By the time you read this, I will be back at work.

I wrote 95% of this post last night and planned on just hitting publish this morning, but that didn’t happen. Neither did my run this morning because I woke up still congested and convinced that an extra 30 minutes in bed would do miracles for my cold. (It didn’t.)

So let me restart this post:

By the time you read this, I will have just finished my first day at my new job!

This will be the happiest any girl has ever been to return to the workforce.

But since I’m apparently not a 100% responsible adult, I left my passport (which I needed to fill out Important Job Paperwork today) in NJ this weekend.

GIANT FAIL.

My very wonderful mother, and her wonderful friend and loyal blog reader Janet decided to drive through the candy cane forest and the Lincoln Tunnel to return it to me.

They also brought me my little Charlie Brown Christmas tree from last year! (Not a damn spot in this apartment where I’d have an extra 10 cubic feet to hold this tree, so it lives in NJ during the off-season.)

They insisted on getting a bite to eat, and who was I to argue? We went to the Italian place across the street, and I got chicken with spinach, sundried tomato and mushrooms over a side of pasta.

Janet requested I take a picture of her food, too. She got a mango salad that looked really good.

I got in bed nice and early so that I would be well-rested this morning, but my cold and nervousness about today had other ideas and I tossed and turned angrily for at least an hour and a half.

I also didn’t pick out my outfit last night, since apparently that is an insurmountable task when you are hopped up on Dayquil, so I wasted time doing that this morning, too. But the first day went well! I’ll be working with some cool clients, and all my coworkers seem to really like their jobs, which is huge.
I am so grateful to be back at work (did I mention that?), but after quite a few months of not working, I was exhausted from getting up early and sitting at a desk all day and wanted to hop right back into bed, but I made myself walk over to the gym and do half an hour on the arc trainer. It’s been a while since I just went to the gym to do cardio on a machine that was not a treadmill, so i was surprised at how quickly I zoned out. I was also amused by the girl next to me who upped her resistance about two seconds after every time I did. But I finally won the resistance war.

I stopped at the place formerly known as Pump for dinner on my way home and got a plate with a little brown rice, Brussels sprouts, broccoli/quinoa salad, chicken/beef meatballs, sweet potato and guacamole. Honestly? Not as much a fan of Pump since they got rid of the chopped tomatoes and cubed sweet potatoes. But I still go there occasionally because it’s healthy and easy. (Tonight’s plans involve some bonding with FreshDirect.)

After dessert.

Thanks for all the sweet tweets and comments wishing me luck today! It warms my half-cynical/half-sappy heart to get such nice messages from people, including those of you I’ve never met!