ForSale--Tonight we listed our townhouse on the market. Over the past few months as we had actually considered a move within Illinois, we already started the fun process of "de-cluttering". Much of the extraneous crap in our house is stored in a little storage garage down at Storage Mart. We re-painted our funky colored loft area complete with kooky plastic IKEA lights and bright green kid paint into boring, neutral beige. We have taken every hint we can from Designed to Sell (our current favorite show) and now we just wait for the big Open House. I think that our house will sell fairly quickly, but you just never know. It is definitely sad to think that there will be a for sale sign tomorrow on the place that we built in 2001 and had our 2 kids in. I put nine months of blood sweat and tears into my "Jazz Bar" basement remodel, complete with wet-bar and bathroom. Hopefully the next people will appreciate it.

CareerMove--Last week I did one of the craziest things I've ever done in my career. I asked my boss if he would allow me to do my job from "elsewhere". Not another office within the company - but from home, in another state, closer to my family, but further away from any office within the company. What I thought could be a resounding no, turned into a huge surprise. They are going to let me do it! I'm going to move to Rochester, NY to work at the same job that I love, in a town where my parents, my in-laws, and 3 of my grandparents are all within 2 hours of one another.

I really don't need to be right next to my co-workers to be able to do my job as Interactive Marketing Manager. I work with people from London and Chicago, Tampa and Edmonton. We are a distributed team that works mostly from instant messager and email. I'll still return to the Chicago area quite frequently, which will help soften the blow of leaving all of our close friends.

Wow, we have lots to do now!