Planning for the Future

So Sam and I sat down the other night to try to figure out a plan for getting us into our trailer and out on the road. We both agree that it doesn't make much sense to be carrying around a bunch of debt while trying to scrounge for work while we are traveling. Without being too specific, we are carrying between the two of us, around the national average of credit card debt per household in the US. We have basically just keeping the wolves at bay though, paying the interest each month and barely whittling away at the meat of our debt. Much of this debt was accrued when I was last unemployed. It was a five month span during which we were living mostly off credit cards. Toss in some car repair emergencies and some medical expenses and you have a hearty chunk of change that the fine people at Chase want back at some point (although they're not in any hurry really). So needless to say it doesn't exactly make sense to be buying a trailer and a tow vehicle (we estimate about $15-20 thousand when its all said and done) with that debt looming over our heads.

CL Airstream Roundup

So now with semi-regularity, I check in on the various craigslist sites to see what sort of stuff is out there and what the going prices are for them. Its going to be a while before we are in any shape to actually buy the trailer, but maybe just maybe if a deal to good to refuse comes along, we might bite early.

AUSTIN:


87 Excella - $16K
Overpriced compared to some other trailers I've seen but in pretty good shape.

66 Airstream Trailer - $5000
Original interior, banged up exterior. Its hard to tell from the tiny CL photos but this is just short of the sort of trailer we are looking for. Our ideal rig would be either vintage or 80's with working appliances and have reasonably intact interior and fixtures. This is the price we would probably be up for spending on a vintage trailer thats going to require more of a makeover.

DALLAS:

1970 26' Airstream Ambassador - $7900

Seem's like its in pretty good shape and we think around 25 foot would be the ideal size for us (although we have no idea really, since neither one of us has either actually been in an Airstream). That would give us about 100ish square feet of living space which seems really small but I think it will work. I wonder how much space we actually use in our current apartment?

1969 AIRSTREAM!!! - $6500

Looks like its under 30 feet and has some leak problems but seems cool. The photos are so miniscule as to be pointless so there is no telling about the interior without contacting the seller. I'm tempted to go check some of these postings out in person but since I can't actually buy anything it would sort of be a waste of everyone's time although it would help me get better acquainted with the realities of the different models.



LAS VEGAS:
Since my Sister and her family live in Boulder City which is outside of Las Vegas and also happens to be a popular spot for the retired set, I've added that city's craigslist to my round-up. I figure if something completely sweet comes along I could probably persuade her to be our representative and check out a few of these.

1978 Argosy (Airstream) - $3500

Oh my God I nearly died when I saw this beauty. I have no idea what the interior looks like if its half as good as the exterior I seriously feel like handing these folks our tax refund and taking the trailer home right now. Its not the plan, its not the plan, I have to keep telling myself but this is pretty much perfect. Argosy is a sub-brand of Airstream that existed for a short time in the 70's and 80's. They were painted trailers unlike the buffed aluminum of the official Airstreams. My understanding is that they were a way to use some of the cosmetically damaged aluminum that wouldn't pass muster on official Airstreams - hence the paint job - so they were more budget-minded but at the same time were a place for the Airstream engineers to test out new design ideas which is why they were the first to have the gorgeous panoramic windows. Oh God I can imagine waking up and looking out that window on to forest or field or lake or city street or wherever the spirit moved us to be. We would actually prefer an Argosy since the upkeep on the bare aluminum is costly and time consuming and painting a regular Airstream puts a significant dent in its re-sale value - but Argosy trailers are more rare due to their short production duration. And the price could not be more reasonable if the description is accurate. But really, we're not ready. I mean we would basically just have to store it for the next three months until we could use it and we don't have any kind of tow vehicle but damn it is lovely.

OREGON
Absolutely no good reason for me to be haunting Oregon postings.

76 Argosy Minuet 19' - Sold for $7500
This one was appearently posted to CL somewhere in Oregon, but I actually found it on an Airstream classifieds site. A little small for the price but otherwise perfect considering the recent remodeling.

76 Argosy 26' - $7600

Completely awesome. In great shape with a recent remodel. Its the perfect size and looks great. Someone please pay off our credit cards and give us $7600 so we can buy this trailer today.

Happy Birthday Sam!

Today is Sam's birthday! She is so wonderful and smart and beautiful and I am so glad that she was born so that she could grow up into the incredible person she is, meet me and eventually agree to be my wife! For her birthday I got her a simple gold necklace that I assembled myself as well as a copy of De Blob 2  for Wii since she really liked the original De Blob. Did I mention that she is so great and I love her so much, well I do. We had a fun birthday dinner at an out-of-the-way fancy steakhouse that turned out have a sort of weird and dated vibe and our waiter was very peculiar, providing us with all manner of unsolicited facts about our food and the owner. Part of his unintelligible banter involved something about a $10,000 chef exam and the Olympics. I mean I guess there are some sort of Culinary Olympics, but lots of cooking competitions bill themselves as the Olympics of food. Other theories include the owner having a food cart at the Summer Games or perhaps he won a raffle at the Olympic village, either way, it didn't make the crab cakes hit the table any faster. 

But I digress. Sam is the best and definitely the cutest wife in all of Wifedom. After dinner we came home and had some delicious Carrot cake from Ravelin in Denton, an awesome little bakery that is really too good for that town. Their stuff is actually not so sweet that it makes your teeth ache and instead of being spackled with thick layers of terrible frosting the cake was conservatively frosted just the between the layers and on top which also had a nice array of fresh fruit. Hooray Birthday Cake! Happy Birthday Sam!

Downsized

Poopoorama

Last Thursday afternoon I got a call from the assistant HR rep at my office. I have been calling them bi-weekly since this mess erupted and every single time their answers to my questions have been oblique at best but this time they called me and it was to let me know there was an all-staff meeting the following morning. From the moment I hung up I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach but I was glad we were finally going to get some resolution to our waiting around, one way or another. That night as we lay in bed, Samantha actually fell asleep before me. I was too tense, too wound up with fearful anticipation about the coming meeting. After laying there staring up at the ceiling for an hour, I tried to distract myself and quiet my brain by reading, but after turning through several pages, I realized that I hadn't actually read anything. I was starting to get frustrated. I just wanted to be asleep so that I could wake up and go to the damn meeting and have it done with. Out of desperation I hit the bottle and after downing three fingers of Irish Whiskey, I was thankfully inebriated enough to relax and fall asleep.

Vagabond Dreams

A couple of nights ago Sam and I were laying in bed talking while she drifted off to sleep. At some point the conversation changed and Sam suggested that as soon as we are able, we should buy a vintage Airstream trailer, remodel it, sell or store all of our belongings and hit the road with dogs for a year or until we feel like giving it up. Sam doesn't make declarations of this sort very frequently and when she does, she is serious. I know this because I used to always say crap like this in a sort of casual dreamy way, like "yeah we should totally hold a scrabble tournament," or "yes we should get a hold of a monkey and a saddle and teach it to ride The Baron," and she would fully expect me to have the entrance fees collected, the brackets drawn up, and have purchased the tiny cowboy hat. I meant like "wouldn't it be awesome" and she you know, took me on my actual word. I say all this to emphasize that she is not fucking around here.

Microbes, Friends

I didn't intend to start a food blog here, but I've been spending most of my free time experimenting in the kitchen so this is the product of my leisure. The Ricotta was pretty successful and the recipe actually yielded about what it said it would maybe even a little over. I used cheese cloth to drain out some of the liquid because its, you know, cheese cloth - it says it right there in the name so I figured it would be the right tool for the job, but it wasn't. The weave was pretty loose so I layered it and the little curds got in between the layers forcing me to have to scrape them and squeeze them out. All in all though, a successful and easy experiment and the product was incorporated perfectly into a batch of lasagna. I tried to save the whey, but it made quite a bit and was taking up a lot of room in our narrow side-by-side fridge.
My next experiment was yogurt and it was just as easy. After cooking the milk, inoculating it with a sample of commercial yogurt and then leaving the mix to sit on a heating pad for eight hours for the bacteria to propagate, I was left with a mildly tangy yogurt with the consistency of cream of wheat. I think if I had cooked it longer, it would have made for a thicker product and I will try that next time.
With these successes, I am trying now to show some restraint in my efforts. Sam discovered what I was up to and reminded me of my tendency to exhaust myself quickly on a project in a way that cannot be sustained for long. So I am delaying my jump into more complicated processes trying to consume as much of what I produce before moving on to the next thing, So after I finish eating this tub of yogurt, easily a week's supply for me, I will be taking on my next challenges: bean sprouts, ravioli, baguettes, croissants, and then its on to canning.

Cook Again

I'm still monitoring the dogs who have come down with some kind of  intestinal disturbance - a condition that has me following them around trying to collect samples of their poop. Its not too different than usual, actually, except that now I'm tagging it and saving it for later. Still no word about my job and even though I'm technically being compensated, its making me feel a little freaked out about money, like I'm unemployed again. I've decided to add "send out resumes" to my daily to-do list. I'm also trying to figure out what I should be doing with my time. I feel like I should be taking more advantage of this break and also keeping very busy helps to prevent my mind from dwelling too much on how much I don't know about what is going on with my job.