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Thank God for my many fans, three of whom emailed me last week to ask, "Hey stupid, where's my GRACK!?"

Well, guess what? This is it! What's more, there'll be another column posted in less than 48 hours, meaning that I will once again be up to speed and will have actually done the work I've already billed the boss for anyway. In the following paragraphs, I hope to get this relocation lunacy out of my system and leave room for topics of more earthshaking importance, like whether or not your next Mac mouse will have a cord and how come no one is surprised the Heimatsversicherungsdienst said Windows just might kill us all. So: why is this sucker showing up late Saturday night instead of last Monday?

Let's just say that the last time I moved to a different residence entirely on my own (without the help of She Who Does Most of the Work), I was so much younger it ain't funny. Back then, all I had to do was throw the dirty clothes in the back seat, toss the guitar in the trunk, and whistle for the dog. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MEANTIME??? I still don't really understand, and don't you try to, but it really sucks. Yeah sure, "possessions," but what I can't get my brain around is why they matter so much I actually have to take care of them.

Take those little plastic things that slip over the top of a door and make a hook you can hang your bathrobe on. I mean, the one I have cost 59 cents, maybe. Did I have to pack it? And how come I need more than one plate, answer me that! I did do my bit for cutting back by leaving a drier-load of clothes at the old apartment, or at least I thought I had. When "Maya" returned my anxious call, she said there wasn't anything in the machine. Oh, come on ... If they're not there, where are they?! I'll bet she'd already converted my favorite faded Levis into rags. There is no justice in this world, no, not one bit.

In the end I had to hurry up and started tossing anything that didn't move into whatever boxes I had handy. That means I can't find anything, of course. But then again, maybe I don't want to. I'm sure you know the feeling. If our physical lives were like hard drives, all we'd have to do is yell "RE-FORMAT!" and the deed would be done. No muss, no fuss, no bother, no undo. Ah, the very bearable lightness of nothing left to lose.

So what, I did it. I had the movers take the heavy crap and hauled the rest myself. I got so tired of crawling into the back of my truck to pull out boxes that I just quit, on strike against myself. It's been three days now: a mess o' kitchen stuff and God knows what else is still back there, hah! I may never take it out, whatever the hell it is. There's something to be said for ballast, you know, and increased winter traction.

At least I figured out how to move in, something I never managed gracefully before. As you can see from the picture of my "office" somewhere on this page, I basically cleared out one room where I could feel halfway sane and crammed the bulk of the unopened boxes into places like the bedroom and the kitchen, where I can trip over them in the dark. It's really dim here, too, because there isn't a single overhead light or wall switch, the reason being that I've moved into the sort of house most of you have never stepped inside: a hundred-year-old adobe dug into the side of a hill.

Yes, I've mentioned that before, not by way of bragging but because I hoped the gods might intercede before I moved into a place where all the floors are made of mud. Yes, mud. These old Southwestern houses have no foundation whatsoever and certainly no crawl space. In the old days, you just brushed away the tumbleweeds and laid your adobe bricks down in a line. This is not a joke. Everything was eyeballed, mud being forgiving in that way, and somehow or other you built yourself a shelter. The floors of houses like these are rock-hard adobe mud, which in the best of circumstances can be difficult to distinguish from finished concrete at a glance. Two looks will do it, however, and in this case the embedded straw and wavy surface texture give it right away. It's all covered with carpeting here, though many such floors are not.

There isn't a right angle or plumb wall in the joint, I swear. The window frames, all different sizes, sag every which way but somehow hold the glass. It took me half a day to get my computer table level, and my chair still slides down under it all the time. Just imagine: if you've built your house on the side of a hill, "leveled" the ground by eyeballing it, then spread thick wet mud right on top of the ground to make a floor, some of that is going to run downhill before it dries. The good part is, it's SOLID. There isn't a creaking floorboard or any boards at all, in fact. It's also quiet and cool inside.

So that's what I did and where I am, high on a ridge overlooking the town, with coyote howls instead of sirens. The Internet's a little slower here, (curses!), but it's quiet and there are mountains all around. All in all, this is a great place to crank out Applelinks and get a taste of the real (old) New Mexico before it's all replaced with third-hand doublewides with tires on the roofs.

If anything, my new location is even more "Taos" than the old one. This morning I heard a knock and opened the door to greet a tanned & bearded gent my age wearing a straw hat, Ecuadoran shirt, purple sweatpants, and sandals. This was my neighbor one house over, a potter, there to welcome me to the 'hood. The couple who live next door have a dog named "Washtay," Lakota (Sioux) for either "good dog" or "hello" or maybe both. I mentioned this to the executive director of the writers group I'm working for this summer and she said, "I'm not sure. It's been ages since I've spoken any Lakota." Of course, it's always been strange here -- when we first showed up in town, my wife couldn't get a haircut from the recommended person because the hairdresser was on a meditation retreat in Nepal ...

(Under the circumstances, moving to a sagging heap of sun-dried mud and liking it doesn't even HAVE to make sense, does it?)

One down, one to go.

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr invites your emails.

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(Beautiful land for sale here: "What It Is About El Rito,")

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