I am slowly falling into the routine of an eight to fiver. The house I am renting is pre 1930 and has it's own set of quarks and faults. I like it just for that fact. My neighbor across the street is named Thomas Vaughn. He often sits on his porch in his cut off blue-jean shorts and bare chest looking bewildered. I have talked to him a couple of times--he has no teeth and perhaps some sort of speech impediment, so I understand about 10% of what he is saying. He sure does like to talk though. I nod and grunt as if I know exactly what he is talking about.

It reminds me of when I was in Russia trying to communicate with the native speakers. You knew they were saying something and could catch a word you knew every now and again, but most of it sounded like jibberish. We got by though, relying on non-verbals, and the exchange that passes between humans that goes beyond words. I remember searching for a bookstore in Nizhny Novgorod. We just kept saying, "Gde dom knigi?" (where is the house of books?). And the questionee would point and say something. We would walk in the motioned to direction for a time and then ask another bundled up Russian, "Gde dom knigi?" It was an effective way of locating our destination.

Anyhow, Mr. Vaughn interests me. It seems he has a lot to say and no one to listen to him. He has spent the last two days on his front porch working on a broken lawn mower. He'll sit and stare at it for a while, scrarch his head, adjust something, then try to crank her up. It sputters for a while and then dies. He did have it running for about 20 minutes yesterday, but it didn't sound like the engine was rotating fast enough to cut much grass.

Tom's sister and her husband live to the left of me. Their names are Bob and Lu. I met them them my first night there when Tom led me over to their house. Apparently Bob needed some Efferdent because whenever he talked, his dentures kept falling down from the roof of his mouth making a strange sucking sound. He proceeded to tell me about all of the people that live on my street. There is the black family that live to my right. They're pretty nice, he says, for black folk. Even his grandson plays with the little black girl. And Lu's sister lives right next door to Tom. Then there's the single woman that lives on the corner with her three kids--from three different men. Don't get involved with her, she'll tear you up. "Bob!" pipes in Lu, "you don' need to be telling everyone's business!" Then the Mexican family that lives down the street. They're pretty quiet, for Mexicans. They don't bother anyone.

I guess my neighborhood is much like my house--with it's own quarks and faults. I think I'm going to like where I live.

Damn.