Still Alive

Alright, me droogs, I think I owe you an after-action report.  Clearly, I've been off the wires for a bit, and I owe an explanation.  The epic road trip had to come to an end, because I ran out of the cash moneys, so it finished up in Indianapolis for the 4th of July weekend, with pitstops in New Albany, IN at the New Albanian Brewery and the Creation Museum on the Kentucky side of Cincinnati (which probably deserves its own entire post later).  The New Albanian Brewery had good beer, and the Creation Museum was home to the worst science I've ever seen.  I will definitely get a writeup of that together at some point.

The Fourth was pretty excellent, as it was spent with good friends, booze and explosives.  I was drinking and blowing shit up for the rest of the day after this was taken, so I have no pictures of the actual explosions, but friends do, and I may post them at a later date.  For now, enjoy the pile of explosives that was completely used that day and night.  4 cakes, 3 300-shot saturn rockets, a boatload of mortars (with custom launch rack), boxes of firecrackers, novelties, roman candles and bottle rockets.  We celebrated the fuck out of this country.

Of course, this leaves the bulk of the last week being spent back in PA unpacking and decompressing.  As of today, I'm back on Nutrisystem and prepared to begin regular blogging again.  No weigh in this morning, as I got up rather late, but I ate a Nutrisystem lunch, snack and dinner.  I've continued applying for jobs and am hopeful that someone will someday want me to engineer for them again.

I'm probably not going to weigh in for a few days, as I don't want to shock myself too much with whatever damage I've done, boozing and eating takeout for about 2 weeks, but I'm fully back on the diet, and will resume the blogging of it tomorrow.  I also intend to resume working out tomorrow or Wednesday, as it has been some time since I have, and fear the result of my laziness.

That is all!

Lunch, Sanibel/Captiva and Dinner

As I'm staying with family (who don't really know about the blog), I haven't been able to hop on the internets machine this weekend.  Now I've got a few meals to recap.

Yesterday, we drove out to Sanibel/Captiva and ate lunch at a joint called The Mucky Duck.

We shared an appetizer of jalapeno poppers and tortilla chips, two of my favorite drinking foods.  I so look forward to next weekend's coming booze fest.

I haven't completely exorcised my seafood addiction, and I got their seafood sampler or platter or something along those lines, which included their "BBQ Bacon Shrimp", of which I will almost certainly just order a full plate next time.

At one point on the drive back, we pulled off the road and I got some pictures of these birds (I think they're ibis..es?) walking along the edge of the water.

I got within about 4' of them before they started to all take off, and this was the best shot I got of them in flight.

We had dinner at their home, so I was able to have a proper Nutrisystem meal.

I had the Nutrisystem Lasagna with Meat Sauce, celery (unlimited vegetable), light ranch dressing (fat), green beans (vegetable) and a slice of wheat toast (carbohydrate).  For dessert, I had a package of sugar-free Twizzlers, since I felt I could get away with them at a location with dependable toilet access, that restored digestive order in a rather definitive way.

Initial Car Packing

It occurs to me that not everyone reading knows about Sheila, my '98 Avalon that is currently my primary residence.

So I thought I'd share some photos I took before we hit the road together.

The old girl's got almost 150,000 miles on her, and I fully expect to enter the 200k club with this car.  In the back seat, you can see my suit bag, food cooler, and main water can.  I also have my clothes bag in the other seat well back there and some pillows, which I use to create my nightly nest.

On the back deck, you can see the "sun shower" water bladder that I use to keep a hot supply of water handy.

In the trunk, you can't see it, but the bulk of the trunk is full of my food.  4 plastic bins that contain my food and some goods that couldn't stand getting wet if the trunk leaked are kept underneath the folding chair and bag of cooking gear.  My large tent is visible at the bottom, and my electric Coleman lantern can be seen on the left.

I'll probably take some updated photos in the near future, so you can see what I changed to make things work better for my daily routines, but now you see a gross look at how I'm packed.

Florida Sunrise

GOOD MORNING!

I'm pretty stoked for the day, as I've got a very pleasant drive ahead of me, but before I get to that, maybe I should recap yesterday afternoon.  Before I do that, I should get out of the way that I just realized that, once again, I forgot to get weighed this morning.  Something about waking up in a car and then needing to hunt for a place to piss just makes me forgetful.

After I headed out from the Georgia rest stop/visitors center, I made headway into Florida.  I came down 95 into Jacksonville, whereafter I shot out to A1A, which is the coastal 2-lane highway here in FL.  I stopped in St Augustine, which has a Walmart, and decided I wanted seafood for dinner.  Unfortunately, it was past 9, and all the little seafood joints had closed their kitchens for the evening.  This lead to a Big Buford at Checkers.

I've figured out what my problem is with the bad eating.  I'd relaxed my rules about meal times, and I need to stop that.  Even if I decide it's the local flavor I want to try for dinner, I need to make sure I do it at the right time, so I'm not starving at 10 o'clock at night and ordering too much/the worst possible thing for me.  Besides that, the only food available that late at night is awful for me, and I shouldn't be eating that late.

So this morning started off nice.  I woke up a bit before six in the Walmart parking lot (bought me a camp fan so I'm not dying in the car at night, anymore) and decided to head to the beach to catch the sunrise.  It was beautiful, but I didn't quite catch it on the beach.  I was coming over a bridge during the main part of it, and I enjoyed it, but I was too late to the beach to capture stills.  I did get a few decent shots, though, and decided to put one up.

After that, I hopped in the car and started south on A1A again, now desperate to empty my bladder.  That's one of the worst parts of staying urban at night, not being able to take a leak right away without fear of a public indecency charge.  All that aside, I found a Starbucks not too far down the road, where I grabbed a venti iced coffee with my gift card, and had a breakfast consisting of a Nutrisystem Blueberry Muffin, a slice of wheat toast (carbohydrate), a juice box (fruit), and 8 oz of milk (dairy).  I didn't really feel like chugging my milk down, so I drank half my coffee and dumped the milk in what remained of that.

Now, I'm going to head out, and see if I can't put some serious miles on the car today.

Lunch and Some Interstate Fun

Today's travel has been all on the interstate, so I haven't seen much of interest.  I had to make up some time, and I've done that.  I'm stopped for a bit because I (finally) had to drop a deuce, and I figured I'd rest up and knock out a lunch entry, while I'm here.

I set out this morning fully prepared to eat a proper lunch and dinner, and things were going well at the start of lunch.  When I stopped for gas in South Carolina, my Red Beans and Rice was hot from sitting on the back deck of the car, and I ripped off the top, put a bit of water in it (as you're supposed to), stuck a fork in it and placed it by the shifter in the car.  Unfortunately, as I sat down next to it, the damned thing spilled out all over the floor.  Recalling a sign I'd seen at the ramp, I put the car in gear and headed out.

One of the things I've been told to try on the journey was a chain restaurant called Bojangles.  They're a primarily southern fast food chain, although they appear to have one location in PA and several in Maryland and DC (http://www.bojangles.com/aboutus_locations.html).  Specifically, I was told to try the Ham Biscuit, which is a slice of ham on a biscuit, un-shockingly.

I decided against the Ham Biscuit (because my car's messy enough without biscuit all over it.in favor of some manner of Cajun Club sandwich, which was fried chicken with some manner of sweet mustard sauce and lettuce & tomato.  It was good, although not worth a re-destruction of the diet for a second visit.

I should get back on the road, when I get nearer to where I intend to stop for the night, I need to find a grocery store and re-stock on milk.  Since I think I'm mostly abandoning eggs as a primary protein source, I think I can upgrade from a quart to a half gallon, and re-purpose my milk Nalgene as a third water Nalgene, to try and keep up with the pace of sweat in the 95+ heat.

Yesterday's Meals and Today's Breakfast

So yesterday was a bit of a failure.  I got on the road around noon, after getting the new tires, and grabbed a Whopper meal from Burger King for lunch.  There are a dozen excuses for this, most of which involve the fact that I was now a full day behind schedule and hadn't had morning time to prep lunch, but it's still a failure.

I spent most of the day on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is an extension of the scenic drive from Shenandoah National Park through Virginia and North Carolina.

Needless to say, it was very pretty.  There aren't as many scenic overlooks that you can just pull off for and snap shots of as there were on the Skyline Drive, but there were a much higher concentration of ones where you could take a 30-45 minute hike to get to one.  Unfortunately, I was pretty far behind schedule (I was supposed to get on the road much earlier in the morning) and I did not have time to take any of the hikes.  I think I might have to come back and do them when I return to this part of the country, because they all seemed very nice.

As I said, I was way behind schedule yesterday, so I made the decision to get off the Blue Ridge Pkwy once I entered North Carolina.  I wish I'd taken pictures of the state crossover, which was just a small wood sign in the middle of nowhere, but that brings me to the other reason I decided to get off the parkway: I was losing the light.  Yes, I was almost stuck driving around on a winding mountain road in the middle of the evening.  Fortunately, I was able to leave before I lost the light, and jogged down the state to get on the interstate system, where I found a very late dinner of McDonalds (quarterpounder meal, I'm a bad person) and a KOA campground for the night.

I spent the evening, and got up this morning and grabbed a shower.  Oh, Glorious Shower Day!  I was hoping to drop a deuce, since I haven't since starting the trip, but it appears my colon's on lock-down.  I then proceeded back to my car, where I sweated into my nice clean clothes while refilling my water can and moving things around for better access.  I grabbed a piece of wheat bread (carbohydrate) that I ate while I took care of things, and then sat down to the remainder of breakfast.

I had Nutricinnamon Squares Cereal with a juice box (fruit) and 8 oz of additional nonfat milk (dairy).  I have a carton of eggs in the cooler, but I'm starting to reconsider them and instead just always having milk as my morning dairy instead of protein.  Cooking is annoying.

I'm back on schedule today, and lunch is already warming in the sun on the back deck of the car, so now, it's time to book it.

(Sorry I forgot to get weighed this morning, I'm working on my morning routine.)

Charlottesville Tire Issues

This was written yesterday while I was at the tire joint, I apologize for not posting it, but I didn't want to while I was still in Charlottesville, and I didn't have the opportunity to post it last night.

So I rolled into town last night, and headed to the local Sam’s Club.  Unfortunately, it was too late to see their tire guys, but I figured I’d check my membership status/renew it while I was there, and find out when the tire department opened.  I met a very nice woman at the member’s services counter, who told me that my membership had expired and I needed to renew it.  I figured that I’d be spending some serious time with Walmart and Sam’s over the road trip, so I might as well spring for the 40 bucks to re-up it.  She told me that the tire center opened at 7am, knowing that I have a non-business membership, although it is a 7-year membership.

So I bedded down in the Sam’s parking lot for the evening, secure in the knowledge that I would awake, get some fresh tires, and be back on the road.  Unfortunately, it was not to be.

I entered the Sam’s, and headed to the tire desk, where a rather disgruntled employee grumbled at me about not having a business membership.  I explained my circumstances, that I was basically living out of the damned car, and that I’d been in the store the previous day, and was told to come in at 7am.  To be fair, I don’t think I got so far as to tell him about coming into the store yesterday, because he cut me off.  He put my keys on the wall, and I sat down to wait.

Waiting there, I realized that the prick was going to stonewall me, and refuse to look at my tires until the proper time.  Thus invigorated with piss and vinegar, I took my keys off the board, told the guy in the shop to tell his boss to close my ticket, and headed to the next tire shop that was nearby.

I was given very friendly service and help at the University Tire and Auto Center (http://www.universitytireandauto.com/).  They did a good, quick job balancing my new tires and taking care of my alignment.  I would heartily recommend them to you if you ever need work done while you’re in the region.

Breakfast In a Cup

Coming at you live from Somewhere In Virginia!  Yesterday, I visited the Shenandoah National Park, which, as those of you who read yesterday's entry know, ended somewhat poorly, but was fantastically beautiful.  I took many pictures, and need to take some time to go through them and grab some that I really like and discard the many, many shots that my inept hands destroyed.  For now, enjoy this weight:

Weight: 291.8 lbs
Body Fat: 39.5 %
Water: 46.4%

So here's some fun facts about living on the road.  First of all, it's not considered polite, in civilized areas, to urinate on the side of the parking lot or to walk around naked, so doing so in the Walmart one I'm in would be inadvisable.  I'm sleeping here, instead of in the National Park, because of tires and bears.  I need to buy tires this morning, and all the food that I had in the trunk is in the back seat of the car, since I didn't want to have to move it more times than was necessary.  But this didn't stop me from getting weighed with my clothes on, or painfully holding my water until such time as I can find a urinal.  Before moving on to breakfast, this thing:

Some of you have not seen The Dark Crystal.  This either makes you a bad person or very young, and this blog is too mature for you.  Go tell your parents what you did, and that you saw something called Fizzgig in the Shenandoah National Park.

For breakfast, I had some Nutrifrosted Crunch Cereal.

Out of a cup, because I don't feel like doing dishes this morning.  I had 12 oz of milk in that container, 8 oz for a protein serving, and 4 oz for the cereal.  I also had a juice box (fruit) and a slice of untoasted wheat bread (carbohydrate), which I didn't terribly enjoy.  Why the hell does toasting bread make it so much better?  I've got eggs and cooking equipment, but I didn't really love the idea of setting up my camp stove in the parking lot here.

That's all I've got, for now.  Time for the tire center to open.

First Day's Journey

So, it's been an exciting day.  I bought a inter-department national parks pass, which gives me access (for a year) to all national parks and recreation areas, I toured most of a very scenic national park in Virginia, and I changed a flat tire.

Yes, the first marvelous day of journeying was marked by a flat tire.  Fortunately, a generous benefactor has decided to gift me some dough for a set of new tires, as it's looking like I'll need to get them replaced tomorrow. (1 tire's bad, you need 2, and they sell you the 4th for free, and they're all old, so you should just suck it up and buy them etc. etc.)  Happy day after Father's Day!

But, there is some good news in it all; I stayed on my diet.  For lunch, before leaving home, I had my last frozen meal for awhile, the Steak & Cheese Melt.  I will miss you, microwaves and freezers.

For snack, I had one of these South Beach diet bars that I picked up that are equivalent to a Nutrisystem snack.  Sorry, no new pictures tonight because dealing with sorting everything on the camera is a bit much for me, at the moment.

Dinner consisted of some cauliflower (vegetable), a bag of BBQ Soy Chips and 2 South Beach bars (about equivalent to a Nutrisystem Dinner.  This was shortly after the tire change, when I was dealing with the fact that I was about 50 miles from anywhere and I was completely out of cell range, so I had to pick a destination from good old analog maps and assume there'd be an appropriate store there.

Here's some fun: I hadn't bought bug spray, because I figured I'd pick some up at the first park store I stopped at.  Turns out, I hit that flat well before that ever came to be.  While I was changing the flat, around 45-50 cars passed me, and one stopped pretty early on (early enough that I hadn't fully appreciated my bugspray error) and offered to help.  As changing a tire is a manly thing meant to be done by one person, I, of course, refused assistance and proceeded to jack up the car.  as I got to the point where I thought I could take the tire off, I began intermittently trying to wave down a car to borrow some bug spray.

Now, keep in mind, my trunk was full of shit, and it all had to go on the road behind the car and in the back seat to get to the spare tire.  So it was clear that I was a person in some distress, and I wasn't just frantically waving my arms 'hello'.  many people sped up at the sight, and the one or two who started to slow immediately accelerated away when I started to walk towards them.  I had one that stayed still long enough for me to reach the passenger window, only to realize that they were two old people staring at me with abject terror, who had merely been waiting for a the people coming the other way to pass.  Those bastards nearly took my foot.

As I was putting the first nuts on the spare, a nice gentleman with his family stopped when I flagged them down.  I'm terrible with accents, and I thought the gentleman sounded middle-eastern, but I couldn't be certain.  The driver and another man, who I'd assume was either his father or his wife's father, exited the car, and gladly lent me a bottle of bug juice to spray myself.  While I was juicing, I earned curious looks from the kids in the back of the minivan, clearly fascinated by the fat, sweaty man with all the junk strewn by the side of the road.  The gentleman went so far as to give me a bug spray wipe in a foil packet, in case I needed some more bugspray later.  This is the cheesiest story I have ever told, but it really did make me feel better about humanity.  I wish I'd gotten the gentleman's name, but I'll put up a more detailed (location-wise) account of this when I get a chance in the near future, in the hopes of making contact with him.

I finished tightening the bolts on the spare, hopped in the car, and drove off for dinner and my evening resting stop, to wait for the store to open at 7am so I can get me some tires (or maybe just get this one repaired).  Now, I'm going to try and get comfortable in the driver's seat, turn off the car, and go to sleep.

aaand now a cop's staring at me, signing off and blogging more tomorrow.

Dinner, Sendoff

The moment approaches, dear readers.  We just had a nice Father's Day/sendoff dinner of steak and potato/carrot cake dessert, and I'm preparing the last of the items to be loaded into the car (clothing, toiletries, bedding, lappy).  Tomorrow, I plan to begin my great journey, although my destinations are becoming murkier by the day.

Lunch

Grabbed a late lunch after a nap.  A bratwurst (no bun, mustard) and a Nutrisystem frozen Meatball Melt.  I didn't have the camera with me, because I'm kind of running all over the place, but I definitely enjoyed the meal.  I'm giving it 50/50 odds on finishing what I wanted to finish today and keeping my accelerated timetable.  I'm still well ahead of the original timetable of departing for my epic journey later this week, though, so all is well.

EXCELSIOR!

Weigh In, CL Fail

I kind of spent all night awake. These things happen.

Weight: 290 lbs
Body Fat: 38.9%
Water: 46.8%

So here's the summary: I'm basically not going to be able to post ads on Craigslist because of the joy of filters. I could either pick one city a day to post on, and update it every damned day, which might still result in a suspension of a CL account, or I can just try and find random shit to do via the internet. I still have to think on this. There's plenty of crap along the way, certainly, so I'll find something to do, but it's a bit of a blow to realize that part of the plan must be scrapped at this point.

Damnable Internets

So, it appears I may have been hasty in choosing Craigslist as the platform for my devilish plan.  It seems that there are several things in my way, that have all become more aggravating than they were the last time I used Craigslist for anything (years ago).

1) You cannot post multiple similar ads using the same account to different areas within 48 hours, nor are you supposed to post in more than your local area.

2) You must verify your account with a text message to your phone to post in almost any area of the site.

The helpful folks at the help forum on CL recommended I try the "discussions" forums, but that seems far more time consuming and aggravating than just posting an ad and waiting for responses.

So, dear readers, I ask: do any of you know of a decent Craigslist alternative?  Because I can't find one that seems all that likely as a substitute.  Ah, for the wild, basically unregulated CL of yore.

Dinner and Prepwork

Preparations are nearly complete for the Great Journey.  All that remains are massive playlist creation, packing clothes/laundry, perishable food and ice purchase, and a final car pack.  Didn't get the CL ads up yet, but I probably will this evening.

For dinner: Lean Cuisine Roasted Garlic Chicken Pizza.

I was somewhat bad, as I also had some Wheat Thins with my cauliflower (vegetable) and light ranch dressing (fat).  By way of compensating for my badness, I provide you this amusing picture, which I found when retrieving the previous one from my phone (I didn't have my regular camera handy).

I snapped this a month or so ago, something about the fact that they needed a legalese asterisk for that phrase just warms my heart.  Now, off to that den of sin and iniquity known as Craigslist to do my work.  Enjoy Boston.

Lunch, Continued Prep

So I've got all my basic camping gear/food packed in the car.  Tent, cooking tools, and coolers are all packed.  All that remains are my clothes and my self.  I need to throw the various CL ads on to the internet, buy new fuel for my Zippo, and pick up some propane, and I'm in the wind.

For lunch, I grabbed one of the Steak and Cheese Melts from the freezer.  I'm really going to miss my frozen meals on the road, they make it so much easier to stay on the diet.  Fortunately, my budget's so thin that staying on my diet shouldn't be a problem on the road, because going off of it would destroy my travel ability.

I think I'll pop the CL ads up first, today, then take care of some playlist editing (since I won't be able to do that on the road, really).  I also need to try on my suits and figure out which one fits best to bring along (in case I actually get called for any interviews, or end up going somewhere where I need a suit).  Busy busy busy.

Sleep Problems

I was up all night dicking with something on my EEE PC last night trying to find a halfway decent solution in Linux to work with the crappy webcam I have.  I was trying to set up software to take an image every 30 seconds or so to use as a dashboard camera, but I've run into too many problems.  The cheap old usb webcam I'm using doesn't seem to like taking stills.  It just returns static-filled images whenever a still process is run, and none of the software I've found that records video rather than stills will allow for a low enough framerate (.05 or so fps) to keep the video output down to a manageable size.  I've wasted the better part of a week getting this laptop to run right and trying to learn enough to get the thing to work the way I want it to, but I think I need to concede that the hardware issues and the solutions needed to overcome them would require too much of my time to learn, at this point, to be worth the time lost preparing other things for my great journey.

Last night, I also went through my ridiculous stack of maps from AAA and put together a next stage route (with a bunch of alternates in various parts) of where I think I'm going, as well as compiling a list of states and major cities I'll be traveling in or near.  I used that list to identify Craigslist locales I should post ads in to find destination ideas, so I've now got an easier to consult list (complete with site links) to work off of as I progress across the country.

Weight:     294.8 lbs
Body Fat: 40.2%
Water:      45.8%

In related news, I ate an appropriate Nutrisystem breakfast and dinner, yesterday, but then I ended up having cupcakes and icecream for dessert, so that went all to hell.  I also ate some Triscuits and pepperoni around 1:30-2am because I was starting to get seriously on edge from the damned computer nonsense and I gave into frustration eating.

I need to make a trip to the hardware store today to grab some stuff to help the fam around the house, and then I'm going to double-check the water seal on my trunk and start a mock packing to see how well everything fits.


I applied for a few more jobs yesterday.  I swear, I wish I had the chops for a software developer job, because the demand for programmers as compared to engineers has always been ridiculous when I've been looking for work.  In related news, a slightly more stripped-down version of the EUC bill will either go in front of congress for a vote today or Monday, so that moving along the rails is a good thing.

THE FATASS COMETH

So here’s the skinny: I’ve wanted to take a trip across these fine, United, awesomepants states of ours for years.  On several occasions, I’ve almost shoved a few key items in the car and headed for the hills.  Wanderlust is a special species of madness, and I’m giving in to it.  I can live cheaply, either sleeping in my car or a tent, eating my Nutrisystem meals cooked on a camp stove with side food out of a cooler, and bathing at campgrounds and truck stops.  My big expenses will be gas and camp-fees.

Now, I don’t want to do this like most people plan their road trips, looking at maps and guidebooks or watching the travel channel and saying “well, doesn’t that all just sound lovely, I want to go to there” (although that motherfucker on Man Vs Food has placed some devilish thoughts in my head).  No, I want to do things a bit differently, so I’m going to cloud-source my trip.

How do you cloud-source a vacation?  With Craigslist, of course.  I’m going to be putting up Craigslist postings along my route asking for sites to visit, things to eat, and things to do.  I like people not knowing my every move, so I’m going to be slightly obfuscating my immediate location, as well as keeping my route vague.  Keeping the route vague is easy, because I have a number of states I want to visit, along with a couple of specific locations I’d like to see, but I don’t care how I get there.

I’d like to avoid major highways and instead take back roads and scenic routes, since the interstate is so impersonal.  I’m going to try to visit friends and relatives on certain parts of the journey, and any who read this are certainly welcome to provide ideas of places for me to visit.  I’ve got only one or two dates/locations that must be met/visited, so the rest is all up in the air.

Now, I’m not married to any of the locations picked for destinations on this map.  I don’t, in fact, plan on stopping at almost any of them, but I wanted a decent general map to show the states I’d like to visit.  I do want to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway, because that’s the sort of thing that just seems like a good idea to anyone who likes to road trip, and I want to hit a large portion of the coast of Florida, but other than that, these aren’t the roads I’ll actually be taking, but are within a few hundred miles of where I’d like to go.

So if you know something interesting within 10 miles of this route, any direction, I’d love to get a comment or email from you telling me about it.  I’ll be providing links to some of the Craigslist ads and linkbacks from some of them to this post.

Failure

So I ate peanuts for lunch and some strange organic chips, a grilled cheese sammitch, and some organic cookies for dinner.  Organic does not mean healthy, but someone raided that aisle of the supermarket, today, and my flesh was weak.

Moving on, I think I'm going to go ahead and move forward with stage 1 of my massive plan, out of the hope that congress will get off its ass and pass the extension.  If they don't, I will be moderately screwed.

I will try and push my plan information out the door tomorrow.

Sunday Recap and Unemployment Fun

So it's been a moderately successful day.  I finished fixing the weatherstripping on my trunk, as well as de-cluttering the car and repackaging my emergency car kit to conserve more space.  Made sure a 7-gallon water can I recently picked up held a seal and could be held in place with a seat belt in the back seat (it can).  Also cleaned out my cooler and got it set up out in the car.  I made a magnetized mosquito net/screen to fit over the sun roof of the car, which will have its uses.  All these activities relate to the big project I'm working on, that should, soon, be ready for a grand reveal.

I grabbed a Nutrisystem Carmel Sundae Swirl ice cream treat for a snack, since I missed breakfast and lunch.

I really don't care for care for ice cream all that much, but I'm trying to avoid my shelf food to maintain my stock for the project I'm working on.  It held me over to dinner, which was good enough for me.

For dinner, I had a Lean Cuisine Margherita Pizza, and it was pretty good.

I also had  some cauliflower (vegetable) and light ranch dressing (fat) for sides.  It was a good meal, and fortified me for finishing some of my work with the car this evening.

I just realized as I was writing this (I took a break to file my weekly unemployment claim) that I'm about to exhaust my EUC (emergency unemployment compensation) tier 1 benefits, in a few weeks, which is problematic.  I'm hesitant to mention the joys of unemployment, here, but this is part of the whole experience of me.

Now, running out of tier 1 wouldn't be a problem (other than, you know, the crushing depression that goes with long-term unemployment), I'd normally pass straight to tier 2, except for the fact that congress didn't pass the extension before the Memorial Day recess.  They're starting to consider the bill again Monday, and if they pass it, I should be able to continue receiving benefits without interruption.

For anyone not familiar with the progression of benefits, for most states, the one I'm from particularly, there is an initial 26-week period of benefits provided from the state itself.  Following that, you enter the period covered by the federal EUC, for which you must apply, which is comprised of 3 tiers.  The tiers cover 20 weeks, 14 weeks, and 13 weeks, respectively.  People who qualified for tier 1 automatically start the tier 2 benefits if they do not go off of unemployment before the period begins, and have to file a special claim when their tier 2 benefits run out and they want to apply for tier 3 benefits.  After that point, many states have instituted extension programs.  All told, this is 76 weeks+state extensions.

If they pass the bill, I'm going to continue planning on the big project I've been talking about, and concern over this is why I haven't revealed my plans fully, because it's dependent upon having that small amount of cashflow.  Otherwise, I'll just drop the project, and be glad that I took care of some of the minor projects I've had going on in the meantime.

Lunch and Afternoon Work

I just grabbed a quick lunch to prepare myself for an afternoon of productivity, followed by an evening of zombie killing.

For lunch, I toasted a frozen Toasted Ham & Cheese, which is always a good meal.

This afternoon, I'm sealing my tents.  For those of you who don't camp or haven't ever bothered with equipment maintenance (hey, it's the first time I've bothered in years), tent seams, on their own, are entirely susceptible to leakage.  This is prevented by applying a chemical sealant along the seams every so often.  So I'm going to go stand inside a tent and breath fumes for awhile, hopefully I don't pass out.