My first day of work in an office, and I'm like so stressed. My boss called in me in the afternoon and said I have to attend a meeting with her tomorrow and her boss, even though I probably won't understand anything that's going on.

So I'm back to cube land with no privacy, which is such a change from my office with a view in my last office. People at the office seem nice enough. There's good water and the company has its own cafeteria, but no free coffee. There's hot water in the good water dispenser, so if I bring my own tea bags I can drink tea.

There's a payphone on my floor. Is this a hint about not making personal phone calls on the company dime? Thank god for cell phones. I have a picture badge ID which gets me from floor to floor. I'm going to need it on Friday for the anti-war demonstration on Friday.

My new building is right at one of the major demonstration sites, and a memo went around about the tighter security and advising employee to try to get to work early in case of demonstrators. I've managed to avoid the anti-war freaks since the war started, and now I'm at ground zero for the next demonstration.

I am so nervous about going to my new job tomorrow. I don't remember it being like this before, or maybe I just forgot because it's been so long since I've had to start over.

Starting over is so hard that I think most people stay in jobs that are not quite right for them because of the stress of having to begin again. Who needs that added stress in one's life. It was so much easier when I was changing jobs every two years because I was never really settled in one place, and starting over became so routine.

I hope this job works out, and I'm at it for a long, long time. It's always been my dream to find a job that I'll stay at for more than five years. It would be so nice to settle down and be comfortable at work finally, but I just don't see that happening even with this job.

My intuition tells me I'll be at this job for a quite awhile, but it won't be my last job ever. Something will come along to take me away, and I'll be sorry to leave the job but the opportunity coming will too hard to turn down. It's kind of an odd way to go into a job situation, knowing it won't be forever. But what job is forever is this kind of economy anyway?

My experience has been that even the best of jobs don't stay the best forever. Your group changes, your boss moves on or gets promoted, the company moves in a different direction, and so on. I know someone who's been in their job for over 20 years, but I think that's really rare. It's just not the nature of business these days.

People change and businesses change, and it seems like every year and the changes come faster and faster. Of course, I'm putting the cart before the horse. I mean, who knows, maybe I'll find out in these 30 days that this job is not a good fit. I hope not, but that is always a possibility.

I'm just hoping that the 30 days will fly by and everything will work out and I'll have some semblance of job security so I can go back to concentrating on my writing, getting to my goal weight, and working out.

I have the day off today before I start my new job tomorrow. I'm looking at my wardrobe and thinking, I so don't have any work clothes for this kind of hot weather. It never gets this hot in San Francisco.

My boss said the dress code is business casual, but when I was interviewing the people I saw were quite well dressed. Aaarrggh!! I need some new clothes.

All my really nice work clothes are kind of too big, but I don't want to start buying stuff till I get to my goal weight and they hire me on permanently.

I haven't worked in downtown San Francisco in years. Who knows what the prevailing fashions are these days? I was thinking of wearing short skirts all week, but I'm going to be training with a guy and I want to be comfortable. Guess it's long skirts till I figure the lay of the land out.

Friday is jeans day, but at the company before this one, my boss used to look down on people who wore jeans on Friday. She told me it looked too scruffy. She always wore nice pants and a blazer on Fridays, but then again she was an officer of the compnay, a Sr VP and a CIO.

It was a beautiful sunny weekend in San Francisco, but I spent most of it in bed because of my allergies. The hot weather must have upped the pollen count, and my body reacted accordingly.

On Saturday I went to my chiro/kineseologist in Berkeley, and he even said my body was not in the best of shape. He did some work on me to clear things up, and I was thinking of hanging out and shopping till dinner time and then visiting with a friend who lives out there, but by 11:30 am I had the worse headache.

My friend told me to come and watch her dance at her flamenco class, and I did that, but by that time my head was throbbing so badly. I did manage to drop by REI, which was right across from her dance class place, and pick up some new water bottles which was on my list of errands, but that was it for me other than grocery shopping.

I came home, took a nap, finally broke down and took some aspirin, went back to bed and woke back up at 7 pm. My headache was gone but I was still not feeling right, and I watched TV the rest of the night.

Slept fitfully Saturday night, and decided to skip church on Sunday. I slept till 1:30 pm, and when I woke up I felt better for the first time all week.

I spent the rest of the day and night, doing some light cleaning and watching TV. When I woke up this morning, I felt better and only sniffled a little bit. Hopefully this is a sign that my body has finally adjusted to the new temperatures, and the allergy symptoms will go away.

I only get allergy attacks the first week of really hot weather, and then they're gone and only come back when the news says the pollen count is going through the roof.