Conventional Wisdom

(Historical Notes: Okay, here’s the long and short of it.  I thought if I did more to prep the van than just throwing a sleeping bag on the floor, it’d be more habitable for an extended period.  Unfortunately, I also didn’t want to try and set things up before I left, both so that the extra luggage on the ride down wouldn’t slide around and crush everything and also because I kind of needed to be able to see out the windows on the drive down.  This was entirely unworkable.  Even though I’d experimented with setting stuff up at home, it still wound up taking way WAY longer than expected once I was on site, and nothing stayed in place anywhere near as well as I’d expected.  At this point, I’d say that the only way to even REMOTELY make this work would be to permanently refit the vehicle as a camper.  Trying to just throw some stuff up in a single morning simply doesn’t cut it, and trying all morning just left me all the more frustrated and exhausted for the rest of the day.  Also, It’s worth noting that half the reason I went ahead with this stunt at AWA was because the Galleria parking lot had been a free lot like Ichi’s, so I didn’t feel quite as trespasser-y about camping out in there… only to find out ON THE DRIVE DOWN that they now charged a parking fee, which I immediately interpreted to mean extra security.  I don’t deal well with sudden changes of plans under the best of circumstances, but being extra exhausted and frustrated over everything ELSE seeming to go wrong just made me freak out over this bit even more than I otherwise would have.  More on that later.)