We walked around a bit, and found ourselves down on the other side of the block, where an eerie orange glow surrounded what appeared to be an old mosque. I took some photos, which I keep unretouched.

I had to run out for some food at lunch today, and found myself down in that part of town. I had my camera with me, and decided to stop over for a quick look at what it looks like now. I stopped at the warehouse first, the sticker is still on the door and everything looks almost identical to how it looked over three years ago.

Of course, I wandered down the street to see what had become of the mosque. It was pretty dilapidated, some portions of the buildings were crumbling, and on the building in the second photo the entire roof and side wall had caved in. I would have reproduced the photos identically, but I didn’t expect to be over that way and hadn’t looked at the old photos in awhile.

E and I originally referred to the first series of photos as the “Beirut photos”, not knowing anything about the history of the buildings. In a later conversation with my friend Wes, he related that the owner of the warehouse also owned the rest of the block including the mosque, and it was part of a film set. He sent me this article and this article.

As an aside, I also wanted to shoot some photos of an underpass, which is part of the route taken to get to the warehouse. I crept along the fence separating the top of the road from a truck yard, until I arrived at the top of the cross bridge and was staring at a set of steep stairs descending down to a walkway in the belly of the whizzing traffic lanes. I hopped down a few steps and saw some homeless people slipping in and out of the shadows of the pitch black walkway, and thought better of bringing my brand new camera down into what could end up a bad situation for both parties. At that point I realized that most of what I think is worth photographing exists in bad neighborhoods, and that I should probably stick to taking zebra pics at the zoo.

We just confirmed our plane tickets, we’ll be spending 9 days in New York and Connecticut for Christmas. My sister and E’s father have never met L, and I haven’t been home since I proposed to E last Thanksgiving.

I have no idea what it’s going to be like travelling with the little one, I imagine it’s going to be pretty rough. We went to E’s aunt and uncle’s house outside Dallas for Thanksgiving, and it took us two hours to get out of the house with all the shit we needed to pack.

Hopefully he’ll at least still be in his “sleep all day up all night” mode, since our flights are rationally right in the middle of the day.

E and I took some super cute photos last night after our Valentime’s Day (Observed) hot date night out. I’m absolutely horrible with surprises, but I managed to keep it a secret that I scored some tickets to the Valentime’s symphony at the downtown concert hall. We got dressed up and went out to party with the well-to-do elderly peoples. The music was really just beautiful, and featured an incredibly skilled guest violinist from Israel.

We clowned around with the camera for so long, we wound up both falling asleep with the lights on. It’s been nice having a several-day long celebration of lovey holidays and anniversaries, leaving us just in time for a curl-up weekend.

Things have been really, really good with me and Eilene. Today celebrates eight months of being together (and four months of living together), tomorrow is Valentime’s Day, and Thursday is our super secret surprise night out. We had an extraordinary weekend, and it should be a really nice week.

Well, not quite. We trolled some estate sale listings one Saturday, and found a house in a nice part of town that was having a “pre-demolition sale”. We were interested in a lot of cabinets and countertops, a lot of the stuff was really good. The guy wanted absurd amounts of money for most of it, so Eilene took down his number and waited.

After a few days the house was being turned over to the builder to be knocked down. Eilene then got the builder’s name, and gave him a call. The builder told her to stop by and “take whatever the hell you want”. When asked about payment, the guy wanted none.

So we rented a Penske truck. We started at ten o’clock at night with two crowbars, two power drills, and a box of tools. Though by the time we got there, other people had scoured through a fair amount, we managed to score a load of random doors, enough kitchen cabinets to redo our kitchen, a ton of cabinet doors with great hardware on them, and enough to resell on craigslist to make up for the truck rental.

There was no electricity or running water in the house as it was scheduled to be knocked down in a few days, so we did all our work thieflike with a couple of flashlights.

There was definitely a sad edge to the whole thing. The area of town is one where a lot of the property values are skyrocketing. It’s seen as an up and coming trendy next-rich-part-of-town section of Dallas, so they are skyrocketing the property taxes and forcing out the elderly who have lived there for 40 years. Their houses get knocked down and replaced with mansions that have about four square feet of yard space and stretch to the edge of their respective lots. It’s disgusting.

The house we plundered was nice. It had huge picture windows, vaulted ceilings, skylights, it was very happy and open, and quite large. We made comments through the night about how depressing it was that it would be levelled in a matter of days. Toward the end of our mission, Eilene got quiet and was walking around looking at everything. When I came over, she just looked at me and asked, “I don’t understand. Why was this house not good enough?”

The other night Eilene grabbed me and pulled me outside, happily whispering “you have to smell this”. By the time I was out on the walk I caught that crisp fall smell and knew our brief winter was coming.

One of my personal trip highlights was finally getting to meet up with Mike Dodgy D in Bethel. I actually stood in the D’s house and talked to his mom. I’ve not seen either of them since I left Boston in 1999. We ate lots of diner food and caught up on events.

We headed up to Saratoga in upstate New York on the last day, which is where my mom and sister have wound up. Eilene and my mom get along famously.

Eilene and I went out to Colleyville to buy a television from someone who posted it on Craigslist. When we arrived at the lady’s house, we saw a large pen holding a big bunch of turkeys. They gobbled as we drove by. When we rounded the fence into the driveway, there was another pen containing not one, but TWO LLAMAS.

I freaked, and as soon as the lady answered the door we asked to play with them.

It turns out they were both a llama/alpaca mix, which kept them more miniature (and manageable) in size. The lady gave us each a cup of food, we took turns letting them chow down, and snapped a few photos.

After jumping through several hoops, we found the Texas Tenant’s Union and attended their free weekly workshop. I’m now convinced that the information presented should be “required reading” for anyone renting a property.

The basis for their presentation was that all tenants should know what legal procedure to follow throughout the course of their tenancy even in landlord/tenant communication, in order to prevent situations later in which the tenant, although correct in a dispute, lacks any supporting documentation. The lecture moved through key points of the standard TAA lease and what the legal terminology means in everyday tenancy. Discussion included rights during eviction proceedings, etc.

I was surprised at the number of mistakes I’ve made in the past out of lack of legal knowledge, and E is in the same boat. Both of us have landlords who have been very kind, and with whom we’ve developed a congenial rapport. There have been things I never had properly documented, from existing apartment damage upon move-in, to damage done through violent incidents with drugged out neighbors. My trust rested in verbal discussion and the assurance by the landlord that “It will be taken care of”. What I see now, especially through the degeneration of Eilene’s situation with her landlord, is that it’s very important for landlords to appear congenial and create a false sense of security for the tenant, so that when something blows up the tenant has no documentation of anything and no legs to stand on.

I would highly recommend to anyone that they find a local meeting of a similar organization. It’s worth its weight in gold.

Eilene and I spent a good two hours there yesterday, walking around making remodeling plans. Structurally, everything looks solid, and almost the entire house has refinished hardwood floors. Almost everything that needs to be done is cosmetic or functionality related, so the plus is that it can be lived in immediately without having to have anything major fixed. The inspection will shed more light on that.

Tons of little things in the house reek of the fact that it’s from the sixties and seventies, from the scalloped trim around the interior to those hideous crisscrosses on the front picture window. Eilene and I joked that the first thing we’ll do after I close is go to Lowe’s and get His and Hers crowbars.

My excitement level is through the ceiling on this, moreso than it was just when I started building the car. At least this time, I have about five grades more sanity and ten grades less frustration. Plus it will give me routine external-world subject matter to post about, to continue to avoid being heartfelt. I’ll post photos and whatever, I’m sure.