Glad you're here and ... that Diamond sure looks good on you. 
Just became a Premium member!
diamonds are a chess-player's best friend or something. you can quote me on that, thank you, thank you
Welcome! And if you are not aware of the Chess.com study plans yet (it includes a couple of Chess Mentor courses that Paul described):
http://www.chess.com/article/view/study-plan-directory
...
Just to say thanks for making this such a good place to learn about and play chess. I had a few technical issues when I first joined this site a few months back but everything seems to have been fixed so thanks for the help and Merry Christmas!