4.23.2012

Today We Gather In Praise of Basements

When we started looking for a house last summer, we had relatively few requirements.  We needed a place that didn't have major metal fatigue in the load-bearing members, we had to have a place adequate to our power needs, and we needed a place that wasn't in a neighborhood like a demilitarized zone.*  Besides that, B wanted a yard and a setting not on a major street.  And me? 

I..
Wanted...
A basement.

(wait, let's do it again in haiku):

North Portland real estate
Husband is easy to please
Basements are the shit

So here I sit in the basement of the KFR compound.  We friggin' love this place.  We had ruthlessly rejected the concept of a "starter home" from the outset; this was going to be the place we stayed in indefinitely.  Thus, my basement examinations were thorough and painstaking (i.e. "can I put a computer here?  Is there asbestos within accidentally-stumbling-into-it-distance?"  Correct answers: yes, hopefully not.)  I want to be clear: this is not about the gag-me-with-a-spoon man cave concept...we are now setup with a family-friendly movie viewing spot immediately adjacent to my little office setup.  Instead, the basement was fundamentally about having a place to store unsightly objects (storage bins, mostly, as well as me when I'm just not feeling it), a place to hide in and pretend the world outside is just a horrible fever dream, and most importantly, a place to go when it's hot outside.

Now, it just started with real spring weather in Oregon.  There is reason to believe it will eventually be summer pretty soonish.  When that first gnarly heat wave hits, because, my friends, it does indeed get really hot here sometimes, I am not leaving the damned basement for all the silkworms in China.  I am going to park my heat-sensitive skinny ass down on the couch and watch Muppet Show episodes, any of the three Oceans 11 movies, and/or the extended edition Lord of the Rings making-of documentaries repeatedly.  B and Plan C will be there, too, of course, and we will make it a family-hides-from-the-heat-wave good time. 

* Egon made coming up with these criteria easy, obviously.

1 comment:

Ransom said...

Count me in, especially for the LOTR stuff. Er, not that it was ever "Everybody KFR knows hides from the heat of the sun in a basement made stuffy and hot by the presence of everybody KFR knows..."

Also, I very much dig this increased-blogging thing, which I find to be superior to seeing updates on Facebook in much the way the a handwritten letter is better than a text. That's just how they fall on the 'nifty' hierarchy.