I cringed at the beginning of this video, but watching it through to the end was SO worth it.

Good song and an interesting video. Yeah!

Via: Discopop Directory: Christmas catch-up: Skrillex

I adore the gumption of this girl. When Jenine Alexander couldn’t find land in Healdsburg, California, she built herself a home on the frame of a trailer. She had never built anything before and she ended up building herself a wonderful home.

Here are a couple of great quotes from the video:

“For me, living in a small space, is simplifying, for sure, ’cause otherwise… I mean, I have to give myself a small space, otherwise, it’s so easy to compile stuff. So, if I know I’m going to be living with it, there’s no gettin’ around what I bring in.”

“It’s so lovely to wake up in some place that you’ve built yourself.”

If you like what Jenine did with her house, you’ll love the ingenuity of Devon and Melissa’s Alaskan cabin. With no running water, they have set up ingenious ways to shower and cook. They DO have electricity, so they can run their appliances. I love their clever staircase that doubles as storage space.

Via:

• DIY Tiny House You Can Build for $3,500 that’s Mobile
• DIY home for less than $3,500 – videos – *faircompanies
• Devon and Melissa’s 168-square-foot Tiny House Video Tour in Alaska

Update 02-24-13

There is now a Utah-based company that is making tiny houses, called Open Trail Homes. You can see my review here:

• Starling Travel » Open Trail Homes

I almost forgot about Stan Ridgeway. The first time I ever heard his voice was on Mexican Radio when he was in Wall of Voodoo. In retrospect, it sounds VERY unPC now, but I still love it.

I love this song about a taxi driver who got himself in a bad situation, Just Drive.

The most haunting song, however, is Camouflage. It still gives me chills.

I never heard It’s A Lonely Town in the 80’s, but it’s a great story.

Another crime song from Stan Ridgway Goin’ Southbound. I remember hearing this song when I was a teenager.

It’s pretty clear that Bill Paxton really wanted to be Stan Ridgway when he grew up. Reach by Martini Ranch sounds like it was written after a week-long Wall of Voodoo binge.

I wonder how much the Solo Cup Company paid Toby Keith to write this song.

No matter how much it was, they should have paid him twice that. I can’t get this stupid song out of my head. Now, whenever I see a plastic cup, I’m humming it! I see blue or yellow Solo cups and I instantly think, “Wrong color! Red Solo Cup! I fill you up! Let’s have a party!”

I absolutely adore this Flickr photo set of a cardboard and paper mache build of a Barbie camper van.

Building Barbie’s camper van. – a set on Flickr:

We are making a Barbie camper van, like we made our four boats, made an Audi R8 restored my old Barbie aeroplane and we are hoping to get the same level of result.

The main body of the Camper was made out of a Lakeland box and everything else just scrap cardboard and duck tape.

I already have FAR more Barbie campers than I need, but this project makes me want to build a teardrop camper for my Barbie to haul behind her lime green VW bug.

Someone at the Daybreak Daily asked again about the “smell” supposedly from the landfill.

• Daybreak Daily Forums: Periodic air smell in Daybreak

It reminded me of my worst worry when we were first moving here. This “smell” issue was the scariest thing for me. I had learned about it AFTER signing our lease here, so there was no going back. I was so worried that it would be like the DoWiSeTrePla episode of How I Met Your Mother. If you haven’t seen that episode, here’s a full synopsis:

• Wikipedia: How I Met Your Mother: DoWiSeTrePla

In that episode, Marshall and Lily bought an apartment in New York that they could barely afford in a up and coming neighborhood called DoWiSeTrePla. The real estate agent told them that all the cool new neighborhoods are abbreviations. For example, SoHo is short for South of Houston Street and TriBeCa is short for Triangle Below Canal Street.

At the end of the episode, they are driving in a cab to their new apartment when they smell an ungodly stench. The cab driver informs them that “DoWiSeTrePla” is short for: Downwind of the sewage treatment plant.

We’ve lived in Daybreak over two years now and I’ve smelled it ONCE. It was a pretty minor smell and reminded me of the Great Salt Lake when it gets stinky.

I was SO worried about that smell when we were moving here and the complainers at Daybreak Daily had me convinced that I was about to move into a smelly armpit. Instead, I’ve only caught a whiff of the landfill once and it gave me a kind of nostalgia for my childhood in West Valley City when we smelled the Great Salt Lake every time the wind blew the wrong way.

Is the landfill stinky? It might be, but the residents of Daybreak only smell it about once every two years a month, so stop complaining and stop scaring away people who are thinking of moving here!

Update 06-14-13

I have smelled the Daybreak Stench about once a month, depending on which direction the wind is blowing. I wrote more about it here:

• The Daybreak Stench: Thinking about Smells

For the record, still don’t hate it. Quite the opposite.