A Personal Update

It's been an interesting summer. A time that I'm sure we'll look back upon in the years ahead with both gratefulness and wonderment.

Since Memorial Day, here's just a brief overview of what we've been up to:

• The outside of our home was destroyed in the Hugo tornado & hail storm

• My wife, Rachel, finished her Ph.D. with honors and quickly landed a professorship at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah

• We visited Cedar in early July and on our 15th wedding anniversary we made a low ball offer on a spec home which was accepted by the builder. Unfortunately, two weeks prior to closing, the home flooded in a "historic" flash flood storm. We since canceled the purchase offer and had to rush to find temporary housing (a rental home) until we find something more permanent in Cedar. (Although we loved the new home, we consider this a major blessing. If the flood had occurred after we closed, we would have lost a tremendous amount of money and time. In fact, my home office would have been in the area that received most of the water damage.)

• We put our home up for sale (which was still under major renovation following the storm) and after three showings received an offer that was $5K below our asking price which we accepted. We are scheduled to close on September 15th (our fingers are crossed). Admittedly, if the deal goes through we will still lose a significant amount of money. (A couple of years ago I told my wife that if our home were a stock, I would short it. Sometimes it hurts to be right.)

• We packed up all of our stuff (it's amazing what you can accumulate in 15 years of marriage) and rented a U-Pack trailer and moved to Utah.

• I sold my wife's car (prior to move) and we are in the process of purchasing another (Carsoup is great!)

• In mid-July, my best friend took a full week off from work so we could play golf every day at all of our favorite courses in Minnesota before I left. (The biggest thing we will miss about Minnesota is our friends and neighbors.)

So, we've had our share of ups and downs over the past few weeks and I'm excited to be back to the old routine. Honestly, we haven't had much time to enjoy our new location as both of us have been in scramble mode to get back to work. In fact, I only put up my computer workstation yesterday afternoon after working only via a laptop this past month. That's how busy we've both have been these past few weeks.

Although a lot of people are on vacation this week ahead of Labor Day, my priorities are to simply get back to work and get my feel for the market back which always takes more time than I think it should. Although I tried my best to stay on top of the market over the past few weeks (and update my thoughts here with the premarket posts I do), given the market's performance and unusual activity, I still have quite a bit of catch up work to do. For the week ahead, I plan to do a fair amount of "paper trading" and only when I start to see my performance returning back to normal will I put cash on the line.

In the end, things will return to normal this week with more link posts, the end of week mailbag post, and other stuff I'm planning to share with you as things return to normal. Also, I must say that I very much appreciate everyone's patience and especially the kind words many of you sent our way during this time.