By James Skippenofsky

Excuse me, NewsBlog 5000 readers, for my long absence. I was making a salad and things got a little bit crazy.

Recently, I was reading a story about a college student who was cutting costs by living in his car, so this week for Skippy Does It, I decided to live in my car, a Sebring convertible. I vowed that I would do everything in my car: sleep, cook, bathe, change my clothes, brush my teeth and go to the bathroom.

It can be amazing the tradeoffs you must make between comfort and survival when you live in a sport coupe. My library pretty much had to be left behind. I also found out it is nearly impossible to get the cable company to do an install in the 38th spot in the first row of the Wal-Mart parking lot. Because of this, I left my TV behind as well.

Things went really well for the first week. I had definitely cut back on costs, and I thought that if I could just stick it out a few more months, I could have my credit cards paid off. But then disaster struck.

In the back seat, I was cooking some eggs on my camp stove, when I suddenly had to use the facilities. I got my jar and went to the front seat, where I had discretely used my jar before. I must have taken too long because the eggs caught on fire and touched off the soft top of the car.

Thinking that I needed to do something to put out the fire, I pushed the button to open the roof, and the roof accordioned down, smothering the fire. I was feeling pretty good about myself and I was just about to pull up my pants when the bus full of grade-schoolers drove by. That pretty much ended my social experiment.

Now that I’m back into a bigger space, I do realize that some people are not meant to live in cars. I feel better for trying the experiment, but unfortunately, my rent is going to be higher for the next year, as the local jail charges $45 dollars a day.

posted by NewsBlog 5000  # Wednesday, March 28, 2007