Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to our holiday special. It’s been a good year, for the most part. It’s hard when you work in an educational environment not to think of this as the middle of the year – but 2007 has been pretty good to me.  I thought I’d go ahead and recap some of the better moments of 2007, but don’t be upset if some favorite moment of yours with the Raging Tech isn’t listed here, in no particular order:

  1. Birthday Party at Hooters! This was last January, and we all went to Asheville and then The Usual Suspects afterwards to play darts. Also later that weekend, my family came up to see me!
  2. Had a girlfriend. This is always nice while it lasts – and while it ended unfortunately I can’t say some of the better moments earlier in the year before I started having some sense didn’t happen here.
  3. Got a better job. I moved up in the IT world from full-time temporary to full-time permanent, started receiving benefits, and got to go to the doctor!
  4. Went on vacation to Hilton Head Island, SC. With my new-found job I had this wonderful thing called “Comp Time” that I accrued working on one Saturday, which gave me enough time to take a Friday off and come in on a half-day on the following Monday. I went to Hilton Head and had a pretty nice time at a really nice beach and ate at some really good restaurants.
  5. My roommate got a grill. Many, many good meals have been made on this grill. I enjoy it a lot.
  6. Our Wii moved in. The new roommate brought his Wii with him, and a modded X-box.
  7. Huge TV. Somewhere in there, I purchased a 55″ Widescreen LCD HDTV from Circuit City. It’s-a nice-a.
  8. Trips with Aron. Aron and I randomly would just go out of town, usually about 45 minutes east to one of the bigger towns, and go eat at a good restaurant and go to a store or a movie or something.
  9. Guitar Hero / Sing Star. I’ve never really been terribly musically inclined, but these two video games are so much fun!
  10. Friday Game Nights. Every Friday (sometimes every other Friday I’d come) some of my friends and I got together to go to Huddle House, and then to one of our houses to play games and hang out.
  11. Pay Raise. Even though everyone in IT is underpaid, it was nice to get a 4% raise back in August.
  12. Ken’s Sermon “Sow For It.” My pastor Ken gave a sermon at church a couple months ago about how if you want God to do something in your life, God doesn’t always give it to you right away. If you want to reap it, you have to sow for it. This may be one of the most influential sermons I’ve heard in my life, and I didn’t take notes, which makes me sad. I may have to go buy it on CD from the church now that I’ve thought about it.
  13. The Holidays. The holidays have really changed for me. I’m finally growing up about gift-giving this year. I didn’t want to let friends know to exchange gifts this year, I just wanted to buy them stuff and see how much they liked it. It made everything so much better. My mom loved her earrings, my sister likes her iPod shuffle, and I think my friends have all told me they love their presents.

That’s it for now, folks. Happy New Year!