The Eve Before Christmas Eve - Or would that be Christmas Eve's Eve...

Okay, so I felt like I have blogged recently, to realize it has been months. I would have never guessed it had been so long.

I guess a New Years resolution for me might need to be to blog more frequently, if I am going to blog at all.

I started a challenge at 29gifts.org. It is a 29 day giving challenge. I have not read the book yet, but I believe I am waiting for it to become available through the library. I have started using the library this year and it has helped me save some money that I was spending on books. I have managed to do something good :) for the past 7 days. I started this after I thought I had finished my charitable giving for the year. Last Tuesday, I gave a 2 year old a tricycle for Christmas. I also spent a weekend reading people's wish lists on Freecycle.org. I cleaned out my house and tried to find things people wanted on their wish lists. I have given a ton of things away that I wasn't using that others wanted. It was a great feeling to help make people's wishes come true!

PHR Exam

So, after finishing my bachelors degree in Human Resource Management in 2001, I thought about eventually furthering my education. I never took my PHR exam because I needed HR experience after college and I did not immediately go work in an exempt level HR job. I didn't want to stress over taking the test and then if I was fortunate enough to succeed, risk losing it if I didn't have enough real world work experience. So, in 2003, I decided to pursue my Masters degree in HR Management. I received my MBA in HR 2 years later - end of the summer of 2005. Around that time, I began looking for HR jobs and was hired by Centex Homes in South Carolina in October of 2005. I enjoyed my job at Centex Homes where I worked until I was laid off the summer of 2008 - where we kept thinking (hoping, praying - perhaps a little on the optimistic side) that home building was hitting rock bottom, but it seemed to continue to get worse rather than better. Fortunately, I found a job in a stronger industry by the end of the summer of 2008. I am currently employed as the Assistant Manager of Human Resources for the Georgia Ports Authority.

After all of the time, I was thinking about what my options were for continuing my education. I do have some desires for a doctorate degree one day, but that isn't an immediate goal in my life for various reasons. As of today, I am registered to take my PHR exam at the end of the year. I have not been studying at all. I have lots of hours of hard work in front of me because it would be wonderful if I could receive my certification on my first try, but I know this is not going to be easy.

Getting Into Better Shape

Okay, so not a New Years Resolution or anything, but it is that time. Time for me to get myself into better shape! I am going on a cruise in a month and they are definitely not known for people to do anything except gain weight which I don't want or need to do. So, no better time to start working out more regularly than NOW!

I signed up for gym memberships for me and Brandon on Thursday. Then, Thursday night we attended our first boot camp that is held across the street from my new gym. I went there straight from work and it lasted for an hour. And, at least I survived! We had our assessments at the gym on Friday where we also learned what we should be doing for our upper body at the gym. Sunday we went back to the gym to make sure we remembered and put into practice what all we learned on Friday.

Friday and Saturday I was a bit sore from working out, as well as an unfortunate accident I had. Hopefully, I will heal quickly which will make life much easier!

Tonight's plan I believe is just to walk the dogs, so we will have 100% to give to Boot Camp tomorrow night.

I will continue to update.

The Library

So, I realized I have been spending way too much money on books. I don't desire to keep many books after I read them, but I do enjoy passing them onto my friends. I always like to have a good book to read onhand, especially with how much time I sit waiting on trains to pass. I have not invested in a Kindle or any other kindof book reader yet, so I am still reading traditional books. I do believe I would use a Kindle if I had one, but not exclusively by any means. Until last week, I have probably been to a public library a handful of times since high school and that was probably for emergency Internet access or something, not to check out books. (Of course in college I had to use the college library but that was a requirement!)

So, last week I got myself a library card. Libraries are so much more user friendly than what I was used to growing up. You can pick out the books you want online and have them sent to the library that you prefer to pick them up at. You can also put limitless books on hold and they will come to the library of your liking. The Live Oak Library System where I live covers libraries in 3 counties - Liberty, Effingham, and Chatham County where I live and work. I have already exceeded the number of books I can check out for my first 3 weeks, so I am also using Brandon's library card. The books are all in surprisingly fantastic condition! Out of the last five books, I would not think any of them had been previously read. Two of them were books that were going to be expensive to buy because they are not printed in the U.S. The books were by a British author, Madeline Wickham, who is known for the stuff she has written and published in the United States under the name Sophie Kinsella. Sophie Kinsella wrote the "Shopaholic" series, which one of the books was recently made into a movie. The biggest inconvenience is that libraries have had to cut back on their hours due to lack of funding. The libraries have hours that vary per day and are not even open every day. Luckily, I have a library near my work which I can go to 4 days per week after lunchtime, so I do this on my lunch break. There are not too many places to go around here, so this is kindof exciting for now.

If anybody has read a good book lately, please let me know!

Discover Card

This is directed to people who have a Discover card, or are interested in getting one and like to shop!

You can even get different pictures on your Discover card and I have an adorable beagle on mine that I get compliments on weekly when I use my credit card for purchases.

I definitely like to shop, but at the same time I can be quite frugal because I have to save money in some aspects of my life so I can afford the luxuries that I enjoy.

ShopDiscover is a great opportunity for anybody who has a Discover card. It is a way for cardholders to save money when making purchases from a variety of retailers. You can receive anywhere from 5 – 20% cashback on the purchases you make from these sites.
I have used this in the past to get an extra percentage cash back. Then, I have used this money to turnaround and use it towards a cashback gift card, so I can do more shopping.

Websites that are linked to Shop Discover that offer additional discounts include a variety of retail shops from Ulta, Gap, magazines.com, Fossil, and Banana Republic to name a few.

Discover even offers exciting contests like this! For me blogging about this opportunity, I am in the running for a free $50 gift card. I don’t know about you, but I certainly like the idea of free money on occasion.

New To Blogging

Everybody else seems to be blogging these days, so why not give this a try? Most people seem to think little things (or big things) that happen to me are interesting, sometimes at my expense unfortunately. So, why not share with others what is going on in different aspects of my life from day to day.

Sorry if my life bores you and if it does feel free to share with me any ideas you have to make my life more interesting because I am always willing to try something new.

I even finished a book last night which was written about blogging about cooking, "Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously" By: Julie Powell. A movie is about to be released August 7, 2009 based upon this book. It might be a good movie because there are many things in the book that would be quite funny to see. I read this book for my original book club in Savannah that I have been a member of for about a year and a half or more now. Time certainly flies!

Speaking of new things, I joined a new book club recently. It is summertime and I always have managed to read more in the summer than any other time of year since I spend time at the pool and the beach and various other outdoor activities. Also, I have discovered that if you read while you are stuck behind a train it makes the time pass quickly and you can get much more reading done regularly. Especially since I have been known to get stuck behind 3 trains within the past week during one lunch break! I have book club meeting tonight to discuss a book. It is called "Leave it to Cleavage" By: Wendy Wax. This book club decided to pick books that were either about Georgia or the local area of Savannah or else writers that were from the area. No matter what you think this book is about by the title, I bet it is much different than you imagine.