In fact, the only changes over the last five years were the different vacations we've taken, but not much else. I remember making the comment to my wife at the time that I have a strong feeling that won't be the case for 2008. And, given the past seven months, that has been completely correct.

Last week my wife earned a Ph.D. in Spanish (cum laude) and will begin a new job as a tenured tracked professor at Southern Utah University next month leaving a job she had since my first year of law school. Big changes, to say the least, for both of us. Since accepting the new position in early July, we've been scrambling to uproot and move to Utah including finding and buying our new "dream home" in Utah.

But, as the best laid plans often go awry, last week we were informed that the home we were about to purchase this coming week was destroyed in a flash flood. The good news is that we didn't own the home yet which is a blessing as the damage caused would most likely not have been covered by our insurance policy if we had already closed and moved into the home. The bad news is that we don't have a home to move into yet and I've had to temporarily suspend all moving plans until we figure everything out.

So, in the span of just a couple of months, we've survived two major "100-year storms" both here in Minnesota and also in Utah. When you combine that with the way the market has been this year, to say this year has been "interesting" is a bit of an understatement. I'm sure we'll look back at this year and wonder how we survived this year of so many blessings and challenges at the very same time. In fact, upon learning of our recent news, a good friend shared a quote from a Rudyard Kipling poem with me: "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same, you'll be a man." Good advice for these times, no matter what life sends your way this year.

Now that my wife is back home from Madrid, our plans this week are to put the move to Utah back on track and find suitable, although most likely only temporary housing until we find or build something more permanent in Utah. Then, if all goes well, we'll actually be making the move next week. We still haven't sold our home in Minnesota and frankly it doesn't look like we will anytime soon given current housing market conditions.

Needless to say, I feel badly about having to take so much time recently from trading and blogging, but my hope is that things will return at least to some level of normalcy in a couple of weeks (mid-August) as my wife goes to work and we get settled in. Until then, please bear with me as I juggle a lot of unusual tasks. Once this period is behind us, things will return to normal again here at the website. I promise.