It has been a recent topic of discussion in the Greater Fayetteville Business Journal office as to when it is appropriate to begin putting up Christmas decorations. One of my coworkers shared that the second Halloween ends, her tree is up, another coworker shared that she puts up her decorations when she wants and doesn't tend to wait until after Thanksgiving. 
As for me and my house, we respect the pants ripping, coma inducing family meal, and I refuse to acknowledge the coming Christmas chaos until after the turkey has been put away. You can argue that Thanksgiving is more of a warm up to Christmas. And while there aren't any Thanksgiving specific songs to play (even though Bob’s Burgers has remedied that, thank you Linda) and Thanksgiving has no movies attached to it (Addams Family Values is the perfect fall film capturing both Halloween and Thanksgiving vibes, argue with someone else about it.) there’s still some form of anticipation leading up to the holiday.

My Christmas tree will sit in storage until Nov. 28 out of respect. I don’t want fall to go, the bugs are dying, the humidity is gone and the frost has yet to make any of us late for work. But this final month of fall is proving to be a great one! We have our Health Care Heroes event coming up on Nov. 13 and this issue is filled with this year’s finalists and honorees! The GFBJ team has done an amazing job organizing this year’s event and I am looking forward to serving as the Mistress of Ceremonies yet again!

This issue is also surprisingly health care focused. It’s almost like the community was waiting for around this time to release some of the biggest health care news of the year like the preliminary LCME approval for the incoming Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine (check the cover), the recent partnership between Fayetteville Technical Community College and Cape Fear Valley Health (page 3) and a new piece of equipment being used for the first time in the state by FirstHealth (page 11). I can’t prove that all of these organizations waited for our event to go public with these developments, but the suspicion is there!
We hope you enjoy this issue and getting to know some of this year’s Health Care Heroes!
Happy reading!