We're aliveeee

So much has happened since the last time I blogged...not least a massive earthquake in my home town which caused major damage. In some ways it would have been nice to have been there...if only to show people hoe conveinient it is pod dwelling as we would have been able to pack up and move to safety so easily. The subsequent earthquakes since would not have been very fun though. My poor wee city that I love so much is so changed. I hardly recognise it in photos. And they've had over 3000 quakes since the first one in October. They're still calling them aftershocks!

The pod people haven't disappeared. Since I came over in July we've been very busy, with very few days off. We've spent the last few months working (I've been helping Podboy on job sites). It's been good for the savings account and the credit cards...but not so great for us as we've had very little time to play! And as you know, vandwelling usually gives a lot of time for play.

However, we have made a lot of changes to the pod and I'll pop some photos up so you can see all that we've done.

We've changed the kitchen...actually I built all the shelves and have designed it so that I can access the fridge by only moving one thing. This is an epic accomplishment as we used to have to almost totally unpack the kitchen side of the trailer to get to it. We still haven't got it sorted to run off 12v but we're workign on it. We have all the things we need to make it happen, we just haven't had time yet. So we're still plugging it in during the day and then letting it stay cool by itself at night. If we don't have access to power during the day we sometimes put a bag of ice in it which lasts about 3 days in there. But Podboy is lucky as he has unlimited power whenever he's at work! We also have a brand new stove but I don't have any photos of that (I haven't even used it yet!).

In the picture above you can see the shelves really well...however the lower part of the trailer is now much more organised and has way less clutter!

We also got a new Webber which we're storing on the tyres. I can't work out it it's hobo hobo or hobo chic: I'll let you work it out ;)

We've also put air vents into the roof of the van. They're solar powered and make a lovely wee hum when they're spinning. I'm not sure yet how much of a difference they really make to the van as the weather has been awful ever since we put them in...but they are making a difference to the condensation. We actually have no more condensation problems which is wonderful. It was starting to truly annoy me!

Another thing we've done is put solar panels on the roof of the pod. I can't remember the specs, I'll have to ask Podboy...but they are enough for us to never need to plug in our battery again. Since we've had them we've only run out of power once and that was after 4 days of almost no sunlight. We're very happy with them. Thanks ebay!

We're about to take off on a 6-8 week holiday which may mean that the blog gets some more attention! I start work on the 31st of January (yep! registration finally went through so I can now leagally nurse in Australia). My sister has come over and she's staying in the guest bure...a tent on the roof of the trailer.

Podboy and I debated at length about how we would manage to have guests because we knew she really wanted to come on our trip with us. In a very facetious conversation I suggested that we give her a mattress and she could sleep on the trailer...from there the guest bure was born. Podboy built a platform that folds up when we drive and lays flat when we're settled. It is basically three planks of timber with bracing along the bottom to even them out. They have holes at each end which we weave rope through and tie them to the trailer. We then erect the tent and tie the 4 poles to each corner of the trailer. The whole operation takes about 10 minutes to put up and about the same to take down.

Unfortunately we're still in Melbourne for work (hopefully only one more day of it!) and it's turned freezing here. Gale force winds, torrential rain, flash floods and freezing temperatures. It's meant to be summer!! This has meant that it's been very cozy in our bed as my sister has snuggled in next to us. I get very claustrophobic so having a person on either side of me isn't too fun.

Now, for our trip! We're heading west from Melbourne and doing a 12,000km journey through the centre of the desert to Darwin, then to Broome (through the Kimberley) then along the coast to Perth, then all the way back to Melbourne. We'll have Christmas somewhere along the way. So at the moment it's 3 peas, plus one. Yay!

"HI" from all of us in the pod...and especially from Pod dog :

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 :)

I'm having a quiet internal dilemma about one aspect of pod living. There are actually three things that drive me insane about this lifestyle, but only one that really fills me with real apprehension. The dreaded 'home address'.

We have a PO box where all of our mail can go to so that's not a problem. We have the use of two addresses in Victoria which we can use as our 'home address' although until now we haven't had to use these for anything...unless Pod boy has and I can't remember. Pod boy has also changed most of his legal stuff so that the PO box is his primary address, although bureaucracy won't let him take his old address (read ex wife's house) off these documents as he doesn't have another address to replace it with. At the moment this isn't such a big deal.

However, at the end of July once I've sat my State exams I need to provide a home address to the registration board of both New Zealand and Australia as I am keeping current nursing registration in both countries. This is actually extremely important and both Nursing Councils are very strict on the home address policy and it "HAS" to be where you actually reside. This is what the Australian Nursing Council says on the topic:

Registered nurses have a legal responsibility to notify the Board of a change of address within 14 days of that change having been made. Failure to do so is an offence under the Health Professions Registration Act 2005 and may be subject to a substantial penalty.

My nursing registration is the only thing that requires an actual physical address and seems to have very little leeway in its definition of that address. Most other bureaucratic policies are happy to accept a PO box, or are something I feel comfortable stating that my address is one of the ones we can use from Victoria. In this situation however, I am nervous about the deception and wish I could explain the pod situation to the council. It wouldn't go over well and I'm sure that this lifestyle would somehow be "unacceptable" for a nurse.

What would you do in this situation? I'm pretty sure that I'm going to suck it up and put Pod Boy's Dad's address down as my residential address, but I'm still nervous to do that...not nervous enough to get a house though!

I'm hoping that when I go through the process they are happy to accept a PO box, seeing as I don't imagine they would ever need to pop in and personally visit. But everyone I've talked to back home in NZ seems of the opinion that it has to be your physical address.

We both feel so guilty for not updating this, it's been hectic busy for us both. I have two exams tomorrow, they're not really worth anything just mock exams as preparation for my national exam which is in a month. Therefore, I haven't studied and intend to use them as an indication of what I need to study and where I'm sitting at the moment. For you American's the exam I'm sitting in a month is our equivalent of the NCLEX-RN.

So I've been to Australia again, been back at home in the pod and now am desperately missing pod boy, pod dog and the pod. I can't believe how much harder it is each time to leave them all. This time it was really hard leaving because pod boy was coming with me, which meant pod dog was staying in the kennels. I cried when we left him behind, I felt so guilty. Here are some gratuitous pod dog pictures, just because he's so beautiful.

We got lots of practice with the webber while I was there, I roasted a beef roast, did numerous lamb chops, made sticky pork ribs and also roasted 1/2 a chicken. We also made some southern style fried chicken on it.

This cous cous salad was delicious! Apricots soaked with garlic, spinach, roasted capsicum (over the coals), green onions and garlic/herb infused olive oil.

We flew into NZ and met my family. It was traumatic, loud and at times very funny. Pod boy seems to really like them, I think perhaps even more than I do! They really truly like him and are thoroughly looking forward to his return in just over 2 weeks. It seems like we can't bear to be apart for more than a few weeks at a time now, so it's a good thing for Pod boy's bank account that I move over in just over a month!

I took pod boy on some trips around my favourite city, showing him the beauty that is Christchurch. I can't wait until we come over here and van dwell around the country, there are so many special spots I know he would love.

lol hia i feel like the bad perent that has forgotten there kid at the football match lol so life in the pod continues... lol still no refit. ummm ill do it soon lol
krickle came over and :)lots of :)we just hung out and did work stuff but the real funn was that i became a internasional jet setter i went to NEW ZEALAND and truck me its wikid soooo much better than the land of oz, and ive tentitivly desided to migrate there in 4 or 5 yers. the land seems almost untouched and the people there seem a bit simple lol ( i could be king there )lol
i tryed blue chese for the fist time mmmmmmm love that mold
and i got to meet all of the dreded out laws lol ( i like them a lot)
and i got to send more time with my krickle....
any way im off to rost some lamb mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm