Officially three and a pod

I am officially a van dweller...or in my case a pod dweller. I've been here since Saturday morning and for the first time I have completely unpacked my suitcase. It's now in storage and I'm getting used to properly living in the pod. There's not really much to get my head around, I've stayed here so often recently that it still feels kind of like a holiday. Pod boy and myself keep looking at each other now and then and saying things like "I don't have to go away" or "you get to stay here now". It's funny how neither of us has really accepted the reality of my being here yet.

I ended up coming over a week early as I had a job interview on Monday. It went well, but I'm not sure if it's exactly the hospital for me. I'm hoping to hear from a couple of other places I applied to later this week. One of them is an ideal hospital in terms of the contract they were offering and its location.

There's not really much to report. Pod boy bought a take down recurve bow a couple of weeks ago and we spent this weekend target shooting and he did a couple of walks through the forest looking for game. He got close to a number of animals, but unfortunately none of them were animals he was allowed to kill. I rung up the conservation department here and have them sending some information out about what and where we can hunt. They're also sending a game license application out so we can hunt deer.

I'm not 100% sure how I feel about hunting larger animals. I feel it's a huge waste of life to kill a deer and not be able to adequately store the meat from it. We have some friends we could give the meat to but I know there would end up being a lot of waste from each kill. Pod boy is not sharing my concern about this. I'm still trying to work out other ideas to help myself get more comfortable with the large game hunting side of things. Killing small animals like rabbits and birds sits ok with me as I know that in a couple of meals we would have used all the meat. But the larger animals make me feel a bit icky about it as part of van dwelling for me is about having a smaller carbon footprint and I just feel that the waste from a large kill doesn't fulfill that role.

Anyway, I'm suposed to be helping Pod boy at work. It's part of my role here for now, but it's so cold outside and the pod is so warm with Pod dog on my feet. There's also not much I can be doing outside right now...hmmm does it sound like I'm trying to convince myself that I'm not needed?

I better go and try to offer some sort of help.

Pod - the second

In a spur of the moment decision we decided to do the build on Sunday morning. We ended up with no plans for Sunday which was lovely because Sundays are usually a full on day. So we got up a bit late (0830) and went to Bunnings (timber and building supply shop). We bought supplies - and then headed for the local new subdivision where we intended to find a empty half constructed house and use the garage to shelter the pod in whilst we built.

We found the perfect house, and construction began at about 1030.




The first thing Pod Boy did was fit a piece of timber behind the two front seats, this is shaped to fit almost perfectly in the hole and makes the back of the pod feel like a separate bedroom. It has a door way in it (the door is yet to be hung) to let Pod Dog between the front and the back, and keep him out when the bed is made. His favourite new thing to do is to curl up in the bed as soon as he gets a chance.




The board also acts as the backing for some shelving that is going in behind the two seats. At the moment there are no shelves, but there's so much space there that we want to use it.

Next Pod Boy began constructing the base of our bed, which is also the storage area in the pod. He made a series of boxes, which coincidentally sit just higher than the wheel arches. Currently the boxes are hard to get into, but that's because we ran out of time and have a few more things to do to get the pod finished and ready for decorating. The boxes have single layer flat lids at the moment, but Pod Boy intends to put another layer of board onto the lids that overlaps the separations between each box. I'll try to show detail photos so you understand what I mean. Once the extra layer is on the lids we have flush pull thingys to put into the lids which will make life so much easier.



Once all the boxes were made and the lids were all done Pod Boy built a shelf at the back of the pod. It's just a small one, but it holds my suitcase (yes I'm still living out of one only 3 more weeks until I move over permanently!), the washing bag and the computer when we have it set up. Once my suitcase is gone we intend to get some small drawers to put everyday stuff in, especially socks as we seem to lose them all over the place.

Although the list of what Pod Boy did doesn't seem very long it took a surprisingly long time to do. All in all we were in the garage of the half built house for 11 hours. We had the owners arrive and they assumed we were carpenters doing something to the house, we let them think it and I think it's both funny and sad (I feel bad!!) that they were expecting the outside of their house to be finished on Monday and were probably very surprised to find that it wasn't. We also had numerous drivers out for their Sunday drive slow down as they went past, they probably couldn't work out what was going on.

I love the way the pod is now, it's so much easier to keep stuff in its proper spot and I'm thoroughly looking forward to organising it properly when I move over.

This was Pod Dog's contribution to the rebuilt, he kept us safe and made sure none could get us. He always sits with his legs crossed, he's just that special!

Hi all!

The pod has been rebuilt! It's totally different from the original plans I drew up...but it's done! It works and most importantly (according to Pod Boy's chiro) we have a proper bed! By a complete coincidence we have a bed that is exactly the same size as a queen size bed, we found this by fluke when we were searching for a mattress.

We finished the rebuild late on Sunday, and went looking for a mattress on Monday afternoon. I rung the rubber shop and found they closed at 1730, but they stopped cutting foam rubber at 1630. So Pod Boy and I packed up from work at about 1545 and headed for the nearest shop. We got to the joint at 1630 on the dot and had to wait for 15 minutes to be served, there was only one other customer in the place! Then we told the guy the measurements we wanted and he tried to convince us that they were wrong o.O he was such a douche (and I'm usually so polite about people!) Finally we got him to understand we knew exactly what we needed and that we did want it in three pieces. He agreed to cut it, but we had to pay first.

We went up to the counter and he worked out how much it would be. Now, we work in metric over here, but they still price foam in $/square foot. Guess how many square feet were in our mattress? 30! That was $300 for foam, just foam...no springs, no memory foam, just plain normal foam. We were both shocked, and we discussed it briefly with our eyes and then said thanks but no thanks.

We wouldn't have minded paying that much for a proper mattress, you can get chiropedic ones for just slightly more than that on sale here...so to pay $300 for foam seemed ridiculous especially because we were still going to be getting memory foam for on top of it. We left the shop and were driving down the road when we saw a mattress shop. They were advertising custom made mattresses so we went in. We had 5 minutes, and we asked if they would custom make a plain foam mattress...they couldn't as they only custom made chiropedic ones. But they had a pile of foam mattresses by the door, and by total fluke the queen size was exactly the right size for the pod. Best of all? It cost $99, fully covered and piped along the sides.

We bought it.

It's heaven.

I don't have any finished product photos, but I'll take some tonight when we make the bed, and then I'll take some in the morning when we fold the bed away. I'd take some now, but it's a horrible mess *housekeeper has been building with ber fiance*!

We're just working out what we will do the with mattress during the day. At the moment we're folding it into three and putting it against the shelf at the back of the pod with bungey ropes. Pod Boy thinks he can make some kind of foldable couch out of it by attaching it to thin boards...we'll see what happens!

We're looking for some memory foam stuff (the chiro is looking for it for us actually!) that we'll put over the mattress, but even without it the bed is so comfortable.

I'll write another post detailing our day on Sunday and will post some photos of the process :)