Jonell and Stuart take off to the Great White North

     Greetings my friends and apologies to any of you who were planning on living vicariously off of Stuart’s and my Canadian adventure. Turns out that unless you are rabid fans of This OLD House, our current “adventures” are less than thrilling. Since you last heard from me, we have been working like mad people to get our place set up and winterized.  We finally got our shed built, our 300 lb wood stove wrestled into our house (this was a process that involved various car jacks and some clever engineering (thank goodness Stuart has a great grasp on the fine art of the jerry rig) and our huge picture window installed in our living room, (bat cave no more) just in the nick of time, since it snowed two days after we opened a huge hole in the side of our house.                                   ...

Greetings to all of you, my friends. It feels like ages since I last posted, mostly because Stuart and I basically fell off the edge of the earth and ended up here in another country. We are definitely NOT in Kansas anymore! Or California for that matter.  In fact, we have landed in Alberta, Canada (so we MIGHT be in Texas since Alberta and Texas are close to the same size, both filled with cowboys and oil rigs and cattle ranches) in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  If you ask me how and why we got here, I can’t answer that, as the last months of prepping and moving are all a blur, so lets just say it’s because Stuart was raised in Alberta and after 30 plus years in the U.S. he got homesick and wanted to be nearer his family and old school chums. So he clicked his red shoes and here we are!  Actually it was way more complicated than that (reams of government red tape and many, many hoops through which I am still jumping, to get me on the road to a green card sos I...

We are very busy preparing for our move so please bear with our boring blog. Blogger no longer allows subscription widgets to notify users when new content is added so you will have to check back periodically to see if anything new has been added.  In the meantime here is some interesting latin text to help you relax: Lorem ipsum sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo.  Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos, qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt, neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit amet consectetur adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.  Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit l...

 1. I heard that Stuart came back from Canada and just up and announced that he and Jonell were going to move to Canada without consulting her! Is that true? No, Jonell picked Stuart up from after a trip to Alberta last summer and he told her that they had been invited to live for free in a house on his brother's sprawling property in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Jonell mulled it over on the drive home and thought it sounded like a worthy adventure. She has been itching to move on from Cloverdale for some time. This is the property that Stuart's brother recently acquired: Old link to rental property  It used to be rented out on Airbnb, Vrbo, etc so there are still lingering links with outdated photos showing art and furnishings that are no longer there. Jonell and I will not be in the giant log house but in a detached 'caretaker's cottage' which is 5 times the size of the Tumbleweed Tiny House that we have been living in these past 9 years. 2. When are yo...