I met Brian in the middle of a snow storm. I was just getting ready to push my blue plastic shovel into a mound of slush in front of my truck, when he, walking toward his orange honda element work truck, turned and asked me if I wanted to borrow his metal shovel, explaining that it might be easier in this snow.

"Well, if you need it, feel free to grab it," he told me pointing to a shovel leaning against his house as he continued to chip ice on the walk in front of the house.

It's a large, three-story Victorian, built in the late 1890s. When Brian's dad, a local contractor, bought it in the 1990s it was all but abandoned: boarded up, the utilities were shut off, and it had white aluminum siding in disrepair. When he was in high school, Brian used to drive his family's tan Ford Taurus station wagon over to the house and load it up and take it to the dump. Over the years he and the old house built a connection.

He could be a farmer with his Carhart overalls, gravely voice, worn sweater, and love of old buildings, coffee, the outdoors, and working and crafting with his hands (he did come close to turning an old plot of land in Dover into his own dream farm once). His passion for research and knowledge and writing about sustainable environments and people had him studying to be a journalist in Oregon.

But there is something magical and fulfilling about the act of finding something that has been discarded and giving it a new use and a second chance. Think: Loyd Khan.

Shortly after graduating from college, Brian moved into an apartment on the top floor of the house on Englewood Ave. His mom was going through some health issues nearby and his father needed help with the business. There was a lot to be done.

In fact, the idea that he should be the one doing, kept nagging at him while he was writing and reporting on the lives of others in Oregon, so when the role of landlord and property manager of the Englewood house eventually fell to him, “I didn’t regret it,” he says, leaning back in his chair draping his arm over the edge. And now he and his brother are property managers of four buildings in the area.

It's a job that keeps him doing, and brings a certain amount of freedom with it. He doesn’t have to wear a tie, and he can take a break for a snowball throwing contest in the middle of the day if he needs to - as he did the other day with Bob the mailman and another neighbor (Bob won, Brian wants a rematch). It also utilizes the creativity his artist mom instilled in her four children.

“You’re always learning something. An oil burner wouldn’t turn on the other night, ... So you learn how to do it and you feel really good…. you feel a little more connected to the building, feel a little more wise as a member of society, it’s cool.

But it also means if there's something wrong with the lights, plumbing, sidewalk, or radiator, one of 40-some tenants of his old Boston buildings will pick up the phone. People can take their frustrations out on whomever answers it.

“I don’t know anyone else who gets yelled at every day.”

How are you not bitter?

"I am bitter" he says with an easy grin.

But if he is bitter, it doesn’t show. He picks up trash around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir where he and his dog Virgil walk often, and he’s a chatty neighbor, recognizing and greeting the people who walk past his yard.

He concedes: “It hasn’t made me permanently bitter or a cynic,” adding, “We had a saying in my family growing up: Don't let them rent a space in your head.”

Virgil is a 3-year-old rescue named after The Band's song. He also loves cuddles from the ladies.