When Care (Care’s Online Book Club) told me about her goal of writing a letter a day this year, I knew it was something I really wanted to do, too.

But an entire year of writing a letter a day? A year was just way too overwhelming. It was okay that I didn’t actually know 365 people to write to – Care assured me I didn’t need to write to a different person each time, I could write letters to the same recipients.

But what a commitment! A letter every single day.

I love digging into a project, like the Creative Every Day project, but I knew adding writing a letter a day this year to my list of intentions was just setting myself up for failure.

Then last week, Care posted about a challenge she’d found: A Month of Letters 2012. Since she was already writing a letter every day, signing up for the challenge was a no-brainer for her.

Me? I had to think about it a little. It was only for a month. I could handle a month, right? Not only that, it happens to be the shortest month of the year (even with this being a leap year).

When I was little, I wrote to penpals across the world. Last year, when we finally went through the accumulation of a decade of junk in preparation for our big move, I came across a box of letters I’d received from penpals when I was a kid. I’d kept every single one.

Looking through this box, I remembered how much fun it was to sit down with a decorated sheet of paper, and write about what was happening in my life. The delight of finding an interesting stamp to use. The thrill of writing down the address on the envelope and picturing my little missive winging its way across the continents.

I miss that.

Don’t get me wrong – I love emails. I write long chatty, emails to friends every day. I receive long, chatty emails back. Long, chatty emails are a much loved part of my daily routine.

But there’s something about putting pen to paper that is really just so delightful.

So I’m up for this challenge of writing a letter a day for a month. Care tells me, after a month of letter writing for her, it’s been a real life changer.

And finally! A reason for all the pretty note paper I can’t resist buying! (Not to mention, justification for buying more …)

Would you like to receive a hand-written letter from me this month? Email me your snail mail address and I’ll add you to my correspondence list!

No related posts.

One of the perks of blogging is the truly awesome accountability tool it can be. It’s mid-January already (four days past the mid-point, actually) so what better way to motivate myself goal-wise than post this little update?

So how have I been doing with all my new year goals? Well …

This week has actually been the first week I’ve found myself in sync with my daily goals. The first week of January was virtually a write-off – but then again, I knew it would be, and my expectations weren’t high. The second week turned out to be a little busier than I’d expected, with some new deadlines turning up on my desk that I hadn’t anticipated.

This week, though, has been great. The kind of week that had me saying, “Ah, this is the life …”

So, excuses aside, here’s how I’ve been shaping up with my daily and weekly goals:

The Dailys

1. Read. I finally got my Toronto Public Library library card last week, and to say I felt like a kid in a candy store as I ambled through TPL’s ebook site is no exaggeration.

So, after a rough start at the very beginning of the new year, I’ve been doing quite well with my daily “Read” goal; I’ve just finished Alan Bradley’s The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag – a book I’ve been meaning to read for quite a while now – and I have quite a few more books waiting for me on my iPad.

2. Write. I’ve discovered something about myself: the hard part for me isn’t the actual doing, it’s the “getting to it”. I’m just so skilled at procrastination, it’s quite amazing. But if I can get myself to actually sit down and start something, it’s actually kind of hard to tear myself away.

That’s what’s been happening with my writing. My first project of the year is revising and editing my mystery WIP, 120,000 words of which have been sitting on my hard drive, gathering dust, for the past four years. I’m implementing the index card method for all of my WIPs this year, so the first step was to go through my draft and get all the scenes down in index cards. I finally finished this task last night, and I’m now looking at a stack of 98 cards that contains the bones of what I’ve written so far.

Next up: filling in the gaps. I’ll be brainstorming more index cards, as there were quite a few gaps that needed to be filled. Also, I realized I needed more suspects; it’s not so much that it’s clear whodunnit. It’s more like it doesn’t seem likely that anyone did it, and as a reader, I enjoy mysteries the most when there are a lot of possibilities, rather than none at all. So I’ll be adding in my red herrings the remainder of this week!

3. Create. I did well initially with this goal. Participating in the Creative Every Day challenge was a great motivator. But then my intentions went a little wayward in the second week of the month. This week, though, I’m back on track.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: since I’ve been in a habit of letting my creative side slide the past three or four years, in order to create a new habit of being creative every day, I need to prepare to be creative.

It sounds a little counterintuitive – after all, isn’t creativity supposed to be spontaneous? Well, not necessarily. And what’s been working for me is putting together a concrete list of creative projects, and prepping the materials for them so they’re within easy reach.

I’ve been having the most fun with the Secondary Character Bank I’ve been creating. Since I’m not counting my writing as part of my Creative Every Day challenge, it’s a great way to incorporate a writing-related activity into the challenge. And I’m finding it’s also a juicy source of inspiration for more stories!

4. Meditate. I can give myself a prize for this one! I’ve been very good with my Meditate goal, although most days I only meditated for about ten minutes. But ten minutes is far better than no minutes, right? Plus, this week I’ve been aiming for 15-20 minutes. Small steps really do gain momentum!

The Weeklys

My weekly goals right now are: blogging, exercising and experiencing. (Given the flexibility of my DIY Moleskine planner, I’ll likely be adding and deleting from these weekly goals.)

So far I’ve met the blogging one (yay!). I’ve totally sucked with the exercising one (which started out the new year as a daily goal, so you can see how far I’ve tumbled with this one). And I’ve really been doing well with the experiencing one.

By “experience”, all I mean is getting outside and doing stuff. During all those years I spent in the suburbs, I rarely ventured outside unless it was to drive to the grocery store or the mall or Costco. I didn’t walk much at all; everything was always a drive away, and as for the neighbourhood, well, you can only walk around the block a few times before the scenery of house after house after house gets a bit boring.

But I’ve been getting out quite a lot the past few weeks, and what I’ve been loving is how so many things are within walking distance!

On Tuesday, as part of a homeschooling event for our youngest, Dylan, we attended one of the Free Noon-hour Concert Series programmes at Roy Thomson Hall: the Bach Children’s Chorus. It was simply beautiful, and the bonus was being able to walk home from the concert!

So that’s my mid-January update. How have you been doing with your 2012 goals and resolutions?

Related posts:

1. Welcome, 2012!
2. [TSS] My Year of Creativity
3. Inspiration Monday: Love, Prompts and Comments
4. Blogging Rhythm
5. C is for Catch-up: Daughter, Early Rising and Fun (and that takes care of D, E & F)

(Photo credit)

Happy new year, everyone!

I can’t believe how excited I’m feeling about this new year. There’s an almost palpable, tangible energy in the air right now, a really good energy that’s lifting me right up there.

All this, despite another heavy deadline-filled week ahead of me. But after that, things shift back to normal – and that’s exciting, too!

2011 was quite an incredible year for me, filled with a lot of learning experiences. My good friend Jules wrote, about her Christmas, that everything was the same, but at the same time, so incredibly different – because she was different.

That’s the way I’m feeling today. I am different. And the experience of this new year is very different from past new years.

I’d never been one to make resolutions. The thought of goals used to make me cringe. Other than my work, I would have said “undisciplined” was one word that described me quite well. (I say, “other than my work”, because I am incredibly deadline-oriented, which means when it comes to my work, I have no option but to be disciplined!)

Somehow, all of that has evaporated. I’ve learned to let go of a good portion of my resistance to some of the things that worked as a barrier between me and my dreams in the past. Also, the old adage, “if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting” keeps coming to me.

So this year? I’m letting go of “doing what I’ve been doing” and embracing doing things differently.

Goals for 2012

Yes, I have them! That, in and of itself, is well worth celebrating!

I finished creating my DIY planner the other day, complete with a customized-just-for-me planning system. And this system incorporates both daily goals, weekly goals, and project goals.

For someone who’s refused to set goals for so many years, this is a huge, huge change.

My daily goals? Read. Write. Create. Meditate. Exercise.

My regular weekly goals? So far, I only have a one. Experience life. It shouldn’t be that difficult, now that I’m living in Toronto. There’s so much to do around here!

And my new system lets me have flexible weekly goals, too.

I haven’t tackled my project list yet. I’m adapting the projects portion of Getting Things Done (GTD is an enticing system but it is way overkill for what I want in my life), so that’s one of my weekly goals this first week of the new year.

So yes, I’m all set! I’m welcoming 2012 with wide open arms.

What do you have planned for yourself in the new year? Do you like to set goals or make resolutions, or are you happiest when you just wing it?

Related posts:

1. Planning for 2012
2. My Mid-January Goals Update
3. [TSS] My Year of Creativity

Happy holidays, everyone! I’m still in the middle of festive celebrations, as we have some family “dos” scheduled this week. And then, of course, there’s New Year’s, although Ward and I have been so busy, we haven’t actually figured out what we’re going to be doing on New Year’s Eve.

My Christmas Day was all about Harry Potter, because this is what I found under the tree:

I’d had this book on my wishlist since I first heard about it (I think it was on Twitter), but it was one of those “yeah, maybe one of these days” kind of things – after all the decluttering book-wise we’ve done this year, I felt strange about forking over such big bucks for a big coffee table type of book. But Ward decided to pick it up for me for Christmas, and am I ever glad he did!

I spent most of Christmas Day curled up on the couch devouring Harry Potter Page to Screen: The Complete Filmmaking Journey. It’s one of those books where, when you come up for air, you say to yourself, “And a wonderful time was had by all.” (Well, at least, that’s what I usually say to myself when I find myself immersed in a really good read.)

The parts I like best? The occasional mentions of J.K. Rowling’s contributions to the filming process, like this bit about the Black family tree:

“Within the house is a tapestry that reveals the entire history of the Black family. The tapestry is mentioned only briefly in the book but needed to be fully constructed for the film. So David Heyman called Jo Rowling to get details about the Black family tree. Within fifteen minutes, she faxed him a complete family tree for the house of Black, with over seventy-five names going back over five generations, all complete with dates of births and deaths, marriage details, and even the family crest and motto.”

It really dawned on me after reading this, how Rowling did more than simply write the Harry Potter books. She also created extremely detailed material about all aspects of Harry Potter’s world, and even though these details might show up in the series in brief mentions, or perhaps not at all, they clearly infuse the books with a realism that plays no small role in their appeal.

Know what I would love to see? A volume devoted to all of this supplementary material. Wouldn’t that be just a lovely peak inside the creative process of this very extraordinary writer?

Ward also got me the final movie in the Harry Potter series; when it came out this year, I went to the theatres to see it twice. I think it’s one of my favourites in the entire series. I haven’t had a chance to watch it again yet, as Christmas Day was given over to the reading of Harry Potter Page to Screen, and then right after Christmas, I had to dig deep into my deadlines again, but I’m definitely looking forward to it.

How were your holidays? What bookish delights did you find under your tree?

Related posts:

1. Harry Potter Reading Challenge
2. Harry Potter in Audio: Books 1 and 2
3. Completed: The Harry Potter Challenge!
4. Merry Christmas!
5. The Holiday Catch-Up Post

It’s that time of the year, when the new year approaches and you find yourself sitting back and taking a look at what you want to accomplish in the twelve blank, fresh-and-new months ahead of you.

Except that I normally don’t feel this way until I’m actually IN the new year. Usually, right around this time, I’m coping with burnout from too much work and the stress of not being prepared for the coming holidays.

Not this year. Yes, I’ve been crazy-busy. No, I’m not at all prepared for the holidays. I mean, I’m not even fully unpacked yet! You’d think I’d be too overwhelmed right now to be planning for the new year, but surprisingly, I’ve been feeling energized lately. I’m not sure why.

And I’ve also been realizing the aptness of that old adage, “if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting.”

Our whole recent decluttering experience has shown me something really big: what I want isn’t more “stuff”. What I want is more time to do the things I want to do.

I’ve always been extremely resistant to the idea of getting my life organized. Resistant to the idea of having a day planner and to-do lists. I felt it was my way of being free. After all, I still got all my work done. I’m very good at meeting deadlines, which is probably the main reason I’m so busy with work around now, when the textbook publishing industry is finishing up books for the next academic year. And I do it all with a minimum of scheduling and no lists to speak of.

Sometimes, when you know yourself well enough, saying, “No, that’s not for me” is a really good thing. But you know what? Sometimes, when you step back and take a look at the strength of your resistance, and the reasons you’re resistant, you finally see that you’re pushing away something that might actually help you to get where you want to go.

I think that’s the story around my resistance to more planning, to giving myself more direction.

2012 is a big year for me. There are a lot of changes coming up – not just with my lifestyle, but also with my work and my writing.

Not only am I in need of getting organized and productive – I WANT to do it.

Yes, the resistance is gone. (I think …)

All of which is my really long-winded way of saying, I’m ready to plan for 2012. And so I’ve been looking around at all the ways I can do this. My options?

1. A conventional planner. Like one of the datebooks you can get from Staples. Or something like the Daytimer system. Or, if I wanted to go whole-hog, a Filofax system. (Believe me, I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the Filofax site …)

2. A DIY planner. There are all the wonderful free printable planner options at DIY Planner – if you’ve been thinking about developing your own time management/productivity/planning system, this is the site to check out. There are loads and loads of printables for you to mix and match to fit your life.

As you can probably tell, the more I looked into things, the more I was leaning toward the DIY planner idea.

But something still didn’t feel quite right:

First, I don’t like writing in a binder.

Second, I need a LOT of flexibility.

Third, I love Moleskines and I want a planner system that lets me use a Moleskine.

Fourth, I have a pretty unique life. I have to fit in freelancing elements, book writing and marketing, homeschooling and blogging. Not to mention all the things I want to do, like more writing, art, puzzles (yes! puzzles!), meditation, and having daily adventures. All of that requires a lot of customizing.

Fifth, the system I use has to feel creative. I’m not going to be happy just ticking off items and scheduling things in.

So I’m brainstorming a system that is absolutely and completely designed for me. And I think I’ve come up with something that just might work. It involves a Moleskine. The discipline of weekly planning. And yes, even some of the elements of the wildly popular Getting Things Done.

And despite all of this, it lets me be highly creative.

Which is one of the things I want to make time for. Creativity.

So I’ve ordered my Moleskine (I wanted a grid one, and all of my blank ones are either lined or plain). It should come in a few days. And if I actually go through with creating this perfect organizational system for me, I’ll post about it, with pics – mainly, to keep me accountable.

It takes 30 days (well, some say 21, but I’ll go with 30 to be on the safe side) to form a new habit. Accountability has always been something that helps me stay the course.

So there you go. I’m planning for 2012.

What about you? What are your plans for the new year?

Related posts:

1. Welcome, 2012!
2. [TSS] My Year of Creativity

My new office – with lots of bookshelves!

We have finally finished the massive amount of decluttering we had to do because of our move into the city. (Well, okay, maybe “finished” is a bit optimistic; there are still bits and pieces at the house waiting for disposal.)

It’s been quite a chaotic six weeks (including a closing date which kept getting extended – but everything’s now set to close by the 14th at the very latest. Yay!)

After the movers had loaded up their truck on our moving day last month, Ward slipped behind the wheel of our car and remarked to me, “The house doesn’t look any less full.”

He was speaking the truth.

At first, it was hard, the decluttering. For me, it was mostly books, books, books. We gave away enough books to stock a small bookstore. Not only were there books on all those bookshelves of ours (and we had many bookshelves. Many.), we also discovered boxes and boxes and boxes of books I’d stored away in every nook and cranny of the house.

But as the days went by, I found myself becoming much more hard core. It became much easier to part with things. I only have so much space for books at the condo, so I had strict criteria: Will I ever reread this? Can I buy it in ebook format? Will I ever need the information in here? Can I find similar information online?

After I finished going through all my books, there were all the other things. And that’s when this whole decluttering experience became a real learning experience for me.

I learned about me. About the things I yearn the most for. Because I discovered so many things that had seen so little use. Art supplies. Magazines. DIY kits. Puzzles. Tools. Interesting knickknacks.

As I sighed and carefully packed each almost-new thing into the giveaway boxes, I realized how often I’d tried to satisfy my need for more time with things that I could buy when I had a spare moment here and there. Things which then sat around, waiting for me to have the time to do something with them.

Time which never materialized.

It was a big lesson.

I owe a lot to this whole decluttering/downsizing experience. I feel like a different person – I have far less wants now, and I’m really happy with all the things that I have. And I know the one thing that I really need – more time to do the things that I want – and I’m making that a priority in 2012.

I also like to think about all the money I’m going to save from now on. Because I seem to have developed a resistance to buying things. I’ll go into a store now, and ooh and aah over something, but have zero inclination to buy it.

And honestly? I’m perfectly happy fulfilling any need I have to accumulate or collect things by romping through Pinterest every morning; I pin something and it feels like I “have it”. Strange, but true.

It’s perfect timing for me to experience this lesson, too, with the holidays being so near. My Christmas wish list this year is very small, and it’s filled with things that I know I’ll use, enjoy and make time for.

So decluttering isn’t something that’s on my 2012 list. I’ve already done it! And I have no intentions of ever getting into a situation where I’ll need to declutter again.

Related posts:

1. A Bookworm Declutters
2. This is the Difficult Part

It’s been six days since we moved into our new place in the city, and while I’ve been active on Twitter, I haven’t been here on the blog at all. So I thought it was time for The Big Catch-up Post!

The Move

The actual move itself went quite well. We hired a fabulous moving company that worked quickly and efficiently to move us from the ‘burbs into the city. They do a lot of condo moves, so they were familiar with the ins and outs of moving into a condo.

That night, of course, we were surrounded by boxes. I’m happy to report that our new place isn’t as small as we’d been thinking, and we have TWO walls of bookcases! So plenty of room for all the books we ended up keeping, plus room for more (although I suspect, after all this decluttering we’ve been doing, I will be sticking with ebooks from now on).

Adjustment

So how are we all doing?

Well, I pretty much fell in love with the place from the moment we moved in. I love being so close to so many things. I love the cityscape outside our living room window. I love the lake view outside the office and bedroom windows.

Our Cityscape View

I was especially thrilled that our furniture didn’t make the rooms feel smaller – the rooms, when empty, already felt smaller than we were used to. But, illogical as it sounds, the place was actually transformed once we got our furniture in. It looks and feels bigger. And of course, very home-like, because it’s filled with our things.

Dylan, our eight-year-old, was very sad the night before the big move. He was born in the house we’re leaving behind, and has lived there all his life. We told him it was okay to feel sad, but to make sure feeling sad didn’t hold him back from also loving the new place if that’s what he felt like.

Children are so resilient. The next evening, even though he was surrounded by boxes and couldn’t get at a lot of his toys, he was proclaiming, “I love our new home!” And he hasn’t stopped saying it ever since.

The Night of Our Big Move

And then there’s my husband.

He’s a wonderful man, my husband. As many of you know, he loves to cook, and handles all the cooking at home. He is also a lot neater than I am, so he tends to do most of the cleaning, too. He’s a real gem and I love him to bits.

BUT.

You could say my husband’s not good with change.

And to make things just that much more challenging, the new kitchen is roughly a third of the size of the old kitchen. Not only that, in our old place, we had “the old kitchen” – the room that used to be our kitchen before we renovated and added a new kitchen – and we’d never gotten around to renovating that room to be anything but a kitchen. So in our old place, he had TWO kitchens. TWO fridges. A stand-up freezer. And two rooms full of cupboard space. All of which he utilized.

I wish we had a larger kitchen here! I suspect his adjustment process is going to take a while …

Other Bits and Pieces

Jamie! We’re going to see Jamie Oliver this coming Wednesday! And I’m super thrilled, because Roy Thomson Hall, the venue, is within walking distance from our new place.

This coming week is a deadline-filled week for me, but being so close to the event means I’ll only have to take four hours off. I can squeeze it in! And Ward is happy, because Jamie is one of his favourite celebrity chefs.

NaNoWriMo Fail. At least, I think so. I’m a whole week behind – I realized right after the move there was no way I could do it all. Something had to give, and unfortunately, it has to be the writing. Deadlines, unpacking and getting settled into our new place must take priority.

I’m hoping next year will be different in terms of deadlines!

Tweetstock! Last month I decided to try out my first Twitter conference/event. I hadn’t realized it would fall in the week of our move (since we were supposed to move in on November 1, not 7). On the night before Tweetstock 6, I was actually debating whether I could take the time off to go.

I did decide to go, and I’m very glad that I did! I had a lot of fun, learned a few things and met some really nice people.

It was so much fun, I’m thinking seriously about going to the next BEA and the next Book Blogger Convention! I’ve met so many wonderful book lovers these past three years, and after getting a taste of meeting some Twitter peeps in real life, I would really love to meet some of my book blogger friends in real life too.

So that’s my update for now. I’m keeping my fingers crossed I’ll be able to get back to regular blogging and blog reading in a few weeks!

Related posts:

1. Some Twitter/post glitches …
2. What’s Up Saturday – May 30
3. Feeling Twitter-ific, Thanks to My Netbook & Seesmic Desktop
4. Saturday Randomness: Halloween, NaNoWriMo, Twitter, Food and Comments

So Ward’s home from Okinawa now, and almost all rested from his jetlag.

Which means it’s time to start:

1. Packing the things we’ll be moving with us.

2. Listing things on Craigslist and Kijiji.

3. Giving things away.

4. Getting things ready for storage.

And it also means …

tackling the difficult part. Meaning, this:

These are the bookshelves in our living room. They are packed to the brim with mostly non-fiction books (the bookcase on the far right holds fiction).

Some of these books have been with me for nearly twenty years. There are plays, art books, essay collections, biographies and memoirs, garden writing books, food writing books, new age books, quantum physics and math books … and many, many more.

I’m not sure how I’ll hold up, sorting through the titles and deciding what to take with us, what to give away, what to store.

It will be hard.

My husband has his own dilemma:

These are his cookbook shelves. He ran out of room earlier this year, so he’s also started another collection in a smaller bookcase to the right of this one.

And then there are these – my To-Be-Read bookcases. Yes, I have two of them.

These two bookcases are also problematic because, well, obviously I haven’t read the books they hold yet – and I still want to!

I also have another three full bookcases in my office, filled with writing and reference books (I’m not showing you a picture because that part of the office is unbelievably messy and I don’t think you’d be able to see the books through the stacks of paper piled in front of the bookcases).

All of this – after I’d already sorted through several bookshelves full of books earlier this year. At the end of that first round, I ended up giving away about 20 boxes of books, packed nine for storage and four to take with us.

I thought that was painful. It did take care of all the bookcases upstairs.

This is the downstairs. And just like before, it’s going to be really, really difficult.

My only consolation is – ebooks! I did find it easier to give away my books earlier this year, knowing that eventually, if I want them back, I can order them in ebook format. Much easier to store, ebooks.

But still …

Related posts:

1. A Life Lesson from Decluttering
2. A Bookworm Declutters

Ward’s away on his trip to Okinawa, and if anyone had asked what I would be doing while he was away, I would have said, “Why, reading, of course.”

I even stocked up on a few audiobooks: Gambit, by Rex Stout (a reread), A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny (I’ve been SO looking forward to this new Inspector Gamache mystery) and Outlander, by Diana Gibaldon (another reread, and an unexpected purchase – Audible had it on sale for two days for $4.95 so I snapped it up).

(Nothing in print or ebook, though – I also have a handful of deadlines coming due this week, and I find that when I spend my days staring at PDF proofs, I don’t feel much like staring at a page when I’m done for the day.)

I did get into Gambit – I find both Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Stout’s Nero Wolfe to be excellent companions during kitchen clean-up time.

But surprisingly, I’ve been watching TV series at night!

I’m not really one for television or movies, although when I sit down to watch something, I do usually enjoy it. We made the decision back when my two older kids were young to not do the cable or satellite thing; television time for us meant DVDs and VHS, and nowadays, a lot of online content, too.

The weekend started out, strangely enough, with X Factor auditions on YouTube. Earlier this year my daughter introduced me to The X Factor – we followed along on YouTube – and I really enjoyed them. The new season has just started, and the auditions are actually my favourite part of the series.

Once I’d watched the latest batch of auditions, though, I found myself wanting to watch other things. (This is probably how television addiction starts …)

So I fired up Netflix, something I almost never do. Netflix is Ward’s territory – he loves being able to watch all those reality cooking shows, and of course his action/adventure movies and chick flicks (which he enjoys even more than I do).

Guess what I found on Netflix? BBC’s Inspector Lynley series! I’m a fan of Elizabeth George’s Lynley books, and I ended up watching all four episodes of the show that Netflix had on offer.

And that’s when my eye was caught by Sherlock, also from the BBC. I remembered, vaguely, some Twitter conversation I’d seen last year about this series and how good it was. So last night, I watched the first two episodes.

Sherlock (Photo credit)

Wow. I loved it! The whole idea of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson solving modern-day crimes is so much fun. I found both the characters and the mysteries very enjoyable.

On tonight’s agenda? More Sherlock – there are two is one more episodes episode right now on Netflix. And I’m hoping Netflix will be adding new episodes soon after they get broadcast. (Netflix for Canada doesn’t have quite the selection that Netflix in the States has, unfortunately).

What am I planning to watch after I finish the two one remaining episodes episode? Miss Marple, of course!

Can you tell? I’m really enjoying my bookish TV.

Related posts:

1. Talent!
2. Review: Write Away, by Elizabeth George
3. The Boy Sherlock Holmes: Eye of the Crow, by Shane Peacock
4. Review: The Case of the Missing Marquess, by Nancy Springer

Last week, I posted about the sale of our house, and the start of our housing search in Toronto’s Annex area.

Well.

It didn’t quite work out the way we’d been planning. After an exhausting week in which we traipsed into the city almost daily and viewed several houses, a condo unit popped up in the Yorkville area.

We’d already decided we were going to rent a house, but decided to take a look at the condo anyway.

That’s when it happened.

A Change of Plans

We changed our minds.

You see, we’d spent a week looking at all manner of apartments in houses with all manner of charming imperfections. Nothing felt quite right. Nothing made us say, “This is it! This is the place!”

Then we went to see the condo, and afterward, we both realized something.

We’ve been living for fifteen years with a whole number of charming imperfections. The house we just sold is all about these charming little imperfections.

Frankly, we’re both a little tired of charming imperfections. And there was something very appealing about living with a bit of chrome and glass for a while.

Waterfront, Here We Come

If condo life beckoned, the next thing we had to look at was area. The Annex isn’t exactly well-known for its condos.

So we took a look over the past fifteen years of suburban living, and realized that all our trips into the city were almost always for entertainment: live theatre and the symphony were high on the list.

And one of our reasons for moving into the city was to be able to do more of this, and to be able to take advantage of the lower cost subscriptions for matinee seatings.

Once we realized this, everything started to come together. Toronto’s waterfront area is filled with condos, and is within walking distance to a lot of entertainment venues.

Synchronicity!

A friend of ours who lives outside the country recently flew in and purchased a condo for investment purposes. In the waterfront area. Which she wants to lease out.

The condo was bought from plans, but is almost all completed. The occupancy date is in mid-October.

The timing couldn’t be more perfect.

So now, we have a place! It’s not finalized yet – my friend wants us to go to the pre-delivery inspection first and see the unit (we’ve just been going by the floor plan) to make sure we’ll like it.

But we’re pretty sure. After our week of rental search experiences, which included a number of interesting characters who didn’t strike us as being particularly suitable landlord types, yes, we’re pretty sure. The unit is large for a condo, the layout makes great use of the available space, and there are, as my friend says, oodles of amenities.

Packing …

It feels so good to be able to focus on packing now. Ward leaves for Japan in a few days, and we’d really wanted to have a place settled before he leaves.

And now, we do!

Photo credit

Related posts:

1. The Adventure Begins …
2. The Big Catch-Up Post