we keep our microwave in the basement. have for years. and the years before that, we didn't have one. when company is over and they want to heat up their coffee or warm a plate of food, we take their morsel, disappear into the basement and return with a piping hot rendition of said item. you might think we would have to explain this a lot, but most of the people we hang out with surpass this paltry idiosyncrasy tenfold and don't think anything of it: "oh the nuke-box is in the basement, sure, where else would it be?"

allow me to proffer the following as evidence. some couple friends of ours tv lives on one of those black, wheeled audio visual carts in the garage ... a disconnected garage in at a home located in the country. as a rule they don't watch tv. as a helper to this rule, that can't keep the tube in the house, lest they may break this mandate. but when company stays with them, in comes the cart with the shiny picture box. here is where you get to envision my grown and portly friend pushing an a.v. cart across a grassy and bumpy backyard into the home so said visitors don't think them foolish or a tad on the eccentric side.

a situational side-effect of this routine comes from the effort required to return the cart to it's spiderwebby home all the way on the other side of the lawn. in getting it in, there is incentive, company and all. in getting it out all there is effort, and work and a hundred pound pain in the ass on wheels. given this, sometimes the tv cart out-endures the company. this is bad. this is very bad. because as you can imagine, there's a good reason the cart lives next to the family automobile.

i received the following email in regard to a sign left by my friend's wife, taped to the tv during its latest tour in their home: given my friends unwillingness to even check the actual writing on the sign for the above email, i'm thinking they will be watching the next super bowl wherever the tv now rests.