Listen carefully, is that the sound of a bubble starting to deflate?

The first price 'correction' since 2001? Can it be? The once bullish analysts showing signs of retreat, offering whims of caution over their all-to-familiar mantra of "prices will never go down".

Detached house prices are down some 1.8%, while condo sales are forging the same path - south by 1.5%. While not a significant dip by any standards, it is the first sign of price relief since August, 2001. Encouragingly (for Allisa and I), the average condo price on the west side has tumbled over $40,000 since their September peaks.

Don't run off dreaming of mortgaging the kids for that Kerrisdale home just yet - November has been an off month which may have had an effect on prices - a spot of winter, power outages, snow, and now Christmas - has all but removed the thoughts of real estate sales off many peoples mind. The real figures will come in early spring, when the hangover of Christmas and New Years has worn off.

Stay tuned, these are exciting times!

So Good. So, So Good.

Every once in a long while, I stumble upon a book so inexplicably good that, for the life of me, I can’t put down regardless of what I'm doing, or where I am. Bill Bryson’s “A Short History Of Nearly Everything” is just such a book.

An absolute ‘must read’ for any person remotely interested in science and how we evolved to be who (and where) we are. It's a dazzling journey, an intellectual odyssey of a lifetime, as this book attempts to understand and explain everything that has transpired on our little blue planet; from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. Or, as the author so elequantly puts it "...how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since."

With each page turned, I find myself mesmerized, stealing time here and there just to read another passage; a mad rush to absorb all the astonishing wonder on offer between its covers. As one review succinctly put it, ‘It moves so fast that it’s science on a toboggan!’ I simply refer to it as mind-blowing and enlightening. Go on, have a read, my copy will be done – all 500 plus pages – barely a week after cracking its cover!

Batting 1000.

A very quick post before the weekend officially blankets us - I just received my marked exam. YEAH BABY, 100%!