Good luck with your exam. I'd suggest if you're feeling very comfortable with the Technician material that you spend some time looking over General as well. When you pass Tech you can take the General for free (covered under the original fee). You only have to pay again if you fail. So if you're prepared you could go from no license to Extra for one fee.
Glad to hear you're already connected with a local club. Hopefully you'll find plenty of elmers to mentor you in your new hobby.
The IC-7000 is an awesome rig. I have three HF radios right now. The others are a IC-718 which only does HF (the 7000 does everything) and a hybrid (solid state/tube) Kenwood TS-520S.
Amateur radio can be a fascinating hobby. Especially if you like to experiment. I'm in the process of building a small (probably mount it in an Altoids tin) radio so I can make Morse code contacts from the trail while hiking. You can talk to the Intl Space Station and bounce signals off satellites and even the moon.
I haven't updated my list in a while but here are some of the more interesting places I've talked to:
Azerbaijan
Canary Is.
Svalbard
Martinique
Slovenia
Kaliningrad
A while back a girl selling door-to-door stopped by. She had an accent so I asked where she was from. She told me Estonia and I'd actually just talked to a station there. One of the books she was selling was an encyclopedia so she spent some time with me teaching me about her country. That was pretty cool.
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