I read a number of blogs and thanks to Bloglines, keeping track of them is quite easy. Today most of the blogs have been about 2007, highlights, lessons learned, best and worst, and such. Nina always makes a list of some very serious resolutions for the new year. I generally try not to make resolutions, but rather as Jeff Barr says, “Plans!” Last year in January, I did make some resolutions so it might be interesting to see how I did.

1. I resolve to spend time most every day at my desk in our home office. I’m sure that I can find enough to do to occupy this time.

Nina can definitely attest that I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in our home office. In fact, she has given the office now a pet name: The Hobbit Hole. Now that I’m working from home, I do spend a lot of time here.

2. I resolve to not go to medical school. It’ll take too much time and then I wouldn’t be able to spend enough time at my desk in our home office.

It turns out that I do have the time now to go to medical school. But, I resolutely held my ground and did not entertain any thoughts of going to medical school. I did, however, investigate what I would need to do to get a teaching certificate. That still sounds quite interesting.

3. I resolve to play with more technology on the internet. Gadgets and stuff like that are what makes life interesting.

Technology has been a lot of fun this year. My current favorite is my new Macbook laptop computer. After I was laid off from AMI Semiconductor and had to turn in my Dell Laptop computer, I ordered a Macbook and have found this to be a delightfully useable machine. I’ve also found Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Amazon Web Services have delivered some incredible capability and that may have some impact on what I do in 2008.

4. I resolve to spend at least five full nights in the motorhome when we don’t have to run the furnace.

That turned out to be an easy resolution to meet as well. After leaving my last job (see #3 above), we decided to use the time to visit family out east. We spent most of the month of August driving the motorhome out to Connecticut and back and then in September drove to Seattle and back along the Oregon coast. We definitely had many more than five nights in the motorhome without having to run the furnace! We were able to spend time with all our children and grandchildren in 2007 except for the contingent in Chandler, Arizona. We’ll inflict ourselves on them sometime in early Spring 2008.

2007 was a very interesting year. I made business trips to Belgium and Manila. We took a wonderful cruise along the Norwegian coast with some good friends. We traveled from coast to coast in the United States. I spent half the year employed at one company and the last three months of the year working on commission for a different company. I’ve had the experience of drawing unemployment ($338 a week before taxes).

I’m also certain that 2008 will be equally as interesting. We’ll start the year by making a quick trip to Missouri for granddaughter Shaundra’s baptism … leaving Thursday, January 3rd and returning Wednesday, January 8th. It’ll just get busier from there. Happy New Year!

I like puns. I like words that almost sound like other words. However, I seldom have the opportunity to actually make one up. I also like Twitter and after a little more than a month I’m liking it more as time goes on.

Today was the “vicious winter storm” (so said the National Weather Service) that wasn’t. That is, the snow did not arrive as predicted, the winds did, though not with the predicted intensity. It has been windy enough, however, that copious amounts of snow have been blown into my driveway. With any luck the snow will get blown out by the wind overnight…. Yeah, right. I’ll be running the snowblower in the morning for sure.

My good friend Duane Slocum posted his “bucket list” on his Christmas Day blog entry. The name comes from the movie by the same name coming soon to theaters near you. It refers to a list of “must do” things before one “kicks the bucket.” Then a couple of days later, Duane chided me for not commenting on his list. Well, Duane, I thought everyone over the age of 40 already had their “bucket list”! I do, it’s rather lengthy, and things are getting added faster than they’re coming off. It is a good idea for a future blog entry, though.

I also have another list … a list of people I wish to meet and talk to after I die. For instance, Willis Carrier is on the list. Several times each summer I bless him for having invented air conditioning. Thomas Crapper used to be on the list until I learned from Wikipedia (a sometimes authoritative source) that he was not the inventor of the flush toilet…. Now my list has next to his crossed-out name an entry that reads “Inventor of the flush toilet”, meaning that I still have some research to do in the next life. The public latrines in Ephesus, for instance, used running water to wash away the effluent, so the flush toilet had to come somewhat later than that. I have vivid memories of treking outside in the snow to the two-holer when I was about four years old and we were living in a small out building in Cleveland (Idaho … only a cemetery remains) at Aunt Ann and Uncle Rulon’s place. That and carrying buckets of water down the hill and to the house (because the building where we were living had no running water) are my only two memories from that time.

Well, it’s time to start thinking about the “best and worst of 2007”. Tomorrow is the last day of this year and that could easily be another “blog beween the tweets…”!