Inching back up the property ladder

It's been nice to have quite a bit of good news in a row.  First, my piece was selected to be read for the Feb. Sing-for-Your-Supper, and that was a lot of fun.  I'm trying to decide if I really can write a new piece for March, but I'm leaning toward doing it.  It would be nice to try to build on these connections, as it is by far the most likely avenue to get my scripts produced in Toronto and eventually build a bit more momentum to the point it would be worth talking to an agent.

Second, I got my passport back in the mail, so I can travel again, particularly to the States.  (I have a fun trip to NYC planned for March and a boring trip to the States scheduled for late April and we'll see after that.)  I was starting to stress out about it, as they changed the photo requirements slightly, and I was worried that my application would be rejected on a technicality.

But most importantly, after a relatively short house hunting period -- 4 or so weeks of checking out open houses and, more importantly, the prices, we found a house we liked.  We put in our offer, and it turns out ours was the only bid.  We were fully expecting this to be a bidding war, as we were looking in a hot neighbourhood, with good local schools, and many houses here have gone $50-100K over asking (including a tear down!).  I think we really lucked out in that the seller listed in January but wanted to close in May.  They really would have been better off listing in early March.  Also, there is no parking, just permit parking on the street, but we don't have a car, at least at the moment.  While we could have gone on and haggled a bit more, I decided I had been prepared to pay considerably more, so we went ahead and gave the sellers their asking price (whereas I am pretty sure they expected to get over asking).  Had we decided to play hardball, they probably would have pulled the offer and relisted in March.  But who really knows...

I think I'll hold off on going into more details than that about the location and final price, but I am still quite excited and relieved that I don't have to go keep looking at houses, particularly when in so many cases it has been a multiple-offer situation that gets a bit heated.  I don't really function that well in those kind of arenas.