After fifteen years of renting various cottages in the area, my wife and I are very excited to have purchased a property in Haliburton.
This had been our long-term retirement plan: sell the Toronto home and move up there year round. So, we’ve been keeping an eye on the market and happened to find the right place at the right price. After renting seven different places on seven different lakes, we had a very clear sense of what we wanted and this one had all the right attributes. We’re just about ten-years earlier than planned.
Our rental experience always felt very contained. We’d go up for two or three (glorious) weeks. Then pack all of our stuff back up and plan for the next year. Now we’re in this new circumstance of being able to go up north on any particular weekend. This flexibility really extends the experience which infuses our weekly planning with the potential of getting out of the city and up to the lake.
I’ll confess that it is very surreal to reach what seemed like an unattainable goal and I don’t want to take this for granted. We are very fortunate to be able to do this. That said, I do now have a whole new list of projects, decisions, and expenses to manage. This is both exciting and daunting.
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter —
Lovers In A Dangerous Time by Bruce Cockburn from Stealing Fire (Deluxe Edition). “Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight” is a great line
We really enjoyed having so many friends and family join us for our fifth, and final, year renting the Torch Lake cottage. Such a special place!
As our vacation gets near the end, I’ll miss this view
🎵 Song of the week for my daughter —
Feather, Fur & Fin by Danny Michel from Feather, Fur & Fin. A conservation biologist’s theme song with a fun horn section
🏃♂️ At 335m, my watch tells me this is the largest elevation gain of the year
Finished reading: Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley is a delight. Great writing and quirky characters, along with nostalgia for my own childhood. Recommended via Paul Wells 📚
Thanks to my sister for bringing these whiskeys from the Elora Distilling Company. I’m starting with the Royal Amber
Because the only metric by which you can actually judge a productivity system is this: did it allow you to produce something or not?
A good reminder for those of us that spend too much time adjusting our systems
🏊♂️ The lake was like glass for this afternoon’s swim
My daughter captured me in full cottage vacation mode: a beer in one hand and book in the other
🎶 After hearing my son and nephew rehearsing Is What It Is by Chance Peña, I’ve been a bit obsessed with it. They were practicing for an upcoming campfire concert at their summer camp, where there was recently a tragedy. Watching the campers comfort each other through the tragedy seemed resonant with the song’s lyrics
Finished reading: The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan is a compelling story about justice and the law. A great start to the series 📚
Finished reading: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is a fun and zany time-travel mystery. Although I enjoyed the story, it does get a bit frenetic 📚
