#i spent literally the entire month of january from the 1st to the 31st working on this omg TTWTT | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

corpsentry · 4 years ago

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january: an art retrospective

i did some stuff last month (but it’s a lot of stuff and there’s a photodump + some Serious Fucking Reflection, so it’s all below the cut)

so ok, let’s start with this. here are some heads. each head has a red arrow. that red arrow is what i call the red line of the devil. it’s the slope of the face from the side of the eye to the cheekbone and then down towards the chin. up until like 2 weeks ago, i couldn’t draw it. i couldn’t fucking draw it. i would edit over that part of the face over and over again until i was frustrated and tired and i had a raging homosexual headache and it still never looked right. notice that each head is different. notice that each head looks wrong.

at the start of 2021 i finally admitted to myself, as per the image above, that i was deeply, deeply unhappy with my art. what was the problem? i dunno. but i decided i was going to fix it and i was going to do so via another one scribble a day event wherein for every day of january i would find a photo of a human head, and i would draw it.

january 1st, 2021. i was embarrassed to tweet this even on my private account where like 5 friends and a rock would see it. in retrospect, you can also see all of my bad habits emerging like dicks from a hole in the ground. it’s disproportionate. the brows look flat. the eyes are slanting upwards. the entire drawing looks flat, like this isn’t a 3d person but a caricature of one.

january 2nd, 3rd, 4th:

on the 2nd i decided to start a separate thread for doodles and applied learning. here’s the first set of tests

the rest of the week is kind of uneventful so we’re going to skip those. fast forward to january 11th

this one is especially bad. i am acutely aware, suddenly, that i am not changing anything at all. i’m stressed and miserable about it because i’m still trying to see people as people and trying to draw people that look attractive and proportionate and hot. my friend, leny, reminds me that i need to think about faces in terms of planes. i have a moment. my other friend masha sends me some links to anatomy tutorials. i have another moment.

january 11th. applied sketch

january 13th is when i start the troubleshooting process. the link above drives me mad because i’m pretty happy with the face but then i realize that there’s something very fucking wrong with the shape of the head LOL and then i realize that i’ve never had any idea what the proportion of the face to the rest of the skull is so i grit my teeth and i open a new canvas and i

bald studies. it seemed like the right thing to do. can’t draw heads? ok draw some heads. look at some photographs. i traced each photo but tried to stick to straight lines so that i could replicate the shapes more easily. i broke each face down into shapes. i thought about airplanes

i got really excited. i started doing studies, then applied studies, then stylized studies.

sketches. i’m not sure what’s going on (as always) and it’s very rough, but they look different from the sketches i did on january 2nd. that’s a start

january 16th’s daily study. looks more like a person now. juuuuuust a bit

more applied studies

on the 18th i take a break and go stare at some lips because i don’t understand how the fuck they work. again, i focus on shapes, on volume, on the fact that these things exist in 3d. holy fuck lips exist in 3d. holy fuck we are real

january 19th. i’m working on it.

january 22nd. some sketches + a daily study. it has finally occurred to me that heads can tilt up and down and that things look different accordingly. yes i was not aware of this before. yes i have been drawing for over a decade.

january 23rd. by this point after doing my daily sketch i almost always go back and do an applied study which is basically to say i drew a lot of fucking links. this one looks kind of okay. i’m kind of proud

january 25th. links. trying to make sense of everything i’ve learned

26th, 27th, 28th. daily studies

january 1st. january 31st

The End Of The Photo Dump (dab)

ok NOW i get to talk about what i discovered while studying the shit out of human beings

FIRST OF ALL, there is something precious and magical about drawing shit without the explicit knowledge that you’re going to tweet that shit out to 45 people later. it takes the burden of perception off your shoulders and that does something to you, or at least that’s my theory. i told myself i wouldn’t post any of this stuff until the end of the month (if i wanted to post it at all) and kept everything off my public social media accounts and that meant i could draw ugly as hell without worrying about who would point and laugh, which i absolutely fucking did. a lot of these are fucking trainwrecks. most of these are fucking trainwrecks. why do they look like that?? why??? this doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s allegedly been drawing since they were in kindergarten, does it?????

here’s why: because that person took a huge motherfucking swing at everything they’d ever known about art and spent a month building something new in its place. the abstract explanation is that i grew up on shoujo and weird old anime and my understanding of anatomy was unironically kamichama karin and while i love kamichama karin, when kamichama karin is your rule even if you try to break it, you’re going to end up going nowhere. “you have to know the rules to break them”, yeah? well i didn’t know shit. the abstract explanation is i’ve been miserable about my art for a few years now because i saw other people doing things effortlessly which i couldn’t and instead of going back to the basics, i tried to do what they did (not plagiarism, mind you, i mean i literally tried to copy the red line of the devil i mentioned above because i couldn’t even make that happen) and then i fucking failed.

the simple explanation is this. i had to unlearn everything, and relearn it again (like some kind of new renaissance clown, what the fuck is this?)

take this for example. all my life i’ve drawn faces in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, face shape, head. this works for some people, im aware, but it was something central to how i had always drawn, so i decentralized it. i said fuck you to the old me and changed the order up. now i start with the nose, then the eyes, mouth, the chin line, and the sides of the face. now i force myself to think about the human head as a series of parts interacting with each other instead of a bunch of disparate features which i want to look pretty.

or let’s use this zelda from last year. something about this looked wrong last october, the way something about all of my drawings looked wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it for hell the way i couldn’t articulate Any of my feelings about the visual arts. now, looking back, here’s what i see. that nose is sticking out far too much given how she’s not really facing very far away from the camera. that ear at the back shouldn’t be there. her forehead is too big. she doesn’t have a forehead. what the fuck is up with the shape of her head?

so apparently reject modernity embrace tradition has its roots in alt-right terminology and i’m not very horny for the alt-right (you understand), but the spirit survives here. you know sometimes you have to admit that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing and draw people for 31 days. i’ve spent my whole life drawing stylized people and while again there are artists who have no issue with this, i veered off the track of the Good and the Holy and couldn’t get back on. i had no point of reference because i’d never thought about what an actual human being looks like, so i had no way to fix what i knew in my gut looked wrong but wouldn’t come out better.

this was hard. this was like oikawa tooru swallowing his worthless pride and admitting that ushijima wakatoshi had gotten the best of him for the last time in his high school career, but in haikyuu!! by furudate haruichi oikawa tooru fucks off to argentina and then joins the argentinean national team, and you know what, i think i’ve made it to argentina (not the team just the country). as per the golden rule of dont fucking move until you’re at least two thirds of the way through the month, i only started trying to draw Shit shit on like the 22nd or something, but i was happy with that i created. i am happy with what i’ve done. i’ve posted like 2 things this month that involve people with what i now call ~applied Knowledge~~ and they’re, like, not perfect obviously (perfection is an unattainable ideal), but i’m fucking proud of them. i didn’t spend 5 hours hunched over my laptop adjusting the red line of the devil because it’s not a devil’s line anymore. because i finally sorta get how people work. because i sat down and i said ‘we are not going to fuck with this misery shit anymore’ and then i did that. it’s just a line now.

here are 2 collages tracking my painstakingly carved out progress from january 2nd to february 2nd because i’m a slut for collages

and here’s what i’ve done to my art! the same person drew these but also Not Really! you know! for the first time in a year i don’t immediately hate what i’ve drawn. you know what guys? art is fucking fun. zelda’s forehead doesn’t scare me anymore because i know how foreheads fucking work now, and i don’t know everything, and i’m going to keep troubleshooting stuff as i go (i want to draw a skeleton. like a. i want to draw a goddamn skeleton guys) but i’m honestly and genuinely proud of what i’ve done in the span of a month, and i’m also in disbelief. i started this month-long challenge out as a last ditch effort to make peace with my art because i’ve been tired for a long time and i was ready to kick the bucket on drawing people altogether. i didn’t think anything would happen. nothing’s happened for years. i’ve been miserable for years.

this was the caption for january 1st, 2021. i was super, super fucking embarrassed and it looks like super fucking shit, but you know what, i think i did in fact triumph over the bullshit. surprisingly enough, when you put in consistent effort into something, You Will See Results. didn’t see that coming, did you? i know i didn’t.

this isn’t a success story. it’s a happiness story. i never gave a shit damn about the institute of art or whatever, i was just mad at myself because what i saw in my head didn’t match up with what was on the canvas. and now it’s getting better. now i’m calibrating the compass. now drawing not just backgrounds but also people is exciting to me, and i can stick my links in your face and tell you ‘they hot’. i’m going to keep doing that. i’m going to keep going until i drop off the side of the earth and then spiral towards mars like some kind of fairy, and then i’m going to create something beautiful.

thanks for reading. here’s a pr department link for sticking around until the end

#my stuff

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woah-were-halfway-there · 4 years ago

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What was it like when the two first hooked up. Like how did it progress to that? We’re they like a couple for a few years before they had Mia? Was it two years? Or four?

Ok so this is a really poorly written out timeline lol but hopefully it helps enough 🤣

October 2016: they met for the first time after she went to watch Mitch play in his first NHL game but it was literally just that, they met

Halloween 2016: they ran into each other at a bar, recognized one another, talked and then as she was getting ready to leave y/n mentioned how she was getting brunch with Mitch the next day and invited Auston to join and exchanged numbers. He went, and the three had a really great time

Beginning of November to end of December 2016: they began talking all the time, hung out and did lots together. They became very good friends in this time and it was completely platonic until it wasn’t. He even met Nate and her dad and everything, as a friend (and they were very much so catching feelings for each other but were too nervous/stubborn to do anything about it

December 30th 2016: the whole thing that went down with Chris at the bar on Lexie’s birthday happened. Y/n was v drunk and stayed at Auston’s place. They had a heart to heart *almost* kissed but didn’t

December 31st 2016: y/n wakes up full of regret, is upset about Chris, remembers the heart to heart with Auston (and the almost kiss) but is embarrassed and tries to get tf out of there but Auston is a sweet boi and made her breakfast and had Advil and water ready for her when she woke up so she didn’t have it in her to just dip. So, they talked. She stole some of his sweats and ended up staying with him well into the afternoon until he had to break it to her that his family had just gotten to the city and he had to go see them. Which she was fine with, she went to leave and he asked if she’d go to the centennial classic the following day. She said “yeah, me and Steph are going cause mitch and all” and then he said “no, I mean will you go to the classic as one of my plus ones?” Cause he wanted her to be there for him, cheering him on and she was shook, but said yes before leaving and going home for the night

January 1st 2017: she goes to the game, meets up with Steph and a couple of the girlfriends of the team that she’d gotten to know a little bit from always going to games and just being Mitchys “twin” Steph then handed y/n a bag and told her that she was asked to give that to her and in it was a Matthews jersey. Obviously y/n was surprised but also 🥺 so she put it on, they watched the game, Auston won in overtime. Then after the game when she finally got to talk with him, they were so freaking cute and awkward cause they were both feeling all types of ways especially Auston after seeing that she actually wore his jersey (much to mitch’s dismay) and then he officially introduced her to his family, who had all heard lots about her from Auston. It was very sweet, Ema then invited her to join them for dinner and she didn’t want mitch or steph to think she was bailing on them but they told her to go so she did and had a lot of fun. Then that night after they all had gone back to Auston’s condo, his family soon left and almost as soon as they were out the door Auston had y/n pressed against the wall and they were making out. She stayed the night that night.

January 22nd 2017: the two get into a fight. They’ve spent the entire month basically hooking up, spending all of their free time together and seemingly dating to anyone who didn’t know them. They were crazy about each other but then when y/n hinted that yeah, she would maybe like to try an actual relationship out with him, he froze up and made a comment basically saying that he thought what they had going was good (because he’s a stupid boy) and y/n said “I’m not going to be your fuck buddy, Auston. If you don’t want a relationship that’s fine. But I’m not doing just this especially with how I’ve completly fallen for you. I can’t be strung along, not after what happened with Chris. So, if you don’t want whatever this is going on between us to happen then please let me know and I’ll leave you alone.” And she left, pretty heartbroken because she was feeling that all she was good for to him was sex

January 28th 2017: he texts her in the middle of the night after not speaking all week to go skating with him. They go to the rink at harbourfront, which is empty cause it’s so late. They talk, skate, have competitive one on one matches cause Auston brought hockey gear. Then he, out of nowhere, asks her to be his girlfriend and how he’s wanting to give the idea of them as a couple, a shot

February 12th 2017: they’re officially official, everyone knows. Mitch has already sassed them. And she is his date to the centennial gala where they are pictured together as a couple and everything

Off-season 2017: Auston goes back to Scottsdale, y/n stays in Toronto and they do long distance but she does go to Arizona to visit him for two weeks. She meets his friends, really bonds with his family, then goes back to Toronto and he flys back too a couple of weeks later just before summer ends

2017/2018 season: not much happens, they’re very much so together and are just your typical couple. Y/n is in third year at university, spends a lot of time with her boyfriend at his place, but he goes to y/n and Lexie’s place a lot even though it’s not as nice as his condo downtown. Nate moved to Montreal for university after graduating high school that June, y/n’s dad moves to BC

Off-season 2018: y/n again stays in Toronto but does classes online so she can finish her degree a semester early. Auston is in Scottsdale again, but she does go stay with him for a couple of weeks again and brings him to BC with her and Nate to visit her dad and Mya

2018/2019 season: again, just typical domestic relationship stuff. Y/n finishes university early, works full time at her retail job she had throughout university so she can save up some money because she wasn’t renewing the lease at hers and Lexie’s place since Lexie was moving come September (2019) and she needed to figure something out. Y/n graduated from her program in the spring. Auston, her family (including mitch and Steph), and Auston’s family were there to cheer her on

Off season 2019: y/n works in Toronto, gets hired by an office in her field and is set to start her “adult” job in September. She goes to Scottsdale for a month this time, from mid July to mid August to be with Auston. He’s decided he wants to ask her to move in with him but is a chicken and fucks it up. They fight and she almost goes home but all ends well and she agrees to move in with him

September 2019: y/n starts her job and news of Auston’s charge from when he was in AZ comes to light. Y/n didn’t know about it, was livid and hurt that he didn’t tell her something like that. It was almost a month of them living together, they got into probably their worst fight ever and she stayed at mitch and Steph’s for a few days (it took a bit but they worked it out)

2019-2020 season and 2020 offseason: the events that happen in “Good Life” (keep in mind I wrote that before covid, so that doesn’t exist in this universe)

December 2020: Auston proposes (like in Good Life) and Frank is introduced

End of June 2021: they find out y/n is pregnant

Rest of 2021 and into 2022: the events of “Along For The Ride” part 1 and eventually 2

January 25th 2022: Mia is born

July 30th 2022: they get married

September 2022: they move into their house and out of the condo

Rest of 2022 into 2023: there’s a couple of pieces I wrote like Mia’s 1st Christmas and “Island In The Sun”

Late November 2023: they find out about baby number two, which is where we are right now in the story

Hope this helped! ☺️ sorry it’s a freaking mess though

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stephhannes · 5 years ago

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one year.

“I realize as I write this that I do not want to finish this account.

Nor did I want to finish the year.

The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place.

I look for resolution and find none.

I did not want to finish the year because I know that as the days pass, as January becomes February and February becomes summer, certain things will happen. My image of John at the instant of his death will become less immediate, less raw. It will become something that happened in another year. My sense of John himself, John alive, will become more remote, even “mudgy,” softened, transmuted into whatever best serves my life without him. In fact this is already beginning to happen. All year I have been keeping time by last year’s calendar: what were we doing on this day last year, where did we have dinner, is it the day a year ago we flew to Honolulu after Quintana’s wedding, is it the day a year ago we flew back from Paris, is it the day. I realized today for the first time that my memory of this day a year ago is a memory that does not involve John. This day a year ago was December 31, 2003. John did not see this day a year ago. John was dead.”

—Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

this day a year ago was august 4th, 2018. nathan did not see this day a year ago. nathan was dead.

it doesn’t feel like it’s already been one year without nathan. it feels like just yesterday we were in philly together.

the more i think about the last day we spent together, the more i feel like i was a make-a-wish child getting a trip to disneyworld. the last day we spent together was what i would consider to be a dream day in terms of what my favorite days with nathan looked like.

any day that we actually spent time together after he got off work was a dream day. once he started work, we were still trying to get into a routine, so for the first few weeks, we really didn’t see each other that much. he would get home from work at 4, go to the gym, eat dinner, hang out by himself for a little bit and then come to bed- where we’d usually talk for 30 minutes before he fell asleep. for that period of time, those 30 minutes were basically all of the real quality time we’d get together. but finally, we settled into a routine that allowed for more time together.

the week before nathan died, i was out of town pretty consistently. i was in stewartstown from july 27th to the 31st, and then i went to new york on the 1st & 2nd of august. i got home late on the 2nd, nathan picked me up from the bus stop, and we immediately came home and went to bed.

on august 3rd, nathan got to work from home for most of the day. i ran errands most of the morning and afternoon. i got home and he got done with work at basically the same time. he went to the gym, and i started cooking dinner. for some reason, this was the day that i was finally getting my life together after having a month-long nervous breakdown. i had gone to the grocery store earlier in the day and got things to cook something other than a “depression meal.” i’d also gone to the library, so i spent a lot of time that evening reading while sitting next to nathan as he was on the computer and eating dinner.

we took a shower and then got into bed relatively early that night. i finished my book around 9:30 and we sat in bed and talked for a little bit. and then he fell asleep. i was on my laptop next to him for a little bit. the last time i touched him while he was alive was when i leaned over and kissed his shoulder when i noticed he was asleep next to me.

he was kinda half awake half asleep, and around 11 i was finally ready for bed. so i closed my laptop, and walked around the bed and closed his laptop for him, sat it down on the floor, and then went to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth.

and that’s when it happened.

it all happened so quickly. i thought he was just sick. i didn’t realize he was dying. and then he stopped breathing. and i called 911. and he was dead. and they tried to revive him. and he was dead. and i couldn’t get in contact with anyone. and he was dead. and they took him to the hospital, and i followed behind the ambulance. and i got to the hospital and i waited in line at the ER because that’s what you’re supposed to do in the ER. and they told me they had no record of him. and i knew that meant that he was dead. and they told me to wait. and i waited. and tried to call people. i was so scared and so alone. and i sat in that waiting room on the phone with cody and i told her everything that had just happened and i wasn’t crying yet. not yet.

and finally they took me to a consultation room. and finally a doctor told me that he was dead.

and they let me see him. and i sat next to him for 30 minutes. the time they put on his death certificate as the time of death was actually a time when i was sitting in that room. i knew he had been dead for a couple of hours at that point. but bureaucracy runs slowly. he was dead at 11:08pm on august 3rd, but according to the certificate it was 1 something on the 4th. at 1 something i was crying in a chair next to his hospital bed, i was crying because they wouldn’t let me touch him. all i wanted to do was hold his hand.

i finally left the hospital at 2am.

i got home shortly after.

our apartment had never felt more empty, and just six weeks beforehand we hadn’t moved any furniture in yet.

i walked in and every single light was on. earlier that night nathan had literally gotten on to me about my habit of leaving lights on. our bedroom was a still-life of what had happened a few hours before. one of our grey towels was on the floor, where they had laid him down to do cpr. the blankets were all on the floor, where they’d been thrown off when nathan collapsed out of bed. the fan was still running, laying on the bed, where i’d put it after nathan knocked it down on top of himself when he fell.

i cleaned up the vomit. i picked up all of the scattered plastic that littered our rug from everything the paramedics had unwrapped. i grabbed one of nathan’s t-shirts that i knew smelled like him. i crawled into bed. i didn’t sleep.

no one else knew that nathan was dead until august 4th. just like every other big event in our relationship, there was a period of time where it was just ours. when we started dating, we didn’t tell anyone for a couple of days because we wanted to have it to ourselves for a little bit, and when we got engaged we waited a day to tell everyone because we wanted to keep it just for us for a few hours. and even when he died, it was just ours for a couple of hours.

i didn’t sleep for two days after nathan died.

i haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep since nathan died.

i still remember the first thing i ate after nathan died. on august 7th i ate one biscoff cookie, the ones they give you on american airlines flights. i was flying back to texas and was so weak that i had to eat something. i remember forcing myself to eat again a few days later. i wasn’t even hungry, but i knew that i had to eat something.

+++

one of the very first things i did after nathan died was write a eulogy. i never intended on actually verbalizing it, i just had a lot of feelings that i wanted to write down. i sat and wrote it when i came home that morning after the hospital, and a very un-edited version of it ended up being what i read at his funeral.

i thought that maybe this one year post would be as effortless to write, but it’s been hard trying to decide what i think is the most important thing to say.

i wish that i could sit here and say that i’m doing great and i’m coping well, but that’s just not the case. i still miss nathan so much every single day. i still wake up every morning weighed down by such an insane amount of guilt that i’m the one that gets to wake up every morning instead of him.

i think a lot about the time that nathan told me that i’ve “never needed him for anything,” and how i also believed that to an extent for a long time. i’ve been such an independent person for my entire life, and when nathan and i got together, i relinquished a lot of that independence- even if it didn’t really seem like it to either of us. now that he’s gone, i can’t help but notice this gaping hole in my life. i’m really realizing how much i did rely on him, mostly for emotional support. the hardest part about losing nathan is knowing that the one person who knows how to make me feel better is him, and now there’s no one that gets me like he did.

one time when nathan and i were apart for a few weeks, he said “i just haven’t learned how to get by without you yet,” to me, and that’s exactly how i feel. i just don’t know how to get by without him yet.

i still haven’t learned how to cook for just one person. every night when i come home from work, i feel this weird emptiness because i don’t have anyone to tell about my day. i get that i’m 24 years old and i should know how to self-soothe at this point but it’s been hard not having anyone to talk me down from my weird breakdowns at 3am. and it’s been hard not having someone to force me to get out of bed on my days off. i still can’t fathom my life without nathan in it, because he’s so intwined in how i exist from day-to-day.

i still don’t know who i am without nathan. it feels like such a huge part of my identity revolved around him for more than half of my life. i’ve been having a hard time finding a purpose. when i was in high school, everything i did circled around taking care of nathan, being there for him when he was upset or stressed. when we started dating, it was the same thing. all the decisions i made for myself revolved around how i could best support nathan. now that i’m out here actually making decisions for myself and myself only, i don’t know what i want. nathan was the artist and the scientist and the athlete and i was the loyal sidekick. it feels weird to have my own identity now. to be more than the puppy at nathan’s feet.

+++

i always think of this line from the letter nathan wrote me right before he moved to nyc- “It doesn’t feel fair at all that we could somehow find the one person in the universe that we truly want to be with, only to have to be separated again.” it still feels so unfair that we’re separated again. i still can’t believe that this is my life now. i can’t believe that i have to do this for the rest of my life.

+++

the question i get the most now is “so what brought you to austin from new york?” and i’ve stopped doing that thing where i try to skirt around the truth. i tell the story the exact same way every time. “after i graduated from UT, i moved to new york because my fiancé was finishing up his master’s at columbia. when he graduated we moved to philly because that was where he got a job. then he died. now i’m here.�� but even that story still doesn’t cover the entire last year of my life.

when people ask what i did for the last year, i usually just say “i was on sabbatical.” i’m thankful that i got the opportunity to spend the last year doing whatever i wanted to do. for the first time in my life, i had a little bit of freedom. for the first time, i was able to travel and see my friends that i hadn’t seen in years, and go back home to nyc, and be there without worrying about if i was going to starve or be able to afford rent. i was able to lay in bed for like 6 months without the pressure of having to get a job.

there are some days where i feel like i’ve made no progress. but i have to remember that i spent the first few months after nathan died literally thinking i was going to die from being so sad.

i still cry a lot, but at least i feel like a human again. i’ll never forget how awful i felt after nathan died.

for awhile, i thought i was going to get out of this without any sort of lasting ptsd or trauma, but boy was i wrong! lately i’ve found myself with more anxiety than i’ve ever had before. i’ve been having these consistent nightmares of everyone that i care about dying, and even in my waking life i’ve started having a lot of anxiety over the concept that “oh, everyone i know is going to die and knowing my luck it’s all going to happen very soon.” i’ve gotten more obsessive over small things- i’ve been having a hard time coming to terms with my lack of control. until nathan died, i felt relatively in control of everything in my life, but i lost so much control when nathan died and now i’ve just realized that i have no grasp on anything and it’s been a lot to cope with.

anyways hopefully i’ll get a job with health insurance soon so i can go to therapy but until then i guess i’ll just be crazy, whatever.

+++

i spend a lot of time thinking about what this year would have looked like if nathan hadn’t died. we would have been married by now. we would probably have a dog (or at least 2 cats) by now. we would probably be packing up to move a little further into the suburbs. we would have survived our first PA winter, i’m sure it would have been 3 months of him not letting me turn the heater on. i would have been even more in love with his dumb face than i already was.

this last year wasn’t how i imagined it would be, but it was better than it could have been. i’m thankful for everyone that’s let me sleep on their couch, and everyone that’s checked in on me periodically, and everyone that’s spent time with me over the last year. i’m thankful for the new relationships i’ve built with people from nathan’s life that have now come into mine. part of the reason that i was so excited to marry nathan was an excitement for finally being a part of a family- and when he died i was so afraid that i was going to lose all of that. i’m glad that hasn’t been the case.

from what i’ve read, the general consensus seems to be that the 2nd year is the hardest as a widow. so uhhhhh cool, can’t wait.

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anxiousace44 · 6 years ago

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This story took place around 4 years ago when I had just finished my first semester of college. I’m the oldest of seven children, and in many regards, I was seen as something of the golden child at the time (four-year varsity athlete in high school, cheerleader, perfect grades, valedictorian, National Merit Scholar, very involved in church, etc.) One area in which I did seem to be lacking was dating. I have never been a particularly flirty person (I’ll give you one guess as to why), and this was a topic of teasing from my family.

Generally, the teasing was fairly innocent, just a bit irritating. My brother, however, took things too far. He was constantly on my case about dating and the fact that I was doing none of it. I was getting ready to take some time off from school and go on a mission for church, and I was really invested in this goal of mine. When I came home for Christmas after my first semester at school 500 miles away, my brother, who had once been my closest friend, snidely made it clear he thought I would be happier if I gave up on my mission aspirations and just found a man to marry. Mind you, I was all of eighteen years old with extremely limited dating experience. My brother has always been a bit misogynistic (for reasons undetermined—he has a strong mother, five sisters, and a dad who chugs Respect Women Juice), and I knew his opinion came directly from the fact that he believed female missionaries are inferior and that a young woman should focus primarily on becoming a wife and mother. A perfectly noble goal for people that ideal fits, but his rigid views are incredibly sexist, and this picture-perfect idea he had for my life simply is never going to be in the cards for me.

I was home for an entire month over the winter break, and his harassment was getting to be too much for me. I asked my mom what I could possibly do to get him off my back, and she didn’t have a whole lot of on how to manage him, but she did recount the time her college roommate pranked her parents with a fake engagement to get back at them for being too pushy. I decided then and there to replicate the prank, but to pull it off in the digital age, I would need to take it to the next level.

Upon arriving back at school that January, I headed straight to Walmart and purchased a fake engagement ring. I went big and blingy, something anyone could notice from rather far away. I knew I wouldn’t need this prop for a few months still, but I was excited to get started. A few friends at college, my parents, sister, and some family friends were in on the joke, and the scheming ensued. The first Sunday I was back at school, I texted my brother that there were some new cute guys at church that semester and left it at that. About two weeks later, I sent word home (can’t remember if it were through text directly to my brother or through suggestion to my mom) that a guy had asked me on a date. He bombarded me with questions about the guy’s name, occupation, physical description, what the date would entail etc. I spun a tale about the guy’s backstory, claiming he was James Thompson of Arizona, a 23-year-old petroleum engineer at his first job out of college. I even made up a few details I can’t remember now about which school he went to, where he had served a church mission, and siblings he had. I kept the physical description vague, though, because I had yet to select a stand-in guy to pose for the photographic evidence I intended to provide. I simply said he was probably in the neighborhood of six feet tall with light brownish hair. That encompassed about 15 people I knew, which gave me plenty of material to work with. I also said James and I were going to have a Harry Potter marathon over a weekend, which was so on-brand for me and jealousy-inducing for my brother that none of any of this raised the slightest suspicion.

My brother was ecstatic. He is a famed loudmouth and was fairly popular in school, so before you could say “gossip,” half the local high school knew I had agreed to go on a date with a true stud. As I continued to feed him lies from afar, he kept everyone back home updated on the progress of my “relationship.” My sister, a true Slytherin and lover of subterfuge, encouraged his enthusiasm by speculating about hand-holding and kissing and the like. I told my brother we were going to dinner here, to a dance there, and more for months. I claimed he had gotten rid of his Facebook for his mission and hadn’t gotten around to creating a new profile yet, but a Google search revealed that there was a real James Thompson living in the area where I was attending school. On a group outing with friends, I snapped a picture of me next to a guy fitting the description I gave and sent it home as further proof. I soon learned that my family’s spring break would take place over April 1st, so I decided to bring the prank to its finale on that day. My family traveled 500 miles to visit me at school while they were on vacation, but before they did so, I informed them that James and I had agreed to be officially boyfriend and girlfriend. My brother literally ran outside and ran victory laps around the house upon hearing the news.

On March 31st, my family rolled into the city I live in sometime in the evening, and my mom called to ask if I wanted to see them right away. I politely declined, telling her to tell everyone I was going to dinner with James. In reality, I was in my dorm watching Netflix, but my brother didn’t need to know that. In the morning after a few classes, I met up with my family. I was wearing my fake ring, making a show of letting it catch light and sparkle. My family was still all inside the massive SUV we need just to cart everyone around, but upon seeing me and my bling approach, my brother leapt out of the car, ran toward me, picked me up, and yeeted me into the only empty spot while whooping and cheering, “SHE HAS A RING!” The other little siblings that were not in on the joke were equal parts excited and confused, and my mom, dad, and sister were doing their best not to break character. It was too funny for me to maintain for long, so as my dad started to drive us all off to lunch, I shushed all the rowdy kids and simply said, “Before we get too carried away, I have to say something.”

“What is it?!” my brother inquired with glee.

“April Fools.” I smirked.

My brother’s face fell. He took a breath and said, “All right…that makes sense…it’s really soon and that ring is really big…but…when do I get to meet James?”

“No, April Fools. James isn’t real.”

The outrage was comical and soooo satisfying. After a minute or so of rantings of pure, unadulterated betrayal, he simmered down and simply refused to talk to me for the rest of the day. The family was in tears from laughter, and we had a good time telling any random person who would listen about the incredible prank I had pulled for the rest of the vacation.

When my brother returned to school the next week, he had to sheepishly tell everyone he had been duped. Many of the kids and adults were shocked, some were awed, some were disappointed (wth people…I was 18), but all regarded the prank as incredible. I had only attended that school for one year after my family had moved when I was a senior, so not many people knew me well, but despite not even having spent much time there, I became a legend among the student body. When I came to visit after the end of the spring semester, my mom, who was substituting at the school that day, introduced me and reminded them of the prank. I was met with awed reactions, and my brother, brooding in a corner, was teased by his friends for falling for my joke. These sorts of interactions with his classmates continued until he graduated two years later.

tldr: I expertly faked an engagement to prank my misogynistic brother, and he told everyone he knew about it, so when I revealed the joke, he had to tell all his friends that he’d been played

#april fools

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fossadeileonixv · 5 years ago

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FDL Season Preiew 2019-2020

Let’s blow this Popsicle stand!

Hola amigos! Mike, Av, and I have pieced together a little season previewy thing here much like we did last year where we answer only the most pertinent questions relating to Milan for the upcoming season. Feel free to answer these questions on your own below. Y’all ready? I’m ready. Let’s go.

What was the most important off-season move?

MIKE: I'm hoping by the end of the season the answer to that question will be Bennacer. Biglia, being signed at 32, was always going to be a placeholder for whomever management decided would be the long term replacement at that spot. And just as Biglia was our most important player 2 years ago when he signed, I think Bennacer needs to be our biggest signing and most important player this year. I'm not saying he's the best signing right now, but he sure as hell better be by the end of the year.

AVIA: It's got to be the new coach. The optimist in me thinks/hopes/prays that we will see Milan playing some genuinely good football via GMP. It's been a nightmare to witness season after season of Milan play football without any shape, soul or commitment, not to detract from the times were we have showed flashes of inspiration but we just generally have looked clueless since Dont-Boo-Me-Dorf was installed as coach. I have no idea how much of a hand GMP had in the new acquisitions but the new attacking additions combining with Paq could suddenly have a player like PTek9 firing on all cylinders. GMP, I'm praying, will have us playing direct & attacking football with a squad that knows their roles and stays compact when not in possession....is that too much to ask?

TR: Agreeing with Av, it is without question, Giampaolo. This club came within an inch of the Champions League with the capable, but affable Rino Gattuso. There were a lot of fantastic signings this summer, with Bennacer and Theo expected to make an immediate impact, but it may take some time for the payoff on the youngsters. Giampaolo's presence on the touch though? We've already felt that. I can already tell he might frustrate us with stubbornness, but there's not doubt in my mind that this was the most important change from last year.

What was a mistake that we may end up paying for this summer?

MIKE: The same as my biggest concern for the last 10 years now... that no matter who is running the team, who is managing the team or who plays on the team..... we still have a god damn MISSFIELD. Our entire midfield, save Jack, has been signed over the last 27 months. There's literally no stink left from the previous regime. yet by the end of last year it was still in limbo. It's like a scab that just won't heal. Every summer it heals up and by Christmas, EVERY DAMN CHRISTMAS it's itching and bleeding again.

AVIA: The smart money would be on not shipping Suso but as you know I'm neither smart nor for social norms .....This will no doubt illicit groans but I still think we will kick ourselves for not snapping up Conte. Yeah, he can be a fussy prick with Ladri blood in him but so what? I'm genuinely worried that he will kick start the rebirth of the merda..... blagh! I think he could even lead the merda to a scudetto.....yeah I said it....come at me! TR: My heart tells me Patrick, whispers it constantly in fact, but my head says retaining Silva. At the beginning of the summer I would have bet a significant amount of my sneaker collection that one of either Samu, Silva, or Suso would have been sold. Well, a few offers and a failed negotiation with Monaco later, we're here, with all three. Suso looks like he can contribute as a trequartista, but the other two haven't thrilled. Samu was never going to fetch much because he's a bad football player by almost every measure, but Silva still has an upside and could've raised some funds. I don't think there was a ton of interest, but absolutely would've cut losses and sold for much less than we bought him for. I'm a little curious to see if he finds footing under Giampaolo but am pretty pessimistic.

Who's someone we didn't offload that actually may work out for us?

MIKE: That's easy. It's our 2 best players, Romagnoli and Donnarumma. Last year we gave up the least amount of goals as a team since we had guys named Nesta and Silva still roaming around back there. That's pretty amazing considering Musacchio was the other CB and our fullbacks were.... meh. These guys are the rock of the team. Without them we are shit. With them there is hope. Luke Skywalker versus the Death Star level hope.

AVIA: Maybe Suso or Hakan but I'm looking at Donna to be honest, This time last year I was accusing him of possibly selling us short once the season started but he went on to be our MVP for long stretches. The kid is World Class caliber with a long future so hopefully arming him with a genuinely solid CB pairing will start making us serious contenders for Europe and IN Europe! He quietly went about his business last year in the hope of moving on from the previous years circus and it worked.

TR: Ah! You were expecting me to say the Kan-Man can pan out and reward his fans man, but I'm gonna go dark horse here and say Conti. He won't displace Calabria but will impress when the latter misses six weeks in February and March with an ankle injury suffered in a Coppa Italia tie. Conti will step in seamlessly leading to admiration from most of us here at FDL, with a few outliers calling for him to start. I think he finds a way to contribute in Giampy's setup, and provides a couple of assists at pivotal moments.

Where will we see most improvement?

MIKE: Hmmmm. That's a tough one. How about that Suso does indeed become the trequartista most of you are hoping he would be?

Nooooooooo.

The surprise for many will be that he sucks at it. He's too slow of foot and of mind, can't connect to the attack. He doesn't occupy the role past November 1st and is sold by January 31st.

AVIA: Our backline.......I'm hoping that Duarte is our new Silva tbh. There is simply no way that we can take ourselves seriously if we aint solid at the back and although we weren't the worst team defensively last season, the loss of Zapata and apparent implosion of Mussachio has me worried for the season going forward so here's to hoping the new guy ain’t just hype! Plus I'm going with the notion that Hernandez > RRod.

TR: Touchline. See Giampaolo above.

Where may we see a decline?

MIKE: My biggest disappointment this year is probably gonna be whoever fills the SS role, especially if we don't sign anyone specifically to do it. Besides Jack, I don't see a single player on the team cut out to fill the spot. Castillejo? No chance. That 96 pound spaghetti noodle couldn't stand up to a stiff breeze. Silva? GTFO. Calhanoglu? Suso? who else are we gonna try up there?

AVIA: I genuinely think we will be better across the board, no, seriously. Yeah I loved Rino but there's only so much you can achieve by threatening your players with broken legs. Although GMP aint the calibre of coach I've been bleating on about wanting to see installed at Milan he is still far better at technical coaching than Rino 7 days of the week. There's also the fact that we have removed the millstone of the Europa league from around our necks so we can finally just concentrate on securing a CL berth. The squad in theory has also gone up level with the new additions so its all good right??

TR: Defense, slightly. I'm not saying the backline falls apart or even really drops in quality. However, Giampaolo's squads have never maintained a great defensive record, often finishing middle of the back to the lower half of the league. His teams play advanced on both sides of the ball and I will take the good with the bad, but expect a slightly higher amount of goals conceded from last year.

What scares you most going into the season?

AVIA: Conte's Inter...We have a new coach with a new formation & several new key players, it's always a danger and could end badly. I'd like to see us take things nice and slowly towards the X-Mas break and build up a head of steam come the new year.

TR: Snakes.

Besides that, I'm worried we didn't add that quality second striker and Piatek suffers because of it. The fact we spent €120m and Samu has been paired up with Pia in the preseason isn't a great sign. Leāo isn't going to March right in and when he does get nods on the first team, I think it is going to inconsistent. It isn't a shortcoming we can't overcome as we have a lot of goalscoring quality behind these two, but I do worry it may hold us back some.

What does the top six look like at the end of the year?

MIKE: Juve, Inter, Milan, Napoli, Lazio, Roma

AVIA: Inter, Juve, Napoli, Milan, Roma & Atalanta

TR: Juve, Napoli, Inter, Milan, Lazio, Roma

Tommorow bitches!

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rebeccahpedersen · 6 years ago

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Top-Ten Burning Questions For The 2019 Real Estate Market

TorontoRealtyBlog

Just as my “year-end” blog posts are thematic, ie. the “Top Five Blog Posts” and the shortly-thereafter, “Top Five Real Estate Stories,” I usually feature some sort of early-2019 themed blogs as well.

Either predictions, questions, stories, or themes, I feel the best way to jump into the new year, of real estate blogging, is to offer up some discussion points…

…that we can all disagree on!

Kidding! Just kidding.

It’s been two weeks since we’ve all been in the same (virtual) room. I missed you guys!

Raise your hand if you had too much time with family over the break. Anyone? Anybody care to admit it?

I actually felt cheated this holiday season, since I didn’t spend as much time with family as I thought I would. My daughter was very sick after Christmas, with a fever that lasted for days, so we had to cut short our family-bonanza and stay home to care for her. If I ever watch another episode of “Paw Patrol,” it will be too soon. Seriously. How about five hours per day of that goddam show, in attempts to keep my child’s delirium at bay!? I can’t stand the characters anymore. That kid, Alex? Yeah, he drives me nuts. His entire existence is based upon making mistakes that the Paw Patrol has to clean up. And Mr. Porter? There’s something off about that guy. I wouldn’t trust him.

Post New Year’s, however, things were better. And what child doesn’t love opening Christmas presents one full week after Christmas, right? That’s how sick she was – she refused to open presents! So was she ever a happy camper on New Year’s day.

This was the first year we went out and cut down our own tree, which is something I might do every year, forever, or, something I will never do again. This tree basically dried up by mid-December, and by Christmas, the needles would literally fall off with a medium-sized exhale from your mouth. Our fingers had the touch of death, it was actually somewhat fascinating – seeing every last pine needle fall off a branch, just with a gentle touch.

This might be overkill, but I can’t resist. Plus, I don’t think words do this tree justice:

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My wife hates taking the tree down every year; if it were up to her, we’d still have it up in February. But this year, with the pine-needle-extravaganza combined with her debilitating O.C.D., she was standing at the door with a saw and a garbage bag by January 1st. Our tree is sitting on the curb as we speak, and I actually saw a couple of passer-byers stop, point, giggle, and then laugh away. Yes, our tree is nothing but brown branches, without a green needle in sight.

I went 16 days without working out, I ate more pizza and Swiss Chalet than I care to mention, I was in bed on New Year’s Eve at 11:40pm (I actually forgot about the whole ‘midnight’ thing), and I spent way too much money on 1950’s hockey cards.

So those are my holiday stories, folks. Perhaps we could add the one night that I got tipsy and watched Home Alone, laughing like I was 5-years-old, and reciting every single line from memory, and I think the holiday recap is complete.

Now here we are with a new day, a new dawn, and a new……….real estate market.

Damn. That just doesn’t have the same “ring” to it as the Michael Buble song.

To start 2018 here on Toronto Realty Blog, I wrote “Predictions For The 2018 Toronto Real Estate Market.” I think that in attempts to avoid predictability, I should probably switch up the theme, so this year I’m going to look at “Ten Burning Questions.”

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t look back at my 2018 predictions, not only to remind readers what some of the hot topics were coming into the year, but also to look at how right, or how wrong, I was.

So for those of you that were hoping to see those “burning questions” today, I’m sorry. I’m a tease.

We’re going to start this 3-part blog series by looking back at my 2018 predictions, just to put the market in perspective.

There’s method to the madness, trust me.

Perhaps Bruce Lee’s “Empty your cup” analogy isn’t 100% accurate here, but I can’t help but feel like we can’t look ahead to 2019 before first emptying what’s left in the tank of 2018.

Plus, it will give some of you an opportunity to say “I told you so,” and who doesn’t love that?

I made five predictions coming into 2018, so here they are, and here’s how they turned out…

2018 Prediction #1: The average home price will increase in Toronto, in 2018.

This was wrong.

Dead wrong.

With a “peak” average home price in April of 2017 around $920,000, the November price was down to $761,757 at the time I wrote this blog, and the year-end price was looking like it would come in around $820,000.

My thinking was simple: the market had crapped out in May, June, July, and August, before making a modest comeback in the Fall. Average out the good months with the bad months, and the $820,000’ish average home price was incredibly depressed.

I surmised that we’d see a return to $820,000’ish numbers, which still represented a dramatic drop from that March-April peak of $916,000 and $920,000 and change.

I was wrong.

As I wrote in a December blog post, 2018 would be the first year since 1996 that the average home price declined, year-over-year, which was yet another reason why I predicted a 2018 increase. I suppose the “stick with the trend” mentality can only get you so far!

So how much did the average home price in Toronto actually decline in 2018?

The average home price in Toronto in 2017 was $822,572.

As of this writing, the December stats (and thus year-end stats) were just released by TREB. Talk about cutting it close!

My late-December blog post guesstimated a 2018 final average sale price of $790,000, based on a weighted average of the preceding 11 months. The average home price for 2018 actually came in at $787,300, so I wasn’t that far off.

That’s a 4.29% decline, year-over-year, in the Toronto average home price.

Just as a refresher, here’s the average home price movement since the last time we saw a decrease, and I’ve added in 2018:

So, once again, I was wrong.

But what about the Toronto-416 home price? Do I get a reprieve by looking at the “central core,” which I would probably argue can, and will, survive market forces in the short, medium, and long-term?

This overlaps with my second prediction, so at the risk of being repetitive, let me come back to this at the end of Prediction #2.

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2018 Prediction #2: The freehold market will outpace the condo market.

Wrong again.

But I would love to meet the person who predicted the opposite coming into last year.

Generally-speaking, houses are more popular than condos, agree? That’s simplistic, but let’s say that if most people had a choice, they would live in a house over a condo, and it’s price that’s stopping them from doing so. It’s also supply.

So coming into 2018, with the same “they’re not building any more houses in Toronto; it’s just cranes in the sky” mentality, I can’t look back and say I should have seen the condo appreciation coming.

So how did the housing market do in 2017 versus 2018?

Well, because the Toronto Real Estate Board refuses to provide us with the appropriate data points (let’s just say that on December 31st, they were ringing in 2006…), I took the time to plot each and every month’s sales and sale prices for the four major housing types, in the past 24 months: condo, detached, semi-detached, and townhouse. This is the only way to get true, accurate numbers.

You don’t need the charts to understand the conclusions, but I spent so much damn time on this, I may as well share it!

Here you can see the sale price for each housing type, in each month, and the corresponding number of sales. Why is the number of sales important? Because we need a weighted-average to get an accurate yearly number. If there were 2,000 sales in May, and only 500 sales in December, we can’t simply average the two corresponding months’ sale prices. We need a weighted-average based on sales.

Then I’ve taken a further weighted average of all the all the sale types, and come up with a freehold average for detached, semi-detached, and townhouse, which we can see there is $1,194,327.

That is the true average freehold sale price for 2017. And gosh-darnit, I would love if TREB would make this available, but I won’t hold my breath…

So three things to look at here:

1) How wrong was I with respect to my 2018 prediction that the freehold market would outpace the condo market? 2) While we’re at it, and while we have this data set, how did the Toronto (416) market compare to the overall “Toronto” market that we’re accustomed to hearing about? 3) In Toronto-416, how does the year-over-year average sale price look for the four individual home types (ie. freehold, semi-detached, townhouse, condo)?

First thing’s first, here is the 2018 data:

Well, I think the bolded numbers pretty much sum it up!

Keeping in mind that we’re looking at the 416 and not the overall Toronto market with respect to the “freehold versus condo” comparison, the data speaks volumes.

The 2018 freehold price of $1,132,633 trails the 2017 freehold price of $1,194,327 by 5.17%.

And the 2018 condo price of $592,922, as you can see, is well ahead of that $545,635 price that the market experienced in 2017.

The freehold market went down by 5.2%.

The condo market went up by 8.7%.

I was wrong, as I said before. But with that out of the way, what conclusions can we draw from all of this, and/or what questions should be asked?

I suppose we’d want know, first and foremost, why the 416-Toronto condo market was so resilient!

Were condos under-valued coming into 2017? And did they remain under-valued coming into 2018?

Does this mean we should expect condos to cool in 2019? By association, should we expect the freehold market to outpace the condo market in 2019?

All good questions, and all with answers that will vary dramatically depending on your interpretation for the last 24 month’s market activity, and your prognostications.

As for the second question asked above – how the Toronto-416 market compared to the overall Toronto market, there’s a huge difference, but I think this could have been easily predicted.

Some of you might doubt the conclusions, since the rhetoric has been nothing but doom-and-gloom all year, but this is a stat that TREB does provide, so go to the Market Watch and see for yourself.

The average sale price in Toronto-GTA is down 4.3%; that’s $787,300 up from $822,587.

The average sale price in Toronto-416 is actually up by 0.2%; that’s $835,422, up from $834,138.

As for the third question, here is where things get interesting.

These stats are from my spreadsheets above, since TREB does not provide a breakdown of the four property types, year-to-date, in the 416:

Freehold – down 7.0%

Semi-Detached – up 1.0%

Townhouse – up 2.5%

Condo – up 8.7%

Basically we’re looking at a market that has seen a 0.2% appreciation overall, where the decrease in average freehold price has been offset by the increase in average condo price, and with the smaller sample-sizes of semi-detached and townhouse helping to round out the final number.

All in all, it was a great year for condos, a down year for detached, and a flat year for the 416 on the whole.

I chalk up part of the reason for the 7% decline in 416-detached homes to far fewer “luxury” homes trading hands, which upsets the balance, but admittedly the overall detached market is down. Now to be fair, it really depends on price once again. If a $1,000,000 semi-detached is up 1% on average, I’m willing to bet the $1,150,000 detached house next door is also up 1% on average as well. I think the $2.8M detached houses at Avenue & Lawrence are down, no question. But we always have to be careful not to paint a whole subset of housing with the same brush.

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The rest of my predictions were less interesting, and in the interest of time, I’ll summarize.

3) The “stress-test” will have a short-term effect, but no medium-term effect.

The stress-test definitely did have a short-term effect. I had clients in January that had to scale back their target purchase prices, but only two.

I heard from other agents working with buyers that the situation was a bit more prevalent, but as I said last year, most buyers don’t buy to their max pre-approval, so I didn’t think the decrease in mortgage amount would actually lead to a decrease in purchase amount.

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4) Banks will change their lending criteria.

I was right about this, but for the wrong reason.

Toward the end of 2018, I saw banks tightening up their criteria in a big way.

And in one specific case, for the sale of a condominium listing, I was asked for a copy of the Status Certificate – are you ready for this? From the bank!

That’s right, the bank wanted a copy of the Status, which is something I have never seen before. They likely wanted to ensure that there were no maintenance fee increases scheduled, or no special assessments for the condo corporation. Perhaps it was a buyer who was right up against the ceiling.

Coming into 2018, I figured banks would change their lending criteria to allow them to lend more.

I always say, “Banks are in the business of loaning money, and they’ll find a way to do so.” If the government enacts measures to curb or restrict lending, the banks will find a way around it. Coming in to 2018, I started to see some banks get creative, but that was short-lived.

Alternative lenders and B-lenders picked up a lot of the slack in 2018.

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5) The spring market will provide the reverse chronology of 2017.

I nailed this one, as the following chart, updated from my 2018 blog, will show:

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6) The government is finished meddling in the real estate market.

This was true, for the most part.

Doug Ford did tinker with rent control in late-2018, but we didn’t see anything this past year like we saw in 2017 with the launch of the “Fair Housing Plan,” and there were no major government initiatives enacted this year. You might attribute that to Prediction #7…

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7) Kathleen Wynne will Wynne another Premiership, and that’s scary for home-owners, and home-buyers.

Wrong about this one too.

I suppose I underestimated the zeal of voters, who I thought would rather be guided by the devil they know, than the devil they don’t.

But in the end, we decided we’d rather have a 1980’s drug kingpin lead the province than a person who wants to tax us to death.

Time will tell if we made the right call.

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And on that wonderful note, I adjourn until Wednesday…

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