It's been, perhaps, a momentous day, at least by my meager standards.

The biggest thing today won't actually happen until tomorrow, when my account gets drained. Through the magic of electricity and modern banking, funds are moving from me to the escrow company by way of a large bank in New York.

This makes Sandy personal. I can only hope everyone involved has all the electricity they need to make this happen. If not, well, I'd prefer not to think about that but will, anyway.

And, I just got a phone call from someone advertising himself as an ex-Marine. He and a buddy, who is also, probably a vet, are going to help me move by packing up all my crap in the truck I'm renting to haul it all out of Murrieta and up to the desert. I apologized for the state of the things in the storage place, which he said was no big deal, but he hasn't seen it yet. I've been rehearsing the speech for about a week now to explain things.

Roughly, it's a 10x15 foot area, packed to the brim. The first load of stuff was done pretty neatly and in a more orderly way. Filling the storage place took about three trips, each one more chaotic, and the last load was almost entirely weird-ass crap that isn't in boxes and was pretty much tossed on top of the stuff already there as quickly as I could get it out of my sister's sweet little truck and out of my hair and mind.

So, the stuff in the front of the storage area should probably be the last stuff to go in the truck, but we'll see how these guys handle it. According to the ads and comments, they'll do all the work while I sit back and polish my nails or something.

Also, through a marketing and profitable breakthrough, the size truck I wanted isn't available anywhere within fifty miles, so I'm getting a larger one. That should help in case my guess at how big a truck I'll need was off.

In my dreams, all the crap will fit in one truck, which I will then drive up to the desert with the dogs and unload by myself. I guess I'll be getting there around noon and hope to get everything out of the truck by dark. Then, we'll spend the night up there, enjoying life without electricity and maybe without water, which explains why I bought a hatchet.

My little desert home, like just about every other place up there I saw, has a little fire pit area on the property, which should provide some heat, light, and a way to cook. Then, a mummy bag on some foam rubber to serve as a comfy bed.

The next morning I will be preparing coffee on a cheap little camp stove, loading the dogs back in the truck, and driving it back here to drop off at the truck rental place. Then, we all pile into my Jeep and drive back up to the desert "for good."

Yes, I could have arranged a one-way rental and saved myself $100 in mileage, but only if I either didn't mind walking twenty or twenty-five miles from the local truck drop-off space to my home or towing my Jeep behind the truck Yes, marathon runners or walkers would shake that off as simply training, but I'm neither of those.

I considered using my bike, but in any case that would have meant towing my Jeep, and that would have required me to drop and re-mount the drive shaft, something I doubt I'll feel like doing after picking up and setting back down everything I own, maybe more than once.

I'm sorta worried about my back holding out, but if it's gotta be done, it's gotta be done and maybe I can take my time and liberally rest and take breaks.

Then, I can spend the rest of the day sorting through my shit and wondering why I thought I'd need or want this in my new place. In my defense, when I packed I had no idea what place I'd be moving into, so I may have brought everything, all in poorly-labelled boxes.

The truck rental company advertises an adventure in moving. Yeah, that's an understatement.

I went up to the desert to check out the place I'm buying today, hoping to get some sort of feel for what I'm getting myself in for as well as to take a sober assessment of the place. The first thing I noticed was encouraging: a "sold" sign advertising the seller's real estate agent. No mention of the woman I'm working with to buy the place, but I guess the convention is only the seller gets bragging rights.

What I just wrote isn't precisely true. Before noticing the "sold" sign I noticed that I'd missed the place and had driven a couple miles past it.

And that is a pretty good reflection on me and my whole way of dealing with this (and life in general, perhaps). To be honest, I don't have any idea what it will be like living there or much about it at all. Very few expectations. I'm basically buying this place because I think it's about as cheap a place to live as there is, I've kind of always had a fascination with the desert even though I loved living at the beach, and I've known a couple people who did or do live sorta out there.

It is a complete change from life in the city, at least the city of Los Angeles. Among other things, for the first and only time in my life I'll be thirty miles from the nearest freeway.

The land I'm getting is a 2.5 square, about a hundred paces on each side I think. Along one side is a dirt road, along another is a paved one and the adjacent lots (not the one across the paved road) all have much better looking (and larger) houses on them than mine. Mine will be on the corner of the paved and dirt road.

The ride up to my intended property still thrills me and is both rewarding and strange. Coming south down Interstate 10, a major highway, is pretty common, but it gets a little different as I near the Morongo Indian reservation, home of a casino I assume to be garish.

There were billboards advertising future (or perhaps even current or past) appearances by Alice Cooper and Lewis Black, but not at the same time I don't think. What struck me most about this part of the drive, though, is the surrounding mountains.

They're clear and visible, but they're not exactly adjacent. No one not from Los Angeles can possibly understand how unusual it is to see clearly things at a distance. Yes, it's the way the rest of the world is (and should be), but after years and years in LA, you get used to anything more than a couple miles away being out of focus, lacking definition.

No matter. I just find it a very good sign that I'm in a new place.

Just before the highway splits to take you to Palm Springs, there's a forest of wind turbines. I don't know (and don't care to look it up), but it's quite possibly the most wind turbines anywhere (except for all the places that have more). I did get a kick out of a highway sign in the middle of all this sporting the usual solar panel, and I may someday make a proposal that that particular sign should have a tiny windmill, instead, like one of those toy whirly gig things.

When you reach the middle of the wind turbine forest, you take a highway east, up into the mountains. This is a two lane road, but there's hardly any traffic lights on it and traffic still moves along it at 60-70 mph. It climbs, goes through some towns or cities that have a lot of bars, a few gas stations, and both familiar and local eating places. Also, more animal feed and horse tackle shops than I remember seeing in my old neighborhood, but, basically, all the things anyone probably needs to survive and get his or her car fixed.

Then, another left (Old Woman Springs Road), and further up the mountain, this time past some truly beautiful homes that are perched on the side of the mountain and are architecturally and aesthetically beautiful. I also suspect they're not inexpensive, like mine was. The road climbs, dips, and climbs some more, being a bit roller coastery there for a spell, before you reach the paved road off of which my future home is placed.

A couple miles down that road, past a school (Elementary? Middle? High?) but before the post office is the corner on which the place I'm buying sits. It;s not on a hill, but it is on top of a rise, I guess you'd call it, and if it wasn't for the damn neighbors' houses and trees, would have a commanding view of ... desert. And, in the distance, mountains and something I believe I was told is part of a Marine base.

Along the dirt road a grand total of one pick up truck traveled during the hour or so I was there, and it showed up soon after I did. The driver of the truck and I nodded briefly at each other in that non-committal way men do, and that was that. The paved road, however, stretched out straight to the horizon in both directions and I'd say a third or maybe half the time some car or truck was visible on it. I don't think they all passed me, but I wasn't paying close attention, not to the noon rush of traffic on a Saturday afternoon.

Good Lord it was quiet out there. I mean, quiet. Soundless. A person out there, situated as I was standing on the side of the road, could belch or fart and, unless he or she wrote it down or told you, no one would know.

This is  not like life in the city.

It's sorta official, I guess. I'm leaving Los Angeles, where I was born, raised and lived most of my life, for the desert. I have no idea, really, what I'm getting into, but I expect it to be quieter, as well as much hotter and colder. Most dramatically, it will be more remote.

The place isn't entirely rustic. There's a hookup to city electricity and water and it's right off an actual paved road. It's tiny, about four hundred square feet, but situated on a 2.5 acre square plot, about 100 yards (meters) on each side. Also, I seem to remember it's on the top of a hill, with the land outside the chain link hurricane fence falling away not too steeply.

Inside there's a room, and it reminded me of a studio apartment (or is it a bachelor?). A tiny kitchen and breakfast nook, a bathroom with one of those plastic tub-shower units, and, well, I think that's about it. I don't remember it all that well, but I'm assuming there's a place to sleep or put a bed somewhere.

Outside there's ... not much if you discount the desert, but there are nice views of the surrounding mountains and, of course, the desert. In fact, the desert is right up close!

One side of the house, where I remember the utilities coming in, is where I expect to do some "construction." I need to check out local building codes etc, but I expect to be able to put up some sort of garage or carport, at least, with some extra storage space. Actually, given how much crap I have, I'll need to do that quickly.

The area around the house is all fenced in, which will be good for my dog. I'm not sure if I'll put in some sort of dog door so he can come and go as he pleases since I have no idea what desert critters may choose to come in when I'm not looking (or even when I am!).

I may have to use some dish for television and probably some satellite thing for Internet, but the people renting the place had something and if they did, so can I.

As I pointed out,my cabin is over three times larger than Ted Kaczynski's, something in which I'm sure to take continuing pride.

It's about 100 miles to Los Angeles and for those familiar with the area, it's just down the 10 freeway. Just pretend you're going to Palm Springs and hang a left at the wind generator farm, just after the Morongo Indian Casino.

So, I have a new blog which is pretty the same as my old one.

With the rate everything is crumbling around me, it's only a matter of time before my half-dozen domain evaporates. That's okay, it was never popular and hasn't served any real purpose for the past few years, anyway. It was, I guess, just a vanity thing.

I moved my old blog over to this Blogger address to make sure that my immortal words of wisdom could be found until Google decides to shut this feature off. In the meantime, maybe it will be quicker for them to search if they care to and have a spare robot.

This particular entry is just to introduce my new site. I don't have any more wisdom to impart or anything particularly witty to say, but maybe writing offline and uploading when I can will entice me into using up some of Google's generous disk space offer and might even get me to update more frequently.

I can hardly update less often. I'm not convinced what I'm thinking about things is any more interesting than it used to be and there's still much more that I feel I shouldn't say than I should, but at least I have a new spot to post entries when the mood strikes.

And, it seems to be okay for just posting ramblings.

My Half-Dozen.net site is still up and running (at least for the time being), but I'm too scared to actually look to see when it will die. Feel free to steal any of the wonderful pictures of me that are there and there's still time to make a $20 donation to a worthy cause (me) to keep my phone working even if you can't afford the $10,000 gift to lower your taxable income. Yeah, it will look as if you're paying for editing services, but I won't tell.

I'm a big fan of nice, round numbers and order, but that puts me at odds with the part of the universe that isn't made up of humans, which is to say most of it.

Today is New Years day in most of the world. This is a day heavily laden with moment and meaning, but I'm not sure exactly why it's today. It's not that I object to January being the first month, but it feels pretty arbitrary to have the new year begin right now.

People, being what we are, have probably always counted days. Well, they're pretty noticeable, what with the sun rising and each one separated from the rest with all that night time and cooler temperatures. And, I suspect that it didn't take us too long to notice that days get longer or shorter, that leaves change into beautiful colors before falling off some of the trees, and that snow shows up. Early humans, I'm thinking, when they weren't busy trying just to survive, must have noticed these things and ended up thinking in terms of years.

Days are easy to figure out, years are pretty obvious, but weeks are entirely made up.

The thing is, though, that January first isn't anything special. If we're not going to say a year begins with something sensible, like being the shortest one, the longest one, or one of the two that have equal daylight and night time, we're pretty much down to just picking one at random and saying “It starts now.”

I could even accept a year beginning on some momentous, special day, even something as meager as the birthday of the guy who came up with this silly calendar with its leap years and weird structure. Sadly, though, as near as I can figure out, January first simply is, and that's all there is to it.

The thing is, no matter how much I may want it, one year isn't a nice round number of days that we can sensibly divide up. We have to take the world for what it is and attempt to make it fit some ideal we have, and what we have now just barely works. There are people trying to come up with better calendars with leap weeks every several years instead of leap days every fourth, but I'm afraid even that Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar still has the year starting on a day we wouldn't look twice at if it weren't just for some lucky placement.

Food aside, just about everyone complains about the Chinese.

I recently watched a documentary, Last Train Home, that made me regret some of the things I've felt, thought, and maybe even written about my take on the Chinese.

Conservatives simply hate the Chinese because, well, they're communists. Many liberals have trouble with them because of human rights issues, and I think Americans all over the political spectrum are upset about financial things. True, a lot of that is just hysteria and it's also true that buying US debt is simply us acting as their bank, but we all got excited about Japanese investment a couple decades ago and human nature hasn't changed at all since then.

I avoid buying some Chinese goods some times simply because I often want to use something like a screwdriver more than once. If it's something I expect to use once and throw away, like paper towels or eyeglasses with plastic lenses that are going to become less useful every time I use them, I often go with cheap.

This upsets people who think whenever I do that I'm supporting a slave state. While this may be true, it's more the government of China than its people that I think most have trouble with. That documentary, Last Train Home, changed my thinking about the people.

Dramatically.

I don't know what Lixin Fan wanted to do when he made his film. I rarely about things like that choosing, instead, to let the work speak to me for itself. He may have wanted to show us how the people suffer or it may have just been to show us the largest human migration on the planet.

What I got out of it was a deep appreciation for how the people in China struggle to survive and better themselves, things I cannot fault them for. Peasants living on farms have no money and (not surprisingly) want to get things for themselves and their families. To get any money at all, they have to move to cities, work in sweatshops that allow those with little or no education to assemble things, and live in horrifying conditions.

This film, by the way, shows us one such family.

After making the heartbreaking choice to leave their children, mom and dad scrape out a dismal life only to return, as most Chinese do, home to celebrate Chinese New Year. In a touching scene, they give their teenage daughter the present of a phone, and I tear up even now just thinking about it.

It's easy for us in America to take our way of life for granted. Seeing how the other 95% of the world lives is always humbling, especially since those of us who were born here had nothing to do with it.

I can no longer turn my nose up at Chinese goods, not knowing that someone, somewhere in China needs a job so they can pack their meager goods in a cardbox suitcase to travel and hope to live as well as I do.

My heart isn't stone.