Yay! Anne has just called to say that as of 5pm today the last condition was waived on my house deal and we can post the sold sign! This is a huge anxiety reliever. I must say, other than the week or so of push-push to totally make the place over, the house sold amazingly well. After the first deal fell through was nicely depressed - especially after finding out about the extent of non-residency. Then a series of offers on Sunday and a better one than the original deal. The house looks amazing right now and it’s always that great irony that the house is most impressive when you are finally giving it up. Lesson: put the time in when you move into a new place and make it what you want it to be. Enjoy it while you are there. Creeping dyslexia…why can I not spell house correctly…every time I type house, it comes out hosue. Weird.
Anyway, onward upward and no looking back. Now to worry about landing in ireland…great hope!
BTW, in the ongoing test of Tagaroo…I have been given Ireland and Dyslexia…hence the picture.

A busy, busy Sunday. My agent showed the hosue twice and then held an Open House on Sunday. The end result was a series of great offers on the house. All were presented and we accepted a deal and I met with the buyer. We are into that waiting time now and wait to remove conditions from the house. Fingers crossed by all parties. This deal will make us all very happy.

I have also been watching the travails of the airline on which I am booked to travel to Dublin on the 15th. Their first flight of the charter season was yesterday and they were delayed 10 hours on leaving Hamilton…this does not imbue confidence, but again, am finding appendages to cross.

All continues to progress and I am every day more conscious that my time in Canada runs short.

So…the house deal fell through last Thursday. Her agent left a message wih mine that he couldn’t even get in touch with her to collect the deposit cheque, so deal was null and void. Huge disappointment and the hosue was kept off the market for a week. That left me rather despondent for a few days and this was compounded by the discovery that Canada seems to have a rather draconian tax regime. Apparently if I want to maintan any ties to the country of my birth I have to pay a rather hefty premium for such a priviledge. Unlike most western countries, which tax you only on doemstic earnings and don’t take a cut of earnings which you have already paid tax on, Canada wants it all. So, would end up being taxed twice if I maintain connections. So have had to file a non-residency declaration and cross fingers that they will accept it. Feeling rather low right now.

PS. Am enthused however about the Tagaroo plug-in for wordpress that uses OpenCalais to suggest tags for your posts and also searches Flickr for images that match those tags. Very cool. It suggested the image I attached to this post. Neato!

So…fingers are crossed. After a week of mad painting, cleaning, purging, storing shipping to get the house ready for sale, it was listed for less than twelve hours, first person through has put in an offer and I have accepted it. Conditional upon home inspection and status certificate from condo corp. We’ll know for sure next week, but major source of anxiety may be fading. Would be totally sweet. House shows well and it can be seen at : MLS.ca

Flats to Let

Please see the post on Randomosity detailing how this map was created.

Colleen and Christina showed up early today, headed off and bought paint and totally refinisihed my master bedroom and the den. What an amazing facelift. The den looks absolutely amazing. Gone is the mustard yellow stuccoed ceiling, pinky red walls with wainscotting and electric blue trim. Who could have possibly painted chosen these colours? I had always hoped to redo the room, and they did it in a day. Painting angels.

I managed to reduce a few shelves of the library to boxed volumes, redid the laundry room and packed up most all odds and ends. Its a huge step closer to being ready to market today.

My mom has now spent two days down in Hamilton helping me turf out trash, doing the landscaping and moving all sorts of things out of the house. It’s looking supremely better and I coudn’t do this without her help. The before and after picture from my agent tells the story. What an impressive makeover. Amazing. So we continue the slog to try and make the house presentable. Slowly but surely.

I finally made the decision and accepted a gracious offer from the Royal Irish Academy. I am now a newly minted Digital Humanities Specialist with the Digital Humanities Observatory. This is thrilling and exciting posting working with researchers in the humanities throughout Ireland to help .

This means huge changes in my life and they are total. Time to sell the house, the car, and most of my wordly belongings. I am excited for the change and of course a little trepadacious about the enormity of the concomitant things that have to happen to make this a reality.

So…I figured it’d be a good opportunity to track my experience as a Canadian loosed on Dublin on this blog. Stay tuned.