Features of this travel trailer include:

• A teak varanda
• Two electrically adjustable beds that can be combined into one
• A boiler to provide warm water
• Hot air heating
• A top loading refrigerator
• A modular outdoor kitchen including a two-ring burner, a barbecue, and cutting board
• Low-energy LED lighting
• A corian fountain with a pull-out faucet head that can be used as an outdoor shower

For additional information and photos,  you can visit their website at www.yoursuiteinnature.com.

PAD is offering tiny home plans, customized-built homes, consultations, and workshops on tiny home construction.

Their new website is built by Tammy Strobel, tiny house writer from RowdyKittens.com.

Below is a tour of one of their example homes, the Don Vardo.

Tumbleweed has also recently adjusted the prices of their house plans.  The Fencl plan is now available for $795.

“Rather than follow the customary American dream, Tammy and Logan sold their car, and moved to a bikeable/walkable neighborhood in Sacramento, California. After reading Derrick Jensen’s writings, this couple used Your Money or Your Life as a means to get out of debt and, they feel, regain their lives and their future. While they recount the psychological challenges of facing a future of declining resources, the catalyst that continues to move them forward is a dream of living in an affordable tiny house within a supportive community.”

You can watch the segment below or listen to the audio version.  And if you’re not already doing so, I encourage you to follow their further adventures on RowdyKittens.

I highly recommend it for anyone who needs a quick shot in the arm of inspiration.

This is probably my favorite of the Tumbleweed designs so I was excited to see how someone has modified one for his own purposes.

Now, I am certainly guilty at snarling at Scott on occasion, but, even on a bad day, I will admit that he’s pretty good at calling things like he sees them. Most of the time I appreciate that trait about him.

Here’s the thing–I may be a writer, but I’ve always struggled with putting words on paper when I feel like my life is falling down about my ears.

To me, there are two types of writers when it comes to how they handle crisis… those who can turn inward and draw comfort from their writing during those difficult times and those who dry up until they are able to resolve the crisis at hand. I have always firmly fallen into the second camp.  I’m not sure I can even articulate why. But when things that are deeply important to me start going wrong: relationships, work, health of loved ones, etc., the words stop flowing.

This certainly hasn’t been the smoothest of years on a lot of fronts. Ending my relationship with Charlie was really freaking rough. Struggling with a difficult job and then losing it was also rough. But then, most of the people I’m close to seem to have had a pretty tough time in 2009.

Anyway, obviously things have turned around enough that I’m feeling the urge to write again. So let’s start with the good news… As of the beginning of December, I became once again gainfully employed.

The day I lost my job I started reaching out to work contacts of mine. A friend of mine at a former employer in the brokerage industry was kind enough to send me two job reqs and also to put in an enthusiastic good word for me (along with her boss who was also familiar with my work). The interview process took about a month and involved a last-minute flight to San Francisco, but I ended up being offered a Senior Manager position working with client data which is where I tend to be happiest.

So, two months to the day of when I lost my job, I received my first paycheck from my new employer. In that regard, I know I’m a lot more fortunate than a lot of people out there right now.

In my new position I’m making close to what I was previously and, so far, I’m working a lot less hours. My vacation and health benefits are better, as well. Some really weird things clicked together for me on the job front which I’ll talk about in later posts. However, suffice it to say, the “Hand of God” phenomena seems to be continuing.  To what end, I really wish I knew.  But no one seems interested in filling me in on the plan.

So what’s the downside? The downside is that the position is based out of Phoenix. I had planned to spend the winter in AZ since my place in Portland is not complete weatherized yet. But that doesn’t work out so well in terms of what I had planned come spring.

I am a virtual member of a team that is based out of San Francisco. So a case could possibly be made that I’m already working remotely. But there are some advantages to me being based in the call center the brokerage has in Phoenix. So, yeah, there’s some longer-term issues that remain to be resolved.

A big thing I need to determine is whether my hunkering down in Phoenix is a temporary thing where I simply need the comfort and support of my friends for a time. Or, rather, if it’s my way of conceding defeat about all the renovations that still need to be done to my place in Portland and the loneliness of starting over in a new place away from all friends and family.  I’m just not sure I’m that tough anymore in terms of going it alone.

Here’s what the readers of Coming Unmoored probably won’t like… I have gone so far as to list my little house in Portland with a realtor for the winter. But, considering the current real estate market and the amount of work that remains to be done, I’ll be surprised if anyone expresses interest in it. And, quite frankly, I’m kind of hoping no one does. I really don’t think I want my hand to be forced until I know what I would like to have happen.

I’ve clearly torn on the subject because I’ve spent the last week delaying writing this post. I just didn’t want to have to type the words admitting that I’ve put my place up for sale. It haunts me. I know also, though, that I’m feeling lonely and beaten up from this year and am not ready to take on the place construction-wise again until at least spring. Both my emotions and my bank account are calling it quits for the present time being.

The good news, though, is I seem to have found a safe place to hunker down and consider my options. I have a job and a place to stay this winter close to friends. That feels like quite a lot, right now.

Lemonade is a documentary created by Erik Proulx and directed by Marc Colucci which interviews sixteen advertising professionals who were laid off and follows what happens to them afterward.  The answers are widely varied, sometimes hugely surprising (like the ad exec who opted to have a sex change), and entirely uplifting.

Back when I was gainfully employed working as a massively stressed out consultant in the banking industry, I watched the initial trailer repeatedly and cried happy, wistful, telephone commerical type tears.  It just touched a deeply truthful chord in me.

Then, I was laid off myself back in October and I replayed the thing a million times trying to ask myself what my own, best response to being laid off should be while trying to resist the urge to freak out and grab the nearest available $10-an-hour job just so I could say I was gainfully employed.

Then, I found work again in a field similar to my prior work experience and, a week later, the roughly 30-minute movie was finally finished. And, man, it’s got me asking all sorts of interesting questions.

You can now buy Lemonade online for $10 + shipping.  And it’s worth every penny.  I’ve watched it multiple times.  I’ve shown it to my friends.  I’m half tempted to order more copies and send them out as late Xmas gifts to friends and former coworkers who are still looking for work.

It’s good, guys.  It’s human, funny, and deeply touching.

I’ll be quick to say Proulx doesn’t have all the answers waiting for you wrapped up in a neat bow.  But I think the movie will help you get in touch with the right questions to be asking to find that answer for yourself.  And give you the chance to get to know some people who are on a similar course with their lives.

If you’re looking for additional inspiraiton, there is also a fantastic interview Jonathon Fields did with Erik Proulx which you can listen to here.

And, Eric, before you track down this post, too, and spend time saying thank you.  You really don’t have to.  It’s brilliant.  Just keep doing good work that people can draw strength and inspiration from.  You and the other people on the project have earned some major good karma from this thing.  Hopefully it’s already  headed your way as I type...

Along with several other areas of my life, I feel like I got off-track with the direction of Coming Unmoored.  Now that I have some time and energy again I hope to take things in some new directions.

I had also wanted to experiment some with advertising.  I think I’ve now got a reasonable sense of what works on this site and what doesn’t.  I think I’ve reached the conclusion that the visually distracting Google Adsense ads are going to  go permanently away.  The Textlink ads in actual article entries and those that appear at the bottom of the RSS feed are going to remain for the present.

Rather ironically, the past two months in which I’ve had very little time to devote to the blog are actually the first two in which the blog turned a profit after all operating expenses.  Go figure.

More than anything, though, I hope to continue to grow Coming Unmoored as both a record of my personal journey and as a resource for others making their own.

Those are the handful of days in my life when it feels as though whatever divine entity who’s in charge of the universe exceeds his (or her) patience waiting for me to grasp whatever the current lesson is I’m supposed to be grokking and decides to step in in a far more direct fashion to move things along.

My “Hand of God” Days have never been pretty affairs. But then, I guess that’s rather unrealistic to hope for when Fate decides to step in and starts rearranging things in someone’s world like a two-year-old redecorating a doll house.

My last real “Hand of God” day prior to the most recent was the day my now ex-husband came home from work, made us a lovely three-course meal and then, between course one and two calmly informed me that he’d decided the best thing he could do is go out, buy a gun from Walmart, and blow both of us away “to put us out of our misery”. Suffice it to say, I didn’t end up staying for dessert. That was the day when I realized I really had to get out of my marriage before I ended up dead..

My current “Hand of God” day involved me checking in for my weekly one-on-one with my boss only to be greeted by an HR Rep and the information that my employer no longer required my services.

Now, anyone who’s been following this blog will probably know that I’d been struggling with my job for awhile. Actually, “struggling” is too polite a word. My job has been knocking the snot out of me most of 2009. In September I’d actually started to enact a plan I’d hashed-out in the hopes of eventually being able to transition out of my current job into something I hoped to like more. But the time frame for my escape was apparently way-too-conservative for the Powers-that-Be. So the Divine hand dropped in to the picture and handed me a pink slip from my high-salary job in the banking industry.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that my first reaction upon receiving the news was: “Oh thank, God. This means I don’t have to work through the weekend again!” The panic of being jobless and having no immediate prospects for a new position didn’t hit until the middle of that first night.

Since then, I’ve been busily doing all the right things. I’ve been going through all the paperwork hoops for Unemployment benefits. I’ve gotten my COBRA coverage up and running. I’m networking. I’m interviewing. I’ve actually found a couple of positions I feel I’d be a great match for. But all of this still falls into the category of “survival mode” for me. These are the things I need to do in order to weather the current storm.

There still remains to be answer the bigger question of what I want to be doing with my life. How do I want to use my remaining time on this planet and given talents? And I know I need to figure out the answers to that question soon.

The universe just handed me an opportunity to point my life a new, better direction. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that if I don’t seize this chance the way I’m supposed to, things will get impatiently shaken up again.  And again.  Until I get the lesson.

No offense to the Powers-That-Be, but one snowglobe-style shake-up of my life every couple of years is quite enough. So please believe me when I say: “I’m on it, Boss.”