Previewing 2017

2017.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? 2020 in three years will be even worse.

You know what doesn’t sound bad? A trip to Tampa. Clemson absolutely demolished Ohio State 31-0 in the Fiesta Bowl last night. It’s still surreal to me that Clemson played for a National Championship last year and I was able to see it in person. And somehow, it’s going to happen all over again in a little more than a week! It’s an amazing time to be a Clemson football fan. And I’m on Cloud Nine!

Go finish what you started, Deshaun!

Back to the New Year, what’s on deck for this year?

• 15 Books: The last time I met my goal of 12 books (2013) and upped it to 15 (2014), I fell a few books short. After beating my 2016 goal pretty well, I’ve eaten into my “To Read” shelf a bit. But I’ve still got some work to do. I want to re-read The Dark Tower series from Stephen King with the movie on the horizon. I have a couple of non-fiction books – biographies of Steve Jobs, John Muir, Harry Truman – that I’d like to make a dent in as well. Also, let’s be real… I’ll buy more books than I should throughout the year from Barnes & Noble.
• 365 Miles: My health and fitness goal this year is to average a mile a day for the entire year. The idea was sparked from ESPN’s David Pollack’s Twitter #EveryDayCounts challenge. His challenge is to walk/run/jog at least one mile every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But since I have to gear up for both the Bridge Run in April and the Turkey Trot in November, I thought I’d expand the time frame to a full year but change the goal to average a mile a day instead of an actual mile a day.
• 4 House Projects: Well… Here’s a goal I never thought I’d have. With a new house comes new avenues to spend all of your money. I’m not even moved in yet and I already have a list started. I want to have the backyard fenced in so Harper can have some space to run around. I want to have a deck built in the backyard over the slope into the woods to extend the usable space. I want to paint the house to something other than off-white. So my goal is to try and cross at least four of them off by the end of the year.
• 83% LTV: While we’re talking house topics, let’s add in a financial goal too. I’m putting 15% down on the house at closing. By my fancy schmancy spreadsheet calculations, it looks like I’d be on schedule to hit 83% around April 2018. To get to 83% by December, I’ll need to average adding about $120 extra to my monthly payment. It would be less but I won’t have a January or February payment, so I’ll try to roll some of that money saved into the house. The joys of being an adult…
• 1 Website: I am now the proud owner of JerdanFantasySports.com. My goal is to get something serviceable up and running by the start of the 2017 football season for the Jerdan brother’s Pick Six pool. Worst case, the 2017 Bowl Pick ‘Em pool. The tricky part is that a 0.25 website goal at the end of the 1st Quarter doesn’t mean much. So I’ll have to program-manage this one a bit with measurables like getting a database created, setting up an admin page, and creating logins.
• 12,000 Gamerscore: I want another crack at this one. I’m working through Gears of War 4 and Bioshock right now. I have Watchdogs 2. I have the Walking Dead Season 3. The new South Park, Mass Effect, and Halo Wars games are scheduled to come out in the 1st Quarter. Red Dead Redemption 2 is holiday 2017. I also picked up a new TV over Black Friday, so I’ve moved my old one into my bedroom. That’s allowed me to move my Xbox 360 there and play some old games I never got around to.

For the first time in several years, I didn’t get a South Carolina state parks pass for Christmas. So I’ve left it off of my list this year. A lot of the parks I have left to hit aren’t close to Charlotte or Columbia any longer. With the house being a huge unknown variable in my day to day life, I’m not sure how much spare time and money I’ll have to make state park trips. But I’ll keep chipping away at those 20-ish parks I have left.

What are your 2017 plans?