Daily Ponderings

It's hard to believe that Christmas is one week away. I started buying gifts for friends and family over the summer, which is becoming sort of a tradition for me. Since I save money every month for Christmas, I have a good amount by summertime to start thinking and browsing for gifts. It makes things so much less stressful when the holidays do come around! Of course, I think I should really wrap the gifts as I get them over the summer and fall, too. I feel like I've been wrapping forever! With Christmas approaching so quickly, I am also finding it hard to believe that we're about to start a new year. But what has astounded me even more is that we're about to start a whole new decade! Where in the world did the past 1o years go?? I started the year 2000 sick. I rang in that new decade with my boyfriend at the time, in my living room, and under blankets because I was battling a cold. It's hard to fathom that in 10 years, so much is different. But yet, there is so much...

Many moons ago, after losing my teaching job, and trying to figure out how to make ends meet, a friend suggested I become a tutor for the AOL Ask-A-Tutor program. I thought about it, and decided to sign up. I had to go through training, and after that, I started helping in the English tutoring room. The incentive allowed me to get AOL for free each month, about a $21 savings. That was my initiative for joining. But after several months, I started becoming friends with some of the other teachers, and it became more of a social gathering besides just helping students. I tutored at least 4 hours a week, sometimes more, and it was a pretty good time! A few years ago, AOL stupidly shut down the tutoring program. I soon become an ex-customer of AOL, and found out a bit later that some of the people from the tutoring program had created a new program that gave free tutoring to students from all over the world. I decided to continue to be a volunteer, and I've been doing it since. Not too ...