What?!? A mid-week update of the blog? It’s been so crazy at work that I thought I’d need to write some info down soon before I forget it all. Or, before it gets too much so that I leave things out. This week has been busy but I got to do a lot of cool things.

I wrote two Action alert letters. One deals with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the other deals with commemorations of Rwanda and the ICC . My initial drafts were judged to be too verbose and used too much big-brow language. When communicating with non-academic audiences, I’m all for writing in more accessible language. While I’d like to raise the level of debate and discussion in this country, due to time constraints and short attention spans, I need to … what was I saying, oh, yeah … keep it short, to the point, and avoid certain turns of the phrase. But, I’ll have my next drafts done tomorrow morning and with approval, they’ll be out there soon!

I also participated in one of our infamous hill drops today. That’s when the interns hike up to the Senate and House office buildings and hand deliver items from work. Today, we distributed our excellent Congressional Ratings guide , which tracks the voting records of all members of Congress with respect to our issues. Steve, Becky, Emma, Elise, and I all worked the drop today. Mike is going to work some of the House offices tomorrow. I dropped items off in the Russell and Hart Senate buildings. It was kind of cool checking out senators' offices. Sen. Kennedy had the best office that I saw today. Lots of photos of events throughout his history. What impressed me most, especially with my newly chosen field and the place where I’m working, was the photo you see when you walk into the office. It’s just to the left of the staffer who greets you. It’s a picture of Kennedy shaking hands with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. It looks like it was taken outside the UN. Most excellent.

In between the hill drop, I attended a meeting of the Security for a New Century 108th Congress working group. Michael Krepon and Gen. Pete Worden (ret.) each spoke about the weaponization of space. Very interesting talk. Krepon, from the Stimson Center, was very interested in international law and treaty-based solutions to problems. He was also a realist and recognized the need to back up treaties with vigilance and military readiness. Gen. Worden had a different point of view.

Well, besides some emailing and updating of records afterwards, that was my day today. Whew!