A lesson in real estate rejection

I just got back from Montreal, a great city. We were there for five days and it was an amazing break. I knew I needed it, but I didn't know how badly. But of course I'm a Realtor, so I kept working a little. In particular, I had a listing with an active bid, so I had told all parties that I thought my phone would work in Canada and we could keep tossing the ball back and forth. And indeed, my phone did work in Canada (the trick, which I had picked up from previous international travels, was to call the phone company before I left). My sellers are from overseas, so we were all already used to the romance of different countries. "If you can call me from Ireland," I told them, "I can certainly call you from Quebec." The sadness was that the buyers and the sellers were still a little bit apart on price. The buyers have been coming up, and the sellers have been coming down, but we hadn't managed to meet in the middle. I got the listing around Christmas Eve, s...