SOLD!

On Monday night we got our usual call from Bob, our real estate agent, and since I thought it was his normal Monday night update on the housing market I didn't call him back. I figured, well we only have a week left on this real estate contract before putting plan B in effect (renting the house) so I'll just call him back in the morning. The next morning he called me at work and to my complete surprise, we had an offer!

After we made a quick counter offer and it was accepted we did a muted jump for joy, muted because last time we had an offer it was quickly dashed by our uniquely crappy condo documents. This time, after another initial scare over the documents, the other conditions were smoothly removed from the contract. Now our house is officially sold!

Time for the flurry of activity to begin. We have so much to do and less than a month to do it in as the possession date on the house is March 27. Luckily most of our stuff is already in storage and house is pretty empty. Tommorrow we head out to buy our backpacks, shoes and some other sweet gear and I am so excited.

Look-out Graham, we are on our way! First stop Vancouver!

My First Tattoo

Finally, after a lot of thought, procrastination and nervousness, I headed over to Urge Studios and had my first tattoo done by Dylan.

It is the Egyptian cat goddess Bast. She is the goddess of, among other things, the sun, women, dancing and entertainment. On her chest is the eye of Horus which is a symbol of protection, and a scarab which is the symbol of creation. Behind her is the sun, which symbolizes the god Ra.

I must admit that the process was a little more painful than I had anticipated. However, as soon as the outline was done there was much less wincing on my part. When the color was being done I had a little snack while reading my book which was a great distraction. I was in the chair for about 3 hours, including a couple breaks, but it was totally worth it and I am very happy with the results.

Still here after all this time...

Well as you can tell by our lack of exciting posts from exotic destinations around the world, we are still in Edmonton waiting for the house to sell. The price has been reduced for a second time, down to $156900. Although the house is still being shown regularly there are no takers. We have only had 3 showings since the price dropped and 1 was just yesterday so I suppose we shouldn't jump to conclusions too fast.

We are still very committed to taking this trip of a lifetime, it's just taking a little longer to get off the ground than we had initially anticipated. Boo the housing market and the damn economic downturn. Ah well, I have complete faith that the house will still sell and we will be on our way in no time. We may just have to go the other way around the world.

To quelch our wanderlust in the short term we've decided to take a trip on the train to Jasper in February and go snowboarding in the mountains for a couple days.

Everyone keep your fingers crossed for us, the house has to sell sooner or later!

Two Showings and a Bazaar

The house finally went up for sale last week after a couple minor snags. Since the house is in my name Ryan got the honor of heading to the lawyer's to sign a piece of paper saying I'm allowed to sell it. Then the real estate paperwork had to be done and signed all over again. Ah well, not that big of a deal.

We've already had two showings which is a fun experience. You need to get out of your own house for an hour so that someone can wander through it commenting on your furniture and the color of your walls. Then you get back to find all the lights in the house off and your doors locked in ways you didn't know were possible. As annoying as it can be, I keep hoping for more showings. Let's get this house sold already!

For a taste of the experience to come, we headed to the Tibetan Bazaar that was held this weekend at Westmount hall. It was a small space but it was packed with the exotic. The usual fare of 'Free Tibet' t-shirts were on sale but there was also beautiful jewellry, prayer wheels and fair trade items. Momos and tibetan curry were also available but we didn't indulge.