After signing the offers for the houses on Friday, Juliette and I headed down to the chalet for a well deserved long weekend. My sister Lori was coming down for the first time and I was looking forward to spending the weekend with her.

Our neighbours, Tim and Ginny had several of their kids and grandchildren down, so Saturday afternoon we saddled up the horses and took the grand-kids for a ride. We also went for a bike ride, swam in the pond, hiked through the forests and explored Ellicottville.

We haven’t had much chance lately to spend time with Lori away from the kids, so it was nice to just relax, catch up and spend some time together. I hope we get a chance to do it again soon.

A week ago last Friday as I was leaving work, I received an email from a friend asking if we would consider selling our house. Juliette and I had been talking about moving next year, so I sent him a quick email saying we would talk about it over the weekend.

The house on Rossmore is too big for us and now that we have the chalet, maintaining the gardens is becoming a fair amount of work. We love the openness and the light of the chalet. We are comfortable there, but don’t feel the same way on Rossmore. Knowing how happy the chalet makes us, we wanted to capture that feeling at home.

Monday, I was on the MLS website, searching Burlington and area for a place that suited us. I was pretty discouraged looking at all the cookie-cutter suburban homes, but then I searched down the beach strip and found a small beach cottage that had been recently renovated with big bright windows, oak and slate floors, a big open basement for our bikes and kayaks, and a reasonable distance from work.

Tecla was over for dinner, so we went for an evening drive down the beach strip to check out the house, the area and the other places for sale. I had been watching the area for years and was impressed by what I saw. The area used to be pretty run down, but things are changing. Cottages are being renovated or torn down and rebuilt. The entire area is up and coming and we loved the look of the house and the area.

Tuesday, I called Justin and told him we would sell Rossmore if the price was right and set up a viewing of the house on the beach. Just like the chalet, as soon as we walked in the front door, we knew we wanted it. We looked around, talked about it for a few minutes and put in an offer that night.

Unfortunately the offer was rejected because of the condition on the sale of our house. Well, if selling our house was what was required, selling our house is what we would do. We both came home early on Wednesday and did a whirlwind tidy and prep of the house. That night at seven, Justin brought the person who had contacted him through. At 7:20, I was meeting with Justin and discussing price.

Thursday, our buyer was arranging financing and Friday after work we had a deposit and a signed offer. We put in an offer on the beach house and left for a long weekend in Ellicottville before we even knew for sure if it would be accepted.

Saturday, I received an email on my phone. Juliette and I are soon to be the proud owners of a small beach bungalow!!!

I am going for an inspection on Friday, so I will take some pictures and upload them so you can see what it is like. Meanwhile, check out the MLS listing while it lasts.

Two weeks ago, my brother Philip married his fiancée Sarah at the Old Mill in Toronto. It was a beautiful ceremony and they make a wonderful couple. I couldn’t ask for better for my brother and know that they will be happy together. Welcome to the family Sarah, not that you haven’t already been a part of it for some time.

I have uploaded the photos that I took from the wedding to an album in the gallery. Hopefully I will find some time to caption them soon, but there are many great shots of the wedding and the family, so check them out.

Juliette and I are sitting on the patio of a lovely log cabin overlooking a lake and the high cliffs of Table Rock Mountain in South Carolina. We came down here with Mari, Dave, Tecla, Jennie, Matt and Derek for a week of spring road bike training on the amazing, twisty, mountain roads in the area.

So far, the weather down here has been amazing, sunny and in the high teens, low twenties. Our winter white pasty look is darkening with the biker tans and our legs are feeling the thousands of feet we are climbing each day. We need to head off for dinner in a few minutes, so I’ll keep this update short, but make sure you check back for more soon. I’ve been taking hundreds of pictures. I’ll post them when I get back.

The Washington Post wrote an interesting article entitled You Can Cap The Pay, But The Greed Will Go On a couple of days ago that confirmed my suspicions about corporate greed and executive compensations. With the current state of the economy, many of us are beginning to question the stability of an unfettered capitalist system. The experiments with communism in the Soviet Union and China have shown that system to be unworkable, but unfortunately, that has been used as an excuse to promote unregulated capitalist markets as the alternative.

I am a strong believer that it is not an either/or argument between capitalism and communism. I believe that economic prosperity can be found somewhere between capitalism and communism. Markets need some regulation to prevent unfair competition and exploitation of workers & resources. Society needs the safety nets of unemployment insurance and health care.

Corporations could act responsibly and for the long term good of both their shareholders and society as a whole if the investors in those companies took a personal interest beyond the short term returns of their investments. We are all guilty of this. Most of us don’t even know what companies we are invested in since most of our savings are in mutual funds and RRSPs.

It is partly this disinterest on the part of investors and the focus on short term profits that got us into the mess that we are currently in. Investors and senior executives seem to only be interested in draining as much profit out of companies as possible.

In 1980, executives at large companies made about 40 times what the average worker made. Last year, CEOs made about 360 times more than the average worker.

I believe that we need to figure out how to make corporations accountable to the people and society as a whole. An excellent example is the Mountain Equipment Co-op, which is owned by the people who shop there, is very successful and socially responsible. I don’t know how we can make more corporations responsible, but I think it is an important area to explore.

If you have ideas, please comment.