Good things

This week has been dragging a little at work, but its also been a really good week for a few reasons:

-Caught up on sleep last night after so many late nights in a row. Thank the Lord!
-Saw Jenn for a food coma/Pretty Little Liars party on Tuesday. We should do that so much more often
-My pool has reopened after being mysteriously closed for a couple of weeks
-Buying a wedding gift for one of my favorites (and getting SO excited to see her get hitched and to go to Winston in a couple of weeks!)
-Planning another trip to the dash for homecoming. Life is good.
-Realized that my birthday isn't that far away. Normally I love birthdays, but not so sure I'm excited about number 26...
-Also realized I'm almost done saving up for a big ticket purchase that is frivolous but that I have wanted for a long, long time

What's making you happy this week?

July & August recap

So, apparently July and half of August went by without me blogging. Oops. I blame this in part to my insanely outdated Internet Explorer software that cannot be updated right now for various reasons, and thus, it is about 100x harder to make blog posts, and I officially cannot post pictures. Sigh. I also blame this (mostly) on the busy-ness of life. In the past 30 days, I have been to Savannah, Canada, Birmingham, and Washington DC. And maybe a little Atlanta thrown in the mix somewhere? Just typing that out makes me a little tired. All the trips were good, and half were for pleasure, which is always a plus! Even the ones that we not for pleasure were still lots of fun, and I got to see a few WF friends here and there, and that always makes me happy. Things that don't currently make me happy: laundry mountains, getting my healthy eating back on track after copious restuarant eating, my condo pool being closed temporarily and of course, my lack of blogging. Also my Olympics withdrawals, which is a whole different story because I have never liked the Olympics until this year. Always learning new things about myself.

So, as I breathe a sigh of relief, I promise I am going to try to start blogging again on the reg. And I cannot wait to catch up on everything that you all have been doing! In the meantime, I'm going to attempt to work on my computer issues and hopefully get back up and running soon.

xoxo

Banks

Bank failures are totally fascinating to me (nerd, I know). In the work I do, we think about them a lot. And of course living in Georgia, the bank failure capital of the country, you hear about them a lot. This morning I was clicking through the front page of MSN and came across an article talking about the opposite--the safest banks in the country. Very interesting! Its kind of nice to think about the flip side sometimes.

I know I ocassionally post things referencing finance or money management, but I'm thinking of starting a weekly post on the topic. Either some good advice I've heard or a helpful article I've found. Hopefully this is interesting to someone besides just me!

Peachtree Road Race 2012

Happy belated 4th of July to everyone! Yesterday, John and I spent the morning doing the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta. Its the biggest 10k in the world (somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 people participate), and it was so much fun! Considering my major lack of training (practically none in the past few weeks), I was really proud of myself! I finished in 1 hour, 24 minutes...much faster than I thought considering I was expecting to walk almost the entire thing. I ended up running way more than I thought I would. The atmosphere and people watching were pretty motivating! John did great too--he ran the whole thing in just over an hour. So awesome.

We did it! Any of you who know me personally know it is completely unlike me to do a 10k, but I'm so glad I did and so proud of myself. Can't wait to do it again!

Beach!

John and I had an amazing time at the beach in Destin, Florida last week. We didn't let a little thing like Tropical Storm Debby get in our way. Luckily, she only came by for one day, which we spent at the outlet mall and sitting in the hot tub through the drizzle. Here are some photos to enjoy:

Lots of sun, free happy hour drinks and seafood was had by all :)

Made it!

Finally made it through two long awaited meetings yesterday and another cubicle move, and it's my Friday off! There's nothing better than a three day weekend when you really need it. And not only have I just made it to the weekend, I made it to my Nashville trip that I've been looking forward to for so long! I'm hoping next week in Nashvegas with my work bestie will make up for a lot of the crap we've been dealing with for so long at work!

No big plans this weekend. Maybe doing a little shopping, a massage and a haircut, and going down to Augusta for a night. Actually, now that I think about it, that's a lot of good stuff going on!

Hope y'all have a great weekend too! Xoxo

Financial Advice

One of my biggest work-related passions is financial literacy. I know that I am fortunate enough to have a finance degree and a natural interest in money matters, but so many people do not--especially our generation of 20-somethings. So I always love when friends ask me for financial advice, and I love giving it! I espcially love when I can help someone understand something that they thought was so daunting and out of reach, and explain it in "real person" terms--not something out of a textbook.

I found this great article on MSN Money this morning that gives advice about some really easy things that everyone can incorporate into their daily lives, and save tons of money over time! Please read it if you have any financial goals that you aren't sure how to get started on, I thought it was really helpful!