Living in my SUV

I finally got the SUV bought from my neighbor and I'm off. I've slept in the car 5-6 nights now, and its been very cozy. I still need to re-organize and send some stuff off to Goodwill, but I'm happy with the result so far.

I have a 2000 Ford Expedition - its a beast of a vehicle, with plenty of room to make a living space. The first thing I did was take out the 3rd row seat and hand it back to my neighbor to sell himself. Next, I folded the 2nd row seats down - they fold flat - making the entire back of the car completely level - YAY!

I used the folded down seats at the base for my bed. I'm short - 5'2", so I fit lengthwise the width of the car. Unlike most people I don't have to sleep the length of the car. I'm a born space saver! I went and bought a full size 4" memory foam mattress topper - best $110 ever spent. I cut it in half, since the length of a full mattress is double my height just about. So, cut it in half and doubled it up, now I have an 8" comfy mattress. Its so full of awesome. I have 4 blankets - I sleep on top of 2, and have 2 to cover me - so far this has been warm enough for me and it got into the teens last night. We also got over a foot of snow the other night and I was fine.

I bought a 4' narrow folding table and put that over a couple tubs of stuff (mostly books). The table serves a triple purpose - an extra surface to stack things on, a table for when I get to a campsite, and a table for when I do art fairs. Multi-purpose = space economy.

I got 2 sets of plastic drawers - one is for kitchen stuff & food, the other for clothes - although it is mostly holding my home brewed beer til the Superbowl party I'm going to tomorrow.

I invested in a portable powerpack 600 made by Duracell. You can get it on Amazon the cheapest. So far its been AWESOME. I have AC power in my car now. I keep it charging when I'm driving, or plug it in at a friend's place. I used it for the first time today to power up my rice cooker and make some noodles. I have about 480w continuous power - which is enough for a rice cooker, blender, my laptop, phone, ipod... and it has jumper cables so I don't need someone else around should by battery go dead. Massive bonus.

So I'm staying in Denver til the end of March to find some work, then off on the next adventure. Trying to find my April-October season position somewhere, but I just got a job at Amazon for the Christmas season, so at least I've got that set!