Camping At Work: September 2010

Monday, September 6, 2010

Oops and soup

Things are starting to cool down, but I still find myself needing ac for a portion of the day. Today around 11, I fired up the generator and the ac. Then, around 3:30, I was up and noticed my inverter was only reading 20 volts. Turns out I had been running off of the inverter all day. That would be fine, except I was also running the generator with no load.

At work, I have been primarily eating soup, while eating fast food during the day. So this week I purchased a thermos. It seems to work pretty good. The soup I made at 6am is still hot and it has its own cup to pour the soup into. My plan is to take the thermos back into work each day for cleaning and refill.

About

I keep track of my equipment costs here.

Photos are here.

I work about 117 miles from where I live. My work schedule is fairly interesting. I work night's – 12 hour shifts. It alternates between 3 and 4 shifts each week. Factoring in a 1 hour lunch break, I work 33 and 44 hours. I then end up with really long weekends. The drive takes 2 hours and 15 minutes each way, so on a 12 hour shift, a round-trip is 16.5 hours. That leaves 7.5 hours to sleep, hygiene, and eat. For the last two years, I have been either renting an apartment or staying on a coworker's couch for the 2-3 days (and it is daytime that I sleep) that I'm at work. Rent in the DC area for a single bedroom apartment is very comparable to my mortgage payment on a 5 bedroom house at home.

For a permanent solution, I have decided to use a conversion van as my apartment during the work week and hope to sleep in the work parking lot during the day. I checked with the both the county sheriff's office and the county attorney's office. While there are rules against sleeping on a public sidewalk or park during the night (which might apply to someone inside a van) there are no issues with me sleeping at those same places during the day. Private parking lots require permission of the owner, otherwise I could wake up with a $100 fine on the van. The sheriff's office advised me that I should be prepared to be woken up a few times if someone called in a suspicious vehicle. Otherwise, there are no legal issues with me camping out in the area on a semi-regular basis.

My quest for cheap living begins.