Below are some pics on my truck Vardo project I am working ..ting up all them boards is a biatch, and the weather kept wanting to rain on me. Regardless, I got a fair amount done. I think I have enough wood to finish the sides, however the roof is going to have to wait until the end of the month when I get paid again. Looks a little rough now but when its finished and painted it wont be half bad. It will be cozy inside and will do exactly what I need it to do.
I am outsourceing Alan to build the door for me. I am not very good with doors.
I still need to figure out if I am going to put a little window or a vent in it. I will need a vent, if I get some sausages it will turn into a Dutch oven pretty fast. Materials have so far been a little over a hundred bucks, still cheaper then a quality tent.
It was a little chilly over the weekend, on Saturday while in the garage I realized I could see my breath.
Saturday night I ordered myself a pizza off the Internet. First time I had done this. It was pretty damn neat. They had a flash application set up where you could pick your toppings and all that. Being hard of hearing ordering pizzas can really be a hassle, and I usually order only really basic ones so they cannot fuck it up. I shout my order into the phone and then hope for the best. However with the flash application I built myself a funky pizza with all sorts of ’half this’ and half that’. Since no one had made a pizza like I had yet, I got to name it. I called it the ’Galactus Maxus’. Pretty cool. Too bad its dominoes.
Dominoe’s has foul pizza. Whenever I get a dominoes pizza it taste undercooked. The crust is doughy and the toppings are hardly melted. I usually like to stick a Dominoes pizza in my oven for a little while once I get it. Try and get that foul rubbery dough to crisp up a bit. They are gross, however, I still get them once in a blue moon because they are cheap. And I can order them off the internet.
I go and pick them up, though. I don’t like pizza delivery boys. Fuckers. They probably spit in my pizza. Every delivery boy I have personally known was a man-whore.
I dropped my laptop over the weekend. I was pissed. Usually my laptop perches on my couch in my living room, and when I am bored I will watch television while I surf the web. Last night the laptop slid off the arm of my decaying vinyl couch and hit the floor. It was only about two feet, however, I ’knew’. Sure enough when I picked it up it only worked for a couple of minutes before it blue screened on me. Now it does not recognize the hard drive. Sigh.
Since all I really used that thing for was the web browser, I burned a copy of cd-bootable knoppix and fired that up. It worked just fine and it recognized all my hardware, so I was up and on the web again. I was still annoyed, however. Laptop hard drives are expensive.
I need a new sofa. Maybe I will build one.
2026 Update
Setting the dial to March 2008, where Ed builds a vardo, names a pizza, and drops a laptop. Prime entertainment.
Eighteen years ago, a hundred bucks bought a pile of wood, a busted laptop could be revived by burning Knoppix onto a CD, and the internet's great triumph was letting Ed assemble a half-this-half-that pizza on a Domino's Flash widget. That Flash app is dead now, and in its place we have apps that know your address before you do and charge you a 'service fee' for the privilege of being disappointed. The laptop would be an SSD now; it would hit the floor and keep playing the same grey video. The wood costs twice as much for half as much and arrives wrapped in plastic like a luxury good. The delivery driver has been replaced by a robot car that beeps at the curb. I miss having a human to distrust. At least then pizza had personality—even when the crust was rubbery and the world was ending one blue screen at a time.
“2008 Ed, did you ever finish that vardo roof, or is it still waiting on next month's paycheck like the rest of the century?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, that roof is still a pile of lumber waiting on a paycheck. (Yes, I know, shocking.) Every time I think I've got the money saved up, something else eats it — the laptop hard drive died, the truck needed a part, and the cats keep demanding more kibble. The sides are mostly up, and Alan's supposed to build the door, but the roof is still just a promise. I did get a little vent window planned out, because if I ever do cook sausages in there, I don't want to suffocate. But the weather keeps threatening rain, and I keep putting it off. Maybe this month. Or next. At this rate, the vardo will be finished somewhere around the end of the century, which I guess answers your question. But hey, at least the internet pizza ordering worked out, so I've got that going for me. Take that, foul gravity.
