Rather that posting excessively today I should be taking care of this:

I can still stop and the pads in the front aren’t totally gone but with a mild midwestern winter entering the scene sooner that later now would be the better time for a little fix up. That and I should probably do a full engine tune too as my van home is getting harder to start and harder to keep running until the engine temperature warms up a bit.
Being a naughty mechanic I’m pushing the front pads to their limit by breaking off wear clip so it doesn’t sound so nasty. The rotors need replacement no matter how long I stretch out the life of the pads so I’ll just keep visual tabs on them.
Part of my hesitancy is that, aside from fiscal issues, I just plain don’t feel like doing it. If it was normal passenger car brakes it be no problem but now I’m dealing with a large, heavy duty truck platform. To replace the rotors I’ll need to swap out the bearings and hubs at the same time and then there is the simple act of getting the wheels off. At some point someone before my ownership put on fancy lugnuts that are impossible to remove and impossible to fit a socket to. It’s simple seeming thin metal caps pressed over but neither SAE or metric works and I fought them for a couple hours and only managed to remove one. Clearly, to the above parts total will be new lug nuts all the way around.
So there… point your fingers at the screen and chide me as you please. I deserve it.

April, I’ve spent the last couple days reading your blog…you’re a brilliant writer. You should really consider writing a book.
Robbie

Thanks for the compliment. You’d probably be amazed at how long I actually spend with some of these posts too. The writing part usually takes little time as that’s the easy thing. Debating on weather or not to post what I have in mind far more time consuming. This ability would come as a shock to my high school English instructors as they focused so much on diagramming sentences and very little time on writing. And quite frankly I’d not know a possessive pronoun if it bit me on the tush.
As far as books go I think this site, when I actually post to it, is far more productive to the greater society than would be reserving the information only for those who have access to a book or the money to order one.

I’ve done some copy and technical writing in the past but those gigs were found through networking or just plain old luck. Though I have several degrees none of them focused on the right things to make much of a jump into the commercial writing world. I’ve tried applying before and if I get call backs it always for a different position.
Oh, and let’s not even mention that I’m prone to taking on too many projects at once either!

I was wondering you said 55 foot of square space and having a small space but then you talk about how much gas that vehicle uses so my question is what kind of van or vehicle are you using? that gives you that comfort that traditional homes have.
–Ranger

I gave the original post a brief read through and while I do have about 55 squares of floor space, typical for a full-sized van, many of the hallmarks of traditional homely comforts are missing.

There’s currently no plumbing in the van. Electricity is supplied by a second set of batteries that I need to be energy conscious about as it take a good bit of driving time to refill them with amp hours. My kitchen is a small butane stove though I usually just eat stuff that doesn’t need cooking and being rather ambivilenet about food temperature is a big help there. And let’s not forget that ceiling to floor is only about four feet.
What does make it home like is the stuff that’s in there, my various possessions and the familiarty of the surroundings–especially as I built out the interior as the original inside was literally falling apart. The van is mine, paid in full and revived by my own hands, and once inside it’s my space, my way and therefore very homey. And when people inquire, those used to large and normal home, I just say that I’m rocking it like it was 1850 in terms of home based lifestyle.

I have a soft space in my heart for the normally sized VW vans and also for scooters. Note though that this oddity is a bad idea for stealthy living. One of the rules of sucessful car living and van dwelling is to not draw attention to yourself.