Busy, busy, busy.

This is a *good* move. I can *feel* it. *Everything* is falling into place.

Got two days jumpstart on moving, 'cause I paid the first month's rent a couple of days earlier than I said I would, thanks to -- who else? -- my mother.

Yesterday went back to deliver another load-o-random-stuff rather late, and found that Jerry, my landlord, had cleared the house of all his tools and put things into place so I could really, truly get moved in. Ahead of schedule.

But -- given the enthusiasm I showed over the *land* -- he left the hoe, the shovel, the rake, and the pickaxe. Also the wheelbarrow, though he apologetically explained to me he might need it elsewhere, in time. The soil is sandy. Way easier to work with than the heavy clays closer to the river.

Jerry's spent these last two days repainting trim and fixing stuff while I worked on moving what I call my "stupid stuff" in. The stuff I want to sell, mostly, which now has a place in the basement, underneath this house which happens to be located in prime "yard sale" territory.

He's already replaced the water main and gas main. He's shored up the foundations, since the last tenant put rocks and bricks in such a place by certain a fence so that his pit bulls (which killed one of the elms in back by chewing off all the bark) wouldn't dig out under the fence, and as a result, flooded the basement rather than alowing the water to run off through the alley. (At the same time that this tentant's dogs killed the tree, he wouldn't use the dead tree for firewood, opting instead to burn one of the landlord's old wooden fences, once PNM finally cut off his gas service for nonpayment. DUH.)

While clearly leery of renting to another tenant who might burn down a fence, Jerry wasn't willing to rent a structurally unsound house with broken mains, so it's been vacant for quite some time. And I had no idea what foundation problems were about (they're *way* nasty) 'til I got under the house and basically inspected things with him. (The basement looks like hell, 'cause "walls" down there, which are in fact, just plastered-over earth, are cracked and buckled, but the structure *over* it all remains basically sound, thanks to the Jerry-rigged™ beams underneath the floor's main supports.) Of course the whole place is just off-kilter enough I'm gonna have to spend a good ten bucks or so just on felt feet so my clocks will run right. (Oh, pity me, the poor exploited tenant!)

Meanwhile, while driving loads of belongings across town, I see that other *very* well known real-estate types (including the ostentatiously gay "JM") that I *had* considered renting from in desperation were paying people low wages to go out and polish their precious "FOR RENT" signs with their priceless names on display in the full heat of day -- meaning, I'm sure, that their actual properties are going obscenely neglected. ("Sorry your water heater's dead, but we were *way* too busy polishing the sign, in hopes of bringing in new tenants who can pay more than you can for the same lousy lack of service you can expect from us, now".)

I think I've rented well, even if it's a bit "pricey" for what I'm used to paying. Not only can I live decently, I know more about this house than I have ever known about any house I have ever lived in, including the one I was born in. I know every crack in the walls and floors and ceiling. I know what to look for in each, to determine whether or not there is a problem.

The wood stove in the living room had served Jerry as a shelf during the renovation process. It has served prior tenants as part "cheap winter heat", part "incinerator", so when it got cleared off of Jerry's belongings, it was immediately clear to me that it *desperately* needed a blacking.

I promptly went out to get some blacking, and returned around sunset to do a load of laundry (allowing me to test the greywater irrigation system he's installed) *and* blacken the stove at the same time. Not the most obvious combination of tasks (clean on the one hand, dirty on the other), but it worked, perfetly.

Since blacking the stove required that I burn something in it to cure the blacking, I did so. He seemed impressed that I would do so. I can't imagine why. It's patently *obvious* to me why these things matter. I'm used to cold winters, at this point. And blacking a stove isn't *just* cosmetic. It's structural: it prevents rust. It's also a safety issue: it prevents fires -- even if the stove *was* installed to code a few years back, there's no telling where things rust through until you've gone over it, inch by inch, and one rusted-through spot can mean the difference between life and death.

But I'll be damned if I invite guests into my house with an improperly maintained and slowly rusting wood stove right inside the front door. That's not "charm", that's "neglect". And I'll be damned if I want to live in a wood-heated house with a rusted-out woodstove that I actually plan to use for heat at the risk of my own existence. If I were a vindictive cheapskate I'd deduct the seven bucks I spent on blacking from my next month's rent. But screw it. If and when I replace the electric stove in the kitchen with gas, I may do some such thing. But that's all down the line. For me, now, I'd no more charge him for blacking than I'd charge him for my bottle of window cleaner.

I seriously think this may be a landlord who is *not* just out to screw me out of money.

The house is on the same street Ernie Pyle lived on when he got killed reporting on the war in the Pacific. It's roughly halfway between my radio station (to the North) and the public library that was made out of the Pyle house, which happens to have vast files of original clippings of his newspaper articles of war reporting. It may not be as overtly "glamourous" (for which, read "run down" as "living on the mother road" but it's no less significant, no less meaningful.

I think it may be the oldest house on the block. It appears to have been built, originally, with steam heat (alas, the radiators are long gone) and no electricity. The neighbourhood has since been rezoned, since it's so close to the University, to allow for four residences on each plot which were originally single-family residences on ample land. The plot to the north of me has been turned into an apartment building, while the one to the south of me has been subdivided into "guesthouses" and "casitas".

Yet somehow, the current owner seems to have no interest whatsoever in subdividing his lot into apartments. I'm going on a hunch, here, which I know is perilous. But it seems to me he loves the house and land as it is, now, and wants someone to take care of it as it stands now. As for me, I am infinitely more than willing to pay way more rent than I am paying now to make the whole place work well as a *house* among apartment buildings.

Spent eleven full hours just moving, today. In that time got rid of most of the stuff I can carry by myself in my car that I care about whether it gets lost or stolen or not. All the guitars and such are moved. So are all the records -- all ten feet of 'em. And the books -- all 18 feet and ten inches of 'em. So's the Los Alamos bookcase. Noticed some very interesting engravings in two of the shelf units I hadn't seen before: the letters "USA" carved, upside down, into the same spot of two of the units in what appear to be two different hands in the same style of lettering. The "A" seems to be the same form as the letter is engraved in the "AEC" (for Atomic Energy Commission, forerunner of the DOE, or Department of Energy) on my stamp-holder. Wonder what that's all about.