Bah. Another Monday.

Kir and I spent the weekend doing upkeep on our lives (going to the bazaar, getting the car washed) and watching Buffy. Buffy season three. Brilliant. Incredibly brilliant. I am looking forward to watching it again once we’re watched it all. And then in July, when it’s released, I’ll get season four. I love my DVD player. (It’s bad when the prospect of watching Buffy that night is all that gets you through your day.)

Better, though, than having nothing to get you through your day.

Today is weird at the office. I have emailed a million different people about a billion different things, and have absolutely no replies. It makes me wonder if Turkmen telecom is fucking with me, but probably everyone is just busy.

I have started keeping a journal of work stuff, to help me be better at my job. I am writing down everything I do all day. I think it will help me keep track of everything going on in the three projects I manage (because Outlook and my Palm Pilot are just not enough) and also discover things I spend time on and don’t need to. Worth a try, right? I wish there was a book on how to be a manager. There are plenty of books on how to interact with your people, but for me that’s the easiest part. The hard part is just knowing what to do – how should my desk be set up? How should I track projects? How should I organize my files and what documents do I need to keep?

I find myself thinking back to my work study job in college. I was basically executive assistant to my boss, and I learned a lot from her about organization and how to run an office. My work study job was more effort than anyone else’s I knew, but I’m glad I stuck it out. Margaret taught me how to be a good boss, and that was a really valuable lesson. She also taught me everything I know about how to be a professional – how you write a business letter or a fax, how to answer your phone and run a meeting and write a decent memo. My dad’s a college professor, and my mom runs a business (well, actually, two businesses). I needed the lessons.

So here I am a grownup with a career, running an office on the basis of what I can remember from my first job when I was 18. And, of course, everything I learned from watching Markus and Morgaine in Tashkent. But I know what they did in a technical way – I know what decisions they made and meetings they held. But I never sat in their offices and watched them work. I have no idea how Markus organized his files or how Morgaine decides what to do herself and what to delegate.

Writing that paragraph just made me email Markus and ask him how he kept track of everything. Good stuff, journaling. I never would have thought of just emailing him and asking.

It has finally stopped raining, and we are in the two week intermezzo of lovely weather before it all gets hellishly hot. The weather is truly lovely, though. Every day is sunny and clear. You can hear frogs chorusing at night and birds during the day. Grass is green, flowers are blooming, and the air somehow just invites you outside.

Already, though, it’s dry enough that I start feeling ill and dehydrated if I’m outside too long. So the air invites me outside, but I have to get myself back in pretty fast. An hour is about my limit. Kir and I have been walking a lot at night, when it’s just cool to wear long sleeves. Sometimes we take the dog, who manifests her joy at walking by carefully depositing three drops of urine on every individual clump of grass that we pass.

Just before lunch, I went to the kiosk by my office, partially to enjoy the weather and partially to purchase bouillon cubes. (every day for lunch I eat a cup and a half of bulgur cooked in broth, with steamed broccoli on top) The woman in front of me at the kiosk bought corrugated third-world toilet paper and a bottle of cheap vodka. Then I requested five bouillon cubes, in my careful yet inadequate Russian. The kiosk counted the cubes out slowly as he handed them to me – “one, two, three, four, five. Five thousand manat, please.” He grinned at me as I gave him my 5,000 manat note.

As I walked back to the office, it dawned on me. He’s helping me learn my Russian numbers.

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.