The New Christmas

My family is extremely traditional.  My parents still live in the house where my brother and I grew up.    (It’s always refreshing and familiar to visit home and my mom always puts a package of Ferrero Rocher’s on my pillow before my arrival.)  Up until last year, holidays have been the same familiar routine.  We all congregate at my Grandparents’ home (built by my Dad and Grandpa in the 80s) on five acres of land with two dogs, ten chickens, one rooster, and eight vintage Farmall tractors (Grandpa’s hobby is restoring them) and stuff ourselves silly, no matter what we’re celebrating.   Last year things in the family started to change.  All of the grandkids are now adults.  The first great-grandchild, Baby Theo, joined the family last October.  My cousin Edward put down roots in China.  This year things are even more different.  Edward is now in India and Andrew, his brother, has joined him for a few months.  Elizabeth, their sister, is in Africa for a year, so the big family gatherings are considerably smaller.

My brother Nicholas is going to graduate from college in May and is spending a lot of time contemplating what he wants out of life and what is most important to him.  Thanks to his introspective reflection on what he truly values, he suggested that instead of exchanging gifts on Christmas morning, we buy presents for a needy family of four.  My parents and I loved the idea, so on Black Friday we braved the consumer madness and purchased Christmas gifts for our adopted family.  It was a lot of fun to shop as a family, and it was much more fulfilling to give to a good cause instead of giving each other silly presents like kitchen gadgets, coffee table books, or Snuggies.  This new direction in gift-giving was a relief to me, because as a currently homeless person, I have worried about storing Christmas gifts in the trunk of my car where space is limited as well as what to do with the things people give me that I don’t have a place for.

Staying Classy in San Diego

Anchor Man is one of my favorite movies.  The cast of characters is ridiculous and hilarious.  Ron Burgundy and his unapologetic skirt-chasing, hard-boozing ways.  Veronica Corningstone and her non-regional dialect.  Baxter, Ron’s bi-lingual terrier.  The cult classic has some interesting and shady personalities, similar to downtown San Diego, where I stayed last week during another work trip.

The Sofia Hotel is a darling boutique hotel.  The location is perfect: walking distance to Horton Plaza and the Gas Lamp district, and only a few minutes from the airport.  The hotel’s ground floor is home of The Currant Restaurant, an American Brasserie.  The decor is rich and sultry, with dim lighting, velvet upholstery, and ornately carved wooden furniture.  Overall, the interior has a sexy, French feel, swanky enough for Mr. Burgundy himself.  After a long day of sales calls it was an ideal, quiet place to relax and asses the successes and challenges of the day.  Mussels in white wine, tomato and shallot sauce with frites helped too!

Step Two: Organization, Part II

Two posts ago, you read about how I’m legitimately living out of the trunk of my car.  Now I’ll dive into the details of day-to-day living.

Thanks to my wonderful employer and our lovely work facility, I have access to a weight room, yoga and kick-boxing classes, and a really nice locker room!  I try to take advantage of the weight room as much as possible during my lunch break.  I can pop over and put in about 45 minutes, then hit the showers in the locker room, and be back at my cube in an hour.  I was on a waiting list for about a year before I got my own locker!  This is perfect for my current lifestyle.  I have all my toiletries stored there so I can take a full on shower after work before I go out for the evening.  It’s really nice to have a central place to keep my stuff and shower, so I’m not tying up my friends’ bathrooms.  Plus, it's cleaned daily, unlike most residential bathrooms.  ;)

Business Trip

As an electively homeless person, work trips are more valuable to me than ever before.  It’s a nice break from staying with friends and I’m guaranteed my own bed instead of a couch!  On Monday, I flew to Tampa for a team meeting.  The majority of my co-workers are territory managers and work virtually out of their homes all over the country, so it’s a treat for the whole group to get together.  My employer has a relationship with Busch Gardens so we were able to utilize their facility to meet.  Tuesday morning started with an onsite breakfast at the Crown Colonial restaurant in the park.  We managed to squeeze in a meeting between breakfast and lunch (lucky for me my colleagues share my passion for eating) and then had free time to enjoy the park!

Step Two: Organization

My first "secret-revealing" post, The Purge, told you all about how I narrowed down my possessions to just the essentials.  Now here's the fun part!  I am an organization geek- I get overly excited about nesting boxes, file folders, and containers of all shapes and sizes.  I got rid of nearly everything I owned, but still have necessities I need to easily access while storing them somewhere.  My personal challenge with my living experiment is to operate as efficiently as possible as I go from one place to the next.   My goals are:

1. Be organized and look nice (I don’t want it to be obvious I’m living out of my car!)


2. Don’t leave anything (for more than a couple of nights) in my friends’ homes


3. Leave a place better than I found it (life lesson from Girl Scout camping trips)

I have three places I store my things:

1. Trunk of my car


2. Locker at work


3. Boyfriend’s garage (original plan was to rent a storage unit but I'm taking my time to shop around for the least sketchy, most convenient location that is safe to visit by myself in the evenings... it's like searching for a needle in a haystack!)

What I access the most often (once or twice a day) is the junk in my trunk!  This is where I store my toiletries, pillow, blanket, accessories, and some clothes.

Nomad Life: One Month Down!

Yesterday I celebrated one month of living a nomadic lifestyle.  When I think back to how I was living a couple of months ago, it’s dramatically different!  My house, roommate, her dog, and all possessions are gone!  So far I love the freedom- staying at different places, no chores, no bills!  The month of November brought some travel opportunities with it which has made the transition a bit easier.  Luckily, my first official night of homelessness was spent in the beautiful Hotel Rex in San Francisco!