Halfway through my Erbil stay, I haven’t exactly followed
through with ambitious dream of preparing for a job interview next month.
Instead, I’ve been shivering and dodging raindrops.
It has been gorgeous out, though. Unfortunately, only about
30 percent of the time. When it’s gorgeous it really is fantastic. But for
whatever reason, it’s been incredibly wet. Apparently it’s wetter than it’s
been in 30something years. It stormed twice after 6 p.m. yesterday and kept me
awake, which is weird because in Baghdad, you can’t hear anything inside the
apartments. The windows are thick and I’m on a middle floor, so there’s no rain
pounding on roof. Here, though, I can hear it just pounding, and my curtain is
open a little and the flashes of lightning light up the whole room.
Usually, the storms don’t last for too long, but they’re
brutal. And unfortunately, I didn’t pack a raincoat. Although there’s a
distinct rainy season here, it’s usually over by now so I took it out. It
starts in November or so, and this year it hasn’t gone five days without rain
and usually there’s been way more than that.
I am sticking to the gym, and last night I had to wait out a
storm in order to get there. The gym is just in a little metal building, so it’s
not really a place you want to be while it’s pouring out, but it wasn’t too bad.
But maybe last night’s and today’s will
be the last. Hope springs eternal, I guess.
The worst part has been, with the last three days’ rain, the
chill. I’m back to not being able to get warm. The buildings have wall-mounted
heaters but the walls and floors just hold in the chill. This morning, I’ve had
three cups of hot tea and two cups of hot chocolate, but I’m still chilled.
Mostly it’s my toes.
Since there wasn’t a lot to do after work last time, this
time I brought some stuff to knock out, thinking I’d have a couple hours a
night to kill. That hasn’t happened this time. First, I’m still covering a
couple things from Baghdad, so I’m doing more there, but in addition to the
main job here, I got added another project. As a result, I am not getting out
at 5 p.m. or so like last time. That
pushes everything back, and I’ve vowed to do more than the half hour in the gym
that I did last time. In Baghdad, an hour is the bare minimum and sometimes I’m
in there up to three.
Except for one night where I worked until 6:30, I’ve been
good on that (and that night I walked three kilometers) but that where the rest
of the plan falls apart. I’m not getting to the gym until well after 6, so it’s
well after 7:30 or so that I walk the two blocks home (or run, if it’s raining
again), take a shower and grab a bite.
My original idea had been to commit about two hours a night
to preparing for a couple of upcoming things and continuing the online Spanish.
Kaput! Now I’m trying to reorganize and get a little forward progress. On this.
The Spanish is probably going to go by the wayside because I didn’t get the
assignment I thought I’d get, but it might switch to another language soon.
Either way, it’s not the important thing. That’s the prep for this thing I have
coming up and boy howdy, do I need to prep for it.
I am getting better about focusing on it in the mornings.
Normally I wake up around 6, but here, except today, I’ve been up around 5 a.m.
Not on purpose; who does that? The light comes in the window; when the sun is
out, it’s out early. But I get up, make breakfast, check on Zippy and then have
been looking at the stuff, though not as much as I should. I keep thinking I
have plenty of time but man, it goes fast.
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