Last night I got some shelving assembled in the basement. I also set up the desktop PC on those shelves, plugging the television coaxial cable into the video card -- soon I was flipping channels... on a computer... in the basement... alone.

There was a baseball game on -- the Braves. And they were playing, hey now, the Mets. I slid a steamer trunk to the fore, lowered it onto its side, and sat on it like a sofa. Then I remembered: we have a second refrigerator in the basement... with beer in it. I got one and sat down. This was going well. As the game slowed (as baseball games are wont to do) I opened up a web browser and started looking at websites. At that point I realized that, with the beer, the TV, the Internet and the basement bathroom only a few steps away I never really needed to go upstairs anymore. Ever.

While surfing the web I came across some very interesting political news. I cannot think of a snarky comment that does justice to this development. (Though I was instantly transported back in time -- to those distant Saturday nights watching the WWF on channel 9, with the Grand Wizard and Lou Albano and Chief Jay Strongbow, et al).

Later in the evening I did indeed decide to leave the basement so I could watch the rest of the ballgame from the relative non-obscurity of the sofa. Cookie, up way past his bedtime, came down to join me. He's very interested in baseball these days. At one point he said, "Daddy, can you do this?"

He held out his hand, fingers extended except for the thumb and ringfinger which were folded down and touching. The shocker. No, kid, not very often. Not these days.