This some news adapted from an email I sent to a friend:
Kerri and Rowan are getting back tonight from being gone for over a month in the US. They were going anyway to visit family and it turned out her dad was sick in the hospital so they went straight to Kentucky just in time to talk to him one last time before he went under. He lasted a week and a half more and died. Of course, it's sad and an emotional journey, but there were many things that made it better than it might have been. First it was good that they were able to see and talk to him lucidly one last time. Then she was able to be there with her sister to help wrap everything up legally and financially in Kentucky and then they all came back to Oregon together, so she didn't feel like she was skipping out on family responsibilities once again because of living overseas. And of course best of all is the knowledge that because of her dad's faith in Christ we will be certain to see him again some day and look forward to the time we will all be perfectly healthy and glorified in our new bodies!
Meanwhile I spent the last extremely long month mostly alone. It's always fun for the first two weeks before it starts going stale. I was able to churn through a bunch of games that have been piling up, and I made a huge dent in the number of local restaurants for my review blog (http://jcfoodreviews.blogspot.jp/). I also caught up on several podcasts where I went back and started at the very beginning and listened to all of them up to now (The Reformed Pubcast and These Go to Eleven). I've also been concentrating hard on growing my beard, at least 10 minutes every day. I started back in February and I think I'm about to the length where I'm ready to give it a little trim to not look quite so crazy. The picture above is actually from a month ago so it's probably a bit longer now, but not much. I did finally start trimming the 'stache...putting moustache wax in every day was more of a pain than it was worth. Part of my motivation in growing it has been to not have to do extra stuff in the morning!
Otherwise I was able to volunteer to setup/teardown at church on Sundays since that requires getting up early and staying late, which given how far away I live means getting up at 5am and getting home around 2 or 3pm. The fam would not be happy with that Sunday schedule.
Oh! I also found an excellent shisha smoking spot finally. A new arabic(ish) food restaurant opened up a stone's throw away and they do shisha outside on the balcony, and they guys know what they are doing. They even let me buy my own bowl and kaloud lotus which they keep on site for me. I think I'll be over there about once a week.
The summer is almost over, and we've had deliciously cool weather the last couple of days as the remains of a typhoon passed over. I was able to sleep without the a/c for the first time in a really long time. I love fall here, so looking forward to it getting cooler yet.
Rowan starts up his 8th grade homeschool year when he gets back, so that'll keep us all busy I'm sure. I'm going to be more involved now as Kerri wants me to handle the higher level math, science and religion stuff now. Should be an interesting dress-rehearsal for high school.
Well, I think that brings things up to date! Going to head to the airport in a little while to do a restaurant review.
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