They evicted the raccoons!

N'Gai stopped through to see me yesterday. He bought a cargo van last month. Says he's putting together plans to launch a magazine this summer targeting black college students around the state.

Ohmigod, he cut his dreads off! They're totally gone. Completely. He looks just like he did when I first met him, back before he first moved into the Pink House.

I also had an encounter earlier this week with the maintenance guy who works with Jim Lilley, the property manager hired by Sylvia Chi to care for the Pink House. He walked into the store, checked it all out, got a membership, rented some movies, and was running his mouth to me the whole while. Very talkative character.

He told me all about how they renovated the place after Jay and the remains of our crew moved out. They put in a new heat pump, ran power lines from the garage to the back of the house and installed a washer/dryer unit in the kitchen closets, put in a dishwasher, replaced the refrigerator and range, cleaned out the entire basement, put in fluorescent lighting down there, redid both bathrooms, and redid all the heating ducts.

And explained what the problem was with the fucking heat. All the ducts that led up from the furnace had interior valves that were closed. I couldn't believe it. I lived for three years in a house with fucked up heat. Oh, and they evicted the raccoons who used to live in the chimney.

Then he rented She-Devils On Wheels, told me how it reminded him of growing up as one of the leaders of a biker gang in Miami in the early seventies, and started spinning tales about drunken biker parties from back in the day. Right on!