As the week winds down and I move closer to entering the holiday weekend, the sun comes out and my spirits brighten. I don't want to jinx anything, but there is a potential career change in my near future...I'm keeping my fingers crossed all weekend for good measure.

I wish I had stayed home today to enjoy the sun and the crisp spring air. I can't believe it's almost June and we have yet to see a really nice hot day. My superficial fashionable side wants to start on my tan so that my legs aren't blindingly white when I finally reveal them, and the other "new me" side wants to make the public accept my legs as they are. I'm pale as milk and I'm proud. Maybe I'll start a trend.

Tonight we enjoy a flashback to our college days at the House of Blues (Which hub and I continue to refer to as the House of Boobs for no apparent reason other than that it's fun to say. We're such children sometimes.) with the members of Hepcat. I can't wait to reminisce. Before we head downtown we may stop by the Gaper's Block party at Danny's to meet people we interact with online almost every day. I don't know why I am feeling a little bit apprehensive about it. I guess I just imagine myself as being seen as mysterious and fascinating, and when I reveal my 5' tall shy self the mystery will be gone in a poof. I'm just uncomfortable about meeting people in general, which I suppose I need to work on if I want to land a new job on the first interview. It would be fun to have a masked "blind date" party, to physically meet for the first time but leave that safety of not revealing your true identity by wearing a paper cutout of Bush's face or one of those Mardi Gras feather masks. Therefore if you get drunk and say something stupid (which I am sometimes known to do) you can pretend it never happened should your true face be revealed to the group in the future. I'm waaay overanalyzing this. Shut up, Emily. Ok.

Three day weekend, here I come!

Bad Ideas:
- Eating so much you feel like you might puke before a job interview.
- Buying new pants on your lunch break, changing into them in the bathroom, and leaving the size sticker on them while waltzing around the office.
- Adjusting your bra in front of your boss.
- Reinstating the draft.

WRITING ME AN E-MAIL IN ALL CAPS AND USING INCORRECT PUNCTUATION? OFFERING ME A JOB OPPORTUNITY DOES NOT PRESENT AN IMAGE OF BELIEVABLE EMPLOYMENT.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST IN ME BUT THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL I AM GOING TO REPLY TO YOU.

The sad part is that it was a legitimate management position with a large retail company. Looks like somebody needs to hire a new recruiter who actually graduated high school.

As I am a walking contradiction, starting my new stress free happy crappy life last week, here are Five things I hate this week:

- German engineering pooping out on me. My sweet car has decided not to use her turn signals anymore, no matter how many times I turn the lever and bang on the dash.

- Dogs who run in front of my car, begging to be killed. (and owners who let them do it.)

- Hit and runs. (unrelated to the dog thing.)

- Misused apostrophes. (ongoing peeve)

- The unemployment rate messing up my chances for a new jobby job.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and I'm going to take advantage of it. I don't know what happened to me, but something is moving me to take control of my life and strive for happiness and accomplishment instead of whatever else was driving me before. I'm a new girl, ladies and gentlemen.

This morning on the drive to work, even though traffic on North Avenue was insufferable and the overcast sky wasn't letting a single ray of sunshine through, I was happy. I was happy that I live in an amazing city full of amazing people, that I have the most wonderful husband a girl could ask for, happy that I'm healthy and able, that I have a great extended family, and that my new pants fit perfectly. I drove with my windows down, listened to nostalgic music, sipped my coffee, and watched as nearly 90% of my fellow commuters traveled in their hermetically sealed cars with bored looks on their faces, only breaking their glossy stares for angry scowls at the traffic. I didn't take my customary shortcut today, I smiled at the guy selling newspapers in the street, and I let a CTA bus merge in front of me. Somebody stop me, I'm on a roll.

I'm going to start going for what I want instead of waiting for it to come to me. I'm ready for change. I'm thrilled with my life right now, I have everything I've ever wanted and then some, and I'm ready to take advantage of it and appreciate every moment.

I'm a little exhausted from all of this self-reflection and emotional probing. Time for a doughnut.

When it comes to pain and death I'm overly (and appropriately)...scared to death. I'll hopefully have 60 to 80 more years to come to terms with the idea, with the help of psychologists and drunk conversations with my ever loving husband. But who knows where science will be in 60 years, maybe scientists will figure out what makes us tick, what makes us individuals, where this "soul" thing comes from, and find a way to capture and preserve it when our earthly bodies poop out. When I'm 100 I could be existing inside a gorgeous youthful robot with beautiful flowing waves of auburn hair, a flat smooth tanned tummy and legs that won't stop. Or I'll be old and grey and pleased with the life I've created. If the robot thing doesn't work out I'll settle for contentment.

Craig thinks that my fear of death comes from the uncontrollability of it. The fact that I can't dictate when and how I and the people I love will pass freaks me out. I suppose there is some truth to that, but I think it is also the insignificance of it all, and the eternal life question and all that. Most people live selfishly, fulfilling their own desires and needs before thinking of others, which is absolutely normal and fine with me, but if we're all doing that just to survive then what's the point? I imagine everyone leaves some little mark on every person they interact with, but if I never existed would the world really be any different? I need to review Back To the Future.

Then there's the eternal end-all finality of death. There are so many experiences I want to have before I'm gone, so many ways I want to impact other people's lives, so many ways I want to be impacted by others, I can't wrap my mind around the idea of being deprived of these things. Oops, there's that uncontrollability again. Maybe that's my problem. I just can't handle things I can't control. Death, traffic and taxes. It's all beyond my grasp.

5 ways you can get me to work for you: a list.
- Pay me 5-10k more per year than I make now.
- Provide a creative and stimulating work environment.
- Do not make me work with passive aggressive bitches.
- Locate your office within an hour's commute of my home.
- Just offer me a goddamn job. pretty please.

Chicago Tribune | Discoveries Show How Obesity Kills

Change IS good, yet I sometimes have a hard time acclimating. Why do you pull me out of my comfortable mindless Monday morning routine, Blogger? Damn you.

Best weekend ever:

Sleeping in on Saturday (much needed), shopping with the husband (without complaint), a successful 3-bottles-of-wine dinner party (with a complete menu change at the last minute), a new dining room table (we are grown up now!), gorgeous weather, brunch outside at the Milk and Honey Cafe, and being able to start off the week with clean laundry and new shoes.

The highlights outweight the lowlights. Good week.

Highlights of the week thus far:

- The word "Pimpumentary" coming out of the mouth of my boss.
- Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" playing appropriately in the Home Depot. It made me smile.
- Purchasing a grown up dining room table.
- Craig's well deserved bonus, allowing said dining room table purchase.
- Buying shallots from the fruit market.
- Ice cream sandwiches for dinner.
- The amazing weather. (You were dead wrong, weatherman!)
- Deciding on an anniversary trip to Paris next year with my best friend of almost 20 years.

Lowlights of the week thus far:

- Construction on every possible route to work.
- Sore throat/allergies/headache.
- STILL no internet at home. Boooo.

Who knows what tomorrow may bring.

For some reason I associate purchasing large pieces of furniture with being a mature and responsible adult. I'm going to grow up tonight and buy me a dining room table.

But for now I'm taking advantage of my sore throat and headache to go home and take a nap. Maybe I'll also play some Nintendo and watch Saved by the Bell.

Self-conscious girly weight rant begin:

I've been losing weight recently, which is starting to worry me as I really haven't been doing anything special to achieve this result, but rather eating things like disgustingly cheezy pizza and chocolate bars from the vending machine at work. Not that I'm really complaining, as summer is nearly upon us and I now have a roof top deck on which I plan to sunbathe and I am the only female in my building so I feel that I have some sort of womanly ideal to try to represent. But on a short person such as myself, 10 pounds is quite a lot, and I am learning all of my clothes fit oddly while I'm shrinking.

I first noticed my pants fitting more loosely, which immediately posed problem in that baggy clothes make one look unproportioned and oddly shaped, and do not adequately represent a new svelte bum. So I bought a new pair of pants and have been wearing the other two pairs of previous labeled "tight butt pants" that I had saved for special tight butt demanding situations. So now with pants that fit appropriately I have discovered some other issues related to my recent thinning out, things I hadn't counted on that are now starting to really annoy me and are making me contemplate pigging out on fried chicken and nachos for a few weeks just so I don't have to deal with them anymore. The biggest of these concerns is that my underwear is too big. For most women there is nothing more annoying than ill fitting bras and panties. Not to mention nothing more unflattering. And right now I have neither the energy nor the finances to go on a lingerie spree. Maybe this freakish weight loss thing will just as quickly and mysteriously reverse itself so I can complain about how tight everything is again.

I'm not complaining about being thinner, and I'm not trying to sound all snotty and unappreciative ("Don't hate me because I'm beautiful"), but I do want to complain about baggy panties and share too much information with the three of you who read my ramblings.

Self-conscious girly weight rant over.

We've moved. We need new STUFF. Some of it we really do need, like a dining room table, a place to put the telephone other than the floor and a toilet scrub brush, but other things we could really live without. We could find these things anywhere, yet we decided to punish ourselves with the Hell that is Ikea. We visited Ikea at least a dozen times when we first moved here, each time vowing to never return. We stay away just long enough to forget how the long drive, the insane crowd, the long lines, and the cheap products aren't worth it, but then we move again and we say "Hey, I we need a _____, and I bet Ikea has one." And inevitably they do. And we don't like it. And we buy a hundred other things instead and swear we will never go back.

We started our adventure on Sunday by taking the wrong highway and turning a would-be 45 minute trip into an almost two hour tour of the Northern Illinois suburbs. We arrived in Shaumburg (the most typical name for a suburb if I've ever heard one) and prepare for battle in the poorly designed SUV packed parking lot. Millions of angry Sweedish design loving drivers stalk the first few parking rows, ready to fight to the death for the closest available space rather than (God forbid) WALK an extra 25 yards from the (gasp) back of the lot! After escaping a near-fatal parking spot duel with a fat angry man in an Expedition, we decided we could stand to stretch our legs and parked at the end of a row and walked to the inviting yellow and blue door (while fat Expedition man was still waiting for the spot).

The three levels of plastic, metal and wood are a madhouse of confusion and excitement. Every man, woman, and child must have their own shopping cart, and they all must walk in opposite directions, irradically stopping and going. We were exhausted before we'd even made it to floor two. We had a list of 20+ pieces of furniture and items we "needed", but managed to leave the store confused, tired and poor with a mere two items crossed off. Ikea seduced us with her inexpensive and brightly colored housewares, and then kicked us out with no money for a cab-ride home. We still need that telephone table, a couch and a dining room table, but at least Hubb has an alarm clock that records his voice and we have a bright red dot of a rug in the middle of our kitchen. And the toilet bowl brush. At least we didn't forget that.

I swear we're never going back.