I'd recommend saving often as well, mainly because the memory leakage is appalling. The acronym CTD is universally understood as "crash to desktop" (without any explanation.)
Also, at the very least, get Morrowind Enhanced executable and Journal Enhanced. Buy a quill and inkpot from Arrille, and make all the notes you need. Preferrably in character.
If you want a fortress teleportal ring, you can use mine.
Read the book on top of it. It contains hints as to how it can be used.
http://www.breakthinktank.com/cgi-bin/btt.pl?morrowind/fortressring
There's also Necessities of Morrowind, which requires you to sleep, eat lunch and dinner, and drink. Better still, it allows you to rent rooms for up to a month at a time and cook your own meals, independent of Alchemy skill.
Also, the Less Generic NPC mods are fun. At the very least, install the Pelagiad and Seyda Neen ones and hear about Erene Llenim's glory days or Madres Navur's colourful visions (and guess what the references are to!) Quests included. This is having a major effect on the design of a village I'm working on.
http://lgnpc.sabregirl.com/
Also I prefer Motoki's Better Heads since they don't shave years off old Caius.
Anyway, if you prefer housing, either wait for me to finish Varlninya or get either "Houses and Apartments" or "The Latest, Greatest Housing Mod Gold". Infinity Warehouse rocked.
LGHMG has a quest associated with its Vivec property, but that's pretty darn expensive, unless you do lots of Dwemer delving. H&A are more modest places that you can buy from a place in the Hlaalu canton. These mods conflict WRT Caldera.
Or, if you're Evil, download Shannon's HellHouse-X. My only beefs are that the slaves in the Crypt of Necrosis won't follow you, Arrille has a teleport amulet right at the start, and the use of Secret Masters' alchemy gear. There's an old thread on TheLys about potential HH quests, but I think Shannon (and modeller Barabus) are busy with a monster city. I reckon it looks alright.
http://www.thelys.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1129
And me? I got most of my MW crap from TheLys. Including Lilarcor.