1. It took Ben an hour and forty minutes to get home from work last
night. He's hopeful he can find a better route, but driving thirty miles
in the Chicago area during rush hour can realistically only get
incrementally better.
2. It really is a fantastic job. Really.
3. Cue
I Will Survive.
4. The new job necessitated a second car. Hello, Honda Fit:

We
did a lot of research, and are pretty confident that it's going to be a
great car. We intended to test drive a Fiesta, but the inexplicably
rude salesman failed to counterbalance the loads of previous bad
experience we've had with Ford. So the only other car we tested was a
Mazda 2. In green. Is this thing not adorable? (Keep in mind that it is
tiny.)

Sadly, it felt like a coffin inside. A cheap,
tiny coffin. Somehow the Honda manages to be a subcompact without feeling like one on the inside.