Vegetables

I've noticed that lately I've started eating more vegetables. Not just vegetarian food, which I've tended towards for a long time, but now just vegetables. I've always eaten a lot of bread and grains, also cheeses and lentils and the like. But I've discovered something fascinating about just plain old fruits and vegetables.

I can make a meal out of them, eat not very much, and be totally stuffed to the point where I can't eat anymore. I found this surprising. I can eat a ton of fish, or a full load of grains, and a complete meal, and it will take a lot before I want to stop eating. But the other day I made a meal out of just a tomato and an avocado. That's it. I couldn't hardly finish the avocado. I had to force myself to finish it! And, with that, I was stuffed for a full day. Same with squash. I have to FORCE myself to finish it. I'm full, my body is going, "NO MORE!". But if it was a bag of french fries, or bread, or fish, I'd probably be able to keep eating and eating. Odd.

But other vegetables can fill me up for only a short time. Then I get hungry again soon. This isn't a bad thing, but I'm still figuring out what does what to me.

I'm enjoying kale. I've figured out how to make a dish of leeks and kale, pan fried in olive oil and garlic, and I add in some random Asian meat-curry spice mix that makes it really really tasty. I eat it with quinoa usually. Today I made it, and I thought, hmm, this'd be really good with nuts of some kind, maybe walnuts. Sometimes I add feta cheese in there. Today I didn't, and I'm hungry again a few hours after eating. Still figuring this whole thing out, I am.

I'm on a budget now, so I'm trying to buy restaurant food much less than I used to. The last few weeks of the month, in particular, usually will involve no restaurant meals at all. I only have enough to do restaurant meals for a few days a month, and I tend to use them as soon as I can. I love food and I love not haviing to cook it. Oh well.

I am saving a lot of money by eating vegetarian, too, but I love my fish, in almost any form I can get it, and I'll never stop eating it. I also enjoy Vietnamese pork sandwiches, which are, thanks to their extreme cheapness, one of the few restaurant meals I can buy.

Registration decisions

I researched re-registering my vehicle as an RV (a "houscar", in California legal-speak).

I'd save money-- maybe as much as $250/yr. I'd have to fill out a form stating how much I spent on the conversion, which would then increase the value of my vehicle, which would possibly raise the cost of registration. What I'm not sure of, is if it'd raise it close to what I'm already paying now for commercial.

I also might get hassled by cops too. If I have noncommercial plates on what is obviously a commercial van, cops might look at it and assume that it has stolen plates on it. Or think I was trying to cheat my way out of paying a commercial reg fee. Either way, it's attention I don't want to attract.

Finally, I am smog exempt as a commercial diesel. As I read it, the law now is requiring non-commercial diesels after 1997 to be smogchecked, so I'd get netted in on that. However, since I run biodiesel, I might pass it, if they're checking for particulates. Then again, if they're checking for NO2, or OBD2 codes, I might not pass. There are a lot of unknowns.

Do I feel lucky, punk? I do not.

The current game plan on registration is to pay the outrageous $350 to keep it a commercial for one more year. If the laws or conditions change, then I can revisit getting it reregistered.

Plugged in and turned on

We've had almost a week of continually foggy, dreary, dark weather, although it's also been HOT and humid and I've needed to keep my refrigerator running. So I tried plugging in my spiffy new 1300W converter. No problem. It works, and it charges up the batteries REALLY FAST. Didn't blow any fuses too, which is excellent, or set anything on fire, which is even more excellent.

Good to know that it works. I also suspect I won't really need it much though. When the weather is cool, the thermostat on the cooler runs it at a reduced duty cycle. It's more just something to have for emergencies, i.e. if I get stuck parked in the shade for a long time, or we get another snap of cloudy-but-warm weather.

Clean the fan

After almost 3 years I finally took the screen off of my vent and cleaned the fan blades. I found out something interesting. They're transparent! Or, they were, befor I let them get so filthy that they were opaque with dirt and dust and grease (from cooking, I suppose).

I sure can breathe a lot better now. I wish I'd done this in the spring, before the warm weather came along. I think I'd have had a lot better airflow in here.

Or even earlier. Perhaps this junk and dirt is what I've been breathing all winter, spring, and summer too. Yuck.

I don't like cleaning, but I'm discovering that it's just something I have to do, there's no getting around it. It's not like I have a lot to clean, anyway, but I guess I have to keep on top of it.

In praise of LEDs

Lately I've been getting back into electronics again, something I messed around with a lot as a child but didn't really understand (I thought like an artist, not an engineer) but now am having great fun with.

I started back into this in order to build a little microprocessor-based controller for my refrigerator, which would measure voltage and then shut off the refrigerator when the sun isn't shining and batteries aren't charging, so as not to run down my batteries. The refrigerator is a TEC, and it uses 4A, and has no thermostat built in, so this is important.

But, also, I discovered that many basic facts of electronics and electricity weren't in my grasp. I'd skipped over them, thinking the stuff was "magic". Now that I've purged magical thinking from my life, I can approach this with a new mind, an open one, and realize that it's all just electrons flowing and they obey basic laws (Ohm's, Kirchener's, etc.). So I'm re-learning all the basics of DC circuits, from scratch.

Along the way I discovered I needed more light in here to work on electronics projects. In keeping with trying to reduce my electricity usage, and to test my understanding of the laws of DC circuits, I decided to build myself LED lights.

I love these things. I recommend them to any and every vandweller. They are cheap, and easy to build. You just buy the raw white LEDs online or from your local electronics store, solder them together, and you've got light. Thanks to the Internet, you don't even have to understand Ohm's law in order to design your own lights, just use this: http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz You can run them off of 12v easily.

LED lights are very bright, and they use very, very little electricity: less than a watt for even a decent-sized array.

After destroying two flourescent lights (flourescents don't seem to like working off of a Cobra "modified sine wave" inverter, sadly), I'm hooked on LEDs. Let there be light!

Pit toilet splashback is the nastiest

I've spent most of the past 3 years urban camping, but over the past few months I've done quite a bit of camping at actual campsites and out in rural areas.

I have to say, splashback from pit toilets is the absolute nastiest thing I've experienced yet. From 20 feet down comes-- straight up at you and onto your body-- a vile splash of ammonia, chemicals, and who knows how many people's effluent. Grossest thing ever.

In urban areas, I have to say the only thing that has come closest have been BART bathrooms. BART has the nastiest bathrooms ever; they're worse than any gas station I've ever been in.

I've generally had good luck with portapotties, both in urban areas and in rural campsites.

Also, I finally learned how to do a proper cowboy shower (a spongebath). It works really well! I still like my urban camping strategy of staying within a few miles of somewhere that my gym membership is good-- hot showers and running water are really nice-- but it's also good to know that with about a gallon or so of water and a washcloth and towel, I can stay pretty clean no matter where I am.

Painting and maintenance

I successfully painted some rusty and weathered parts of the van. Looks a lot better now. I hope I stay grafitti free.

Also, being out in the HOT made me realize that I didn't have enough ventilation. I have a 13.5" square exhaust vent, but only a 9"x5" intake vent. This was no problem when I had the roof bare, because the aluminum roof would pull air up and force it to circulate by convection. Basically, it was a huge stovepipe. But since putting in the drop ceiling, it stays beautifully cool here in the morning, but once it heats up, it's impossible to cool it down again. It was miserable in here with even 70-degree weather. So I cut an additional intake vent, which helped a lot. Convection seems to be occurring again, and also the fan doesn't have to work too hard to circulate the air when I turn it on.

I found another problem too. Even though it's very dark and very well-insulated in the box, that aint' so in the cab. The cab is covered with windows on three sides and gets like a huge solar oven-- if it's 70 outside, it's 90 in the cab. The problem is that way too much of that heat was radiating through a fiberglass "dent" behind the driver's seat (it's there to allow the seat to slide backwards) and through the wooden box door. So, I bought another sheet of isocyanaurate insulation to cover those and stop the radiation.

I'm happily back in the fog zone again, and I've noticed that the extra vent helps solve a lot of the dry-mouth problems I was having. Maybe that will help solve some of my dental problems.