I keep forgetting

It’s been awhile. At one point, I was a prompt, post-every-Saturday person, but that kind of went as by the wayside as my Peace Corps English teaching. You plan and plan, but on the way, something pops up that changes everything.

I’m as swamped as I can be at work. During the summer, we are transitioning to three new computer applications and guess who gets to be point person? And of course there’s the Fourth party, for which I am co-coordinator. It’s being done totally differently this year.

My mantra is to make it to July 15. By then, several obstacles will be history and I should know where I’m going next. Plus, at that point, I’ll have been here over a year, whereas now I’m just under a year. I just need to get to that point and mentally I feel like I’ll  be like in a better mental place.

Right now, I’m just stressed. All these computer applications we’re moving to are not working right and they’re slow. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Last week, I went to a class for one of the replacement applications and hoo boy, it’s not ready for the real world just yet, but it’s coming anyway. But not soon enough. I asked for the training because we were told we had to use it as of March 31, in time to send our Fourth invites and felt lucky to have gotten it. No sooner had I bought the flight ticket than my office decided to stick with the old application through those invites. Which would have been good for me, except I don’t know that one, either.

My last two weeks has been this: fumble around with the old application in order to get my department’s invites ready, then take three days to exclusively study the new, then come back and fumble with the old again. Hopefully, when it comes time to use the new, I won’t have forgotten how to use it.

One thing I keep forgetting is that I have a car now. I bought someone’s 20-year-old Volvo. It’s so weird to think about it that I still refer to it as Jeff’s car. I got it on the threat of being told I couldn’t walk to work anymore; it was pretty cheap. It took awhile for it to clear inspections and really it’s only been in my parking spot for 3-4 weeks.

Two weeks in, I finally decided to take it to work. Honestly, I prefer to walk, so if I can, I’ll do that. But it’s nice to switch up the routine here and there, especially when I have stuff to lug in or back. I drove it last Monday, or maybe it was the Monday before. I think it might have been the Monday before, because I intended to bring it back the following Friday but couldn’t get it out of the work driveway because there was work being done. Anyway, today, a holiday, I finally decided to make a round trip with it and took it to the gas station. I was running on fumes. It cost about $75 to fill the thing up. I’m definitely not going to drive it all around!

Been running around again, though. I did another 10k yesterday, and oh man, I thought they’d get easier, not harder. It was sunny and hot – I felt awful. The upside, though, beside finishing, was that I was allowed to participate in the first place. We’re still on movement restrictions and the path was alone the riverfront and through the old town. But I asked permission and got the OK, so that was cool. And I did finish, no matter how hard it was. And man, my hips hurt so bad at the end.

The next one I have planned is in August, but I’ve been strong-armed into signing up for a 14k this fall. I already bought the plane ticket and I’m already regretting it. I am NOT ready for it. I’m only doing 7-10k a day these days and I don’t intend on adding more. I have no idea how I am going to do 14k. A lot of walking, I would guess. I don’t know my time but I think it was around 1:10, the same as the second one I did. (I’d done three before but didn’t pick up the little toe tag for No. 3.)

This weekend was a long weekend and I did a day trip to Iznik with a little van full of colleagues. Iznik’s a tile city about three hours away and there were some cool ruins. I’m not a big tile person but it’s nice to look.

Guangzhou wasn’t exactly a place where you wanted to buy a bunch of cool stuff, but Turkey is totally different. Leather, lamps, tiles, towels and rugs are just a few of the awesome stuff you can find here. It’s an utterly fantastic tourist place, and it’s hard to lay off when you find something new.

Rugs really are a weak spot for me, and not just Turkish. I’ve picked up three here already, though, and have my eye on a fourth. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve taken two trips so far and picked up rugs on those, too. One was the Pakistani rug that I got in Sarajevo and last weekend I found a little runner – maybe six feet long – from Belgrade.

I really need to stop. Either that or start looking at 2000-square-foot houses with hardwood or tile floors.