Turns out that when you use your phone as an alarm clock, you are exponentially more likely to drop your phone once a day. I'm not even dropping it when I'm turning off my alarm - I'm dropping it as I'm walking away from the bedroom. Like my hands suddenly don't know how to grasp anymore.

Old school alarm clocks are neat and all, but when you wake up at different times on different days of the week - using a smart device is the best. Anyone in need of a cd playing alarm clock?

Unrelated thoughts:

• It is fascinating to me how people who live in the suburbs (and work from the suburbs most of the time) assume that if you live in the city "hopping on the metra" should be a quick fix to get to the suburban location of their choice. As if we all live above/next to a metra station. Just because I live north, it doesn't follow that I live right off of one of the Metra north lines. Getting to the burbs via public transportation for me is a 2-3.5 hour affair.
• I am suddenly obsessed with the idea of owning a hammock. To lounge in on my roof deck. I believe this is a new dream possession. 

I'm finally realizing what a non-stop beginning half of the year this has been. Where did the time go and at the same time, I've only been married for four months? I've only had a new job for two months? I've managed to rack up a lot of change in 2013 so far. 

New goal: no more big life changes in 2013 unless they are of the domestic comfort kind (ie, materialistic home purchases).

loml and I have been trying to cook meals a few times a week (right now we're averaging about once a week, as a pair, but I think we're picking up speed). loml made dinner last night and it was fantastically tasty so I wanted to share: Eggplant Parmesan. Big winner, I'd eat it all the time.

A great Umba month, again. I can't say enough how much I recommend this little mailbox treat every month. With this box, there was another repeat:

Stewart & Claire Old Fashioned lip balm. In a past box I got Spring lip balm. Which was weird and spicy. This one is also weird and spicy - a bit orangey and cinnamony. I like it but I also don't? It feels great but makes me think of Christmas. Next:

Cards from Oyster's Pearl. I received the card above and then a chevron striped blank card. They are glossy, which is something I'm not used to. I'm used to letterpress matte cards. I absolutely appreciate the difference, it's novel. I look forward to sending these out. And the final bit of the box, my favorite:

Beautiful dangly earrings from estieMade. The earrings are a bit longer than my usual lately but I love them. They don't have a big footprint so the length just works. I also have to admit that I was impressed by the way these were shipped - the earring card was so simple but perfect. Just some thick white paper and (genius) brown matte packing tape - symmetrically and carefully arranged. Bravo.

Apologies about my missed days here - I was settling in as an actual consultant at an actual client. And by settling in I mean freaking out. And by freaking out I mean rollercoastering between "I got this" and "I KNOW NOTHING" in the span of hours. It has been about a week now and I feel like I'm definitely over the hump of the full on lack of self confidence. But it does feel like my last job, while a huge boon to my abilities, also led to some huge gaps in my knowledge base. The main gap being design and formal documentation.

Umba box post coming shortly. Possibly tomorrow or this weekend as I sit around and revel in the nothing.

At one point I was pretty starkly honest on this blog, so let me just say that I am a bit of a mess right now. It's kind of weird but for a while there I really felt like I was handling the job change - I wasn't openly anxious about going to work. I was tired but adjusting.

All a hoax. I'm full of anxiousness and covered in the pimples to show it. I'm trying to bring myself  back to earth. I will not fail at this job, I will not fail at this job. Repeat. But I guess my self-esteem about my capability to handle a stressful, huge project is very, very low. And the only thing to fix it is to just do it. Succeed on a project or two for some huge ass company and feel like I'm not a sham. That's the plan. I'm officially on a project (hasn't started yet but SOON). Plan commencing shortly.

In the meantime, let's hope my face, family/friends and loml can survive my weird demeanor and insanity. I'll be back. Just as soon as I feel like I'm not scamming a company out of a huge salary.

loml and I talk a lot about planning for retirement. And the next year we have pretty solidly planned.

This means that 25 years out I have a pretty solid picture of what our life will be. One year out I'm pretty sure as well. But ten years...ten years is an uncertain fuzzy blur. Ten years from now is my new scary age.

Remember how I have a gross and probably not all that entertaining habit of talking about my huge pimples? That's happening again. I have a doozy of a mutant of a pimple. I like to think it's seasons (allergies leading to pimples??) but really I'm the bad patient who uses something and then it works super well so I slowly taper off use. With no doctor's orders. In other words, I will likely die from not completing a course of antibiotics at some point. So yeah, the dermatologist ordered me to keep using my acne meds (I'm 31 and my face is worse now than it was at 16).

As a side note to that, I might have a staph infection in my nose.

If I were you I wouldn't look at or touch my face.

I am getting perhaps two less hours in the house every day and, on average, one less hour of sleep every night. And I feel wrecked every day at 8pm. That will get better right?

I had my first "interview" for a placement on a job today. It was...not great. For a variety of reasons. Most of them being that at most times I had no idea what the person was actually asking. Clear and concise questions rule the world. If you ever interview people, drawn out scenarios of "what if" are just...not conducive to truly figuring out what the person knows. I'll know if I'm being staffed on the job tomorrow. I hope I am, mostly so I can get the anxiety of not knowing about consulting out of my system.

Hopefully this blog will be less job ridden in the following months. I'm going to bed.

A lot of people are inquiring about how the new job is. Yesterday I had one of the best days at work I've had in a while. Time passed, I studied, it was great. But this pattern, my studying for certifications, isn't really how life will be. They aim for 85% chargeable - meaning that 85% of my year I'll be on projects. Some people end up close to 100%. I have no idea what I will be - but I do know that not being on a project isn't typical and it isn't something I should take for granted. Nor is it easy for me to gauge/judge how the job will eventually be. So to those asking - it's great right now, but ask me again after a project or two.

As a related but tangential thought - it is often said that kids and pets need limitations. They need rules to guide them. And I think that might be true of my working happy place - I need guidelines for good/best behavior and I need to have clear expectations. I am expected to have a certain number of certifications within the first two years of employment at my new job. Knowing this, I, an over-achiever, am going to go into overdrive getting those and then hopefully leaving them in the dust. I guess I need restrictions and expectations to feel satisfied.

Also, honeymoon period?

umba!

A spectacular umba month, such a good one!

Brownie of deliciousness:

The brownie pictured is not the one loml and I shared. The one we shared was a dark chocolate gluten free delight. It tasted like a brownie made of fudge. Not fudge but not a brownie either. Do recommend. From Sinfully Delicious...in Homer Glen, IL!

Foldover clutch:

I am going to try out this baby tonight. Simple but with bold colors...I am very much a fan. From This ♥ That.

Way to go this month umba!

I started my new job yesterday. Besides still feeling a bit shitty (I either had a cold or an extreme allergy attack on Saturday night/all day Sunday and it was really ill timed), here's other things I could say:

• As far as I can tell there are 3-7 other ladies on the floor total at any one time. This means that the ladies bathroom is a palace because it is almost always completely empty.
• The office was recently completely renovated. This means it's a super modern floor plan (rows of open desks, phone booth offices, conference rooms of all sizes) with bright colors that quadrant the floor (orange, blue, green, yellow). I'm in blue this week. It also means the kitchen is insanely nice and there is a living room area with an XBox and "at cost" vending machines. Probably things I will never use but I appreciate the effort.
• Speaking of that renovation, as far as I can tell, no one except fairly high management has an office. This means my manager and location lead both sit in the rows like everyone else. I love it. Also, the cubes are pretty much unassigned except for the management (because the rest of us are in sporadically).
• I'm going through a week long orientation and so far my insight is: holy hell, I have an actual "roadmap" for my career trajectory. Some of which I choose and some of which they advise/require of me. This is novel to me and pretty delightful.

So I'm gainfully employed again, here's hoping I get put on a project sometime in the future so I can freak out about being a consultant. Fingers crossed I like it. 

Have you guys ever heard of cakestyle? If you can believe it, yesterday I spent even more money on clothes (seriously, these two shopping trips make up for all my years of clothing indifference in one expensive swoop). When I was trying to figure out how to beef up my wardrobe, I knew I needed help. So I searched "personal shopper chicago" and read around a bit. That's what led me to Macy's personal shopping.

But I hate shopping...and the idea of having to go to the store to buy new clothes every few months or a couple times a year is just..urgh. So cakestyle immediately appealed to me: the idea is that you get a personal shopper who sends you a box full of outfits that you try on. If you like anything, you buy it. If not, you ship them all back, free of charge. The company is an infant, super new and growing into itself. But man it appealed to me. My only concern was that I am a weird fit. loml frequently calls my body a mutant. So I contacted them and asked if they ever do "fitting" appointments. And it turned out, of course they do.*

This appointment, with Beth, was honestly exactly what I wanted out of a personal shopper. She had an insane rack of clothes picked for me based on what I had put into my cakestyle settings. I went through and tried on outfit after outfit. No trolling through a store with a cart or anything like that. And she did a pretty fantastic job overall with fit.

I think overall, with the Macys stuff + the cakestyle stuff, I now have a super insane new wardrobe. I'm pretty excited. And I hope that moving forward this is a step toward me staying more current. I can request a box from cakestyle whenever I want. I can say "I need a cocktail dress, send me some!" or "I just need summer pieces" or "I'm going on a cruise, I need cruise clothes" and a box will whisk itself to my doorstep full of clothing from my stylist. It comes with a video explaining the choices too.

This all sounds like an ad, doesn't it? I am definitely not important enough to be paid for writing this, that is honestly laughable. I think there are like, 10 of you out there reading this? I am just really excited about what happened yesterday.

*Note to anyone who really might be considering this - they just stopped doing appointments for the short term as they are looking for a new office building/studio space. They currently share office space with other VC companies and rent a small studio space for appointments. They want to move to a solo office space/appointment space combined. Hopefully it won't be too long before they are offering appointments again.

The life of the short-term unemployed has been pretty up and down so far. Mostly just a bunch of reading by a pool and relaxing with my game obsession (Tropico 4). I am lucky enough to have a retired father in Florida who opens his house to his children selflessly. It was fantastic.

But it was also fraught at beginning and end. Beginning...we left on the day of the insane, torrential storm in Chicago. Our morning, pre-flight, was spent with towels and buckets in our basement. We were lucky enough to not have sewer back up (oh flood control, I love you completely). But we have an issue with our back door being too low and a clogging drain right outside of it. And a newly found crack in our foundation (or brick wall, as it were). End...we came home to super delayed luggage handling and loml's (I guess our?) car stalling in the cell phone lot (his parents were driving it to pick us up). We wound up taking the L home and leaving the car with his parents.

All that being said, relaxation was great and I have completely let go of my old job. The last day was weird. Saying goodbye to my project coworker who was also my work bestie was weirdly anti-climatic. I'm feeling sure I may not have the best of luck keeping in touch with him and he was a huge part of my life for the past three years. Work friendship is weird. Wiping my computer was the saddest moment (which is kind of sad in and of itself). But ultimately I left at the end of the day like any other day at work. Except I left with stuff:

That's it. That is five years of desk flair and two presents from coworkers. It's not much. I had to spread it out for effect.

I'm getting excited to get on to the next thing. Next Monday is my first day at the new job.