Tim Samoff // Weblog (old)

June 25, 2004

Playing catch up...

I’ve been neglecting to follow-up on a few things lately. I feel bad about it. Let me see what I can do.

First, as I mentioned yesterday, Julianna and I are going to California. It’s kind of cool that this is becoming a yearly trip for us. I miss my friends and family and it will be good to see them.

This trip is slightly different than any others, though. You see, my brother, Luke, and his family (wife Sarah, son Corban, daughter Lydia) have been living in Dallas for the last couple of years. They were there, because Luke was completing the Wycliff Bible Translators Master’s Degree in Linguistics. Now, they are preparing to move to Southeast Asia to work in linguistics (I don’t remember the exact number, but there are still hundreds of unwritten/untranslated languages in Southeast Asia). My brother’s family’s initial stay is going to be four years — during which, they will become familiar with the culture and learn the language. Then, they will come back to the states for a break (I guess that many organizations have discovered that being away from your home country for more than four years at a time can cause undue mental and physical stress and very likely cause psychological problems). Anyway, the plan is that, after they take their break in the U.S., they are to head back to Southeast Asia to complete the actual translation of the bible.

And all this is the reason why this particular trip to California will be different than the rest. My family is saying goodbye to those we love. Not only are my brother and his family traveling halfway around the world, but they are going somewhere that is very volotile (and especially hostile towards those of the some people), and they are going for more time than any of us have ever had to be apart.

It’s going to be hard.

The second thing I haven’t done a very good job of is keeping you up-to-date on our house-hunting (in fact, it appears that I’ve done a frightfully terrible job keeping you up-to-date in this area). It has been three months since we started (give or take a few weeks). We have looked at over fifty homes now. We even made an offer on one very cool house — which, to keep the story short, wasn’t accepted due to some very weird circumstances that weren’t our fault. But, we did find a house! It is in the Hyde Park area, though it’s not quite to the “historic” stage yet, it’s big enough so that we will be able to live there for a while, and…well, after all of the houses we have seen, we are very thankful that we finally found something that we like. We signed the offer contract yesterday evening and the closing date is August 1st. (Click the picture to see a larger version.)

What else…? Well, Julianna and I have been attending a marriage class at church. No! Nothing’s wrong! It is actually a pre-marital class, but it was suggest as a good class for married couples too. Anyway, we are one of two married couples attending the class. All of the other couples — about twelve of ‘em if you can believe it — are all engaged. And, it has been a great class! Unfortunately, we will miss the final class — the one on sex (why, I never!) — while we are in California.

I think that’s about it… I haven’t made much progress on the album, so there’s not much to tell there. Work has been pretty busy lately — our web host has been having a bunch of problems with our server, though, so if you try to visit the site and it doesn’t work… Well, don’t blame me. We still only have one car and I still ride the bus. I haven’t been excersizing enough lately. It’s been ages since I last went to a movie theater. I finally finished the book I was reading for eight months. I’m finally reading a book that I’ve never read before. None of the music that’s out right now is very inspiring. I got this temporary “new” Blog up so that you all can actually comment without getting errors.

Whew! I think that’s it!

I’ll probably post a little while house-sitting and in California, so come on back now, ya here?

Posted at 3:35 pm

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