[I generally post personal blogs on LiveJournal, but I will try to cross-post them here as well]

As you may recall if you've read my LJ, I've lived in my RV trailer for the last 5 years, while I've travelled around Canada and parts of the US. Rather than face yet another cold winter in the trailer, I've found a house-sit south of Edmonton, Alberta. For those of you not familiar with house-sitting, a sitter (such as myself) lives in someone else's house while they are away... anywhere from a few days to many months. This provides the sitter with a rent-free place to live (although utilities are usually charged for longer house-sits), while providing the house owner with the peace of mind of knowing that someone is there to feed their pets, forward their mail, make the house looked "lived in", shovel the driveway, water the plants, etc.

In my case, the owners are spending the next 5 months travelling through South America. So, I'm staying in their 2-bedroom log house on 45 acres, and looking after their 2 dogs, 4 barn cats and 4 horses. A local farmer is coming in to look after the 17 cows. It's a new (5-10 years old) log house, complete with wood stove, gas furnace, dishwasher, central vacuum and moderately high-speed Internet access.

Unfortunately, we got 20 cm of snow soon after I arrived... what a warm welcome from Alberta! But still, it's a very peaceful location; from the upstairs window, I can see only 1 other house, way off in the distance. The rest of the view is of fields and a small woods. There's very little traffic on the country road, but a 20 minute drive will get me to a town with all the services that I need, and another 20 minutes drive will get me to Edmonton.