A very good house

(Sung to the tune of It Was a Very Good Year)

When I was thirty-two

I had a very good house

It had hardwood floors, exposed brick walls

and central air

It looked debonair

Too good to be true

When I was thirty two…

Our landlord is selling the best damned house I’ve ever lived in (not counting those in which I lived with my parents). As I write this, a real estate agent is taking people through Big Trouble in Little China, the lovely TV-worthy bottom half of a historic house that I’ve been renting since August 1999. I’m posting these recently-taken photos just to let the record show that yeah, I lived in a swank all mod cons place.

Here’s the first thing you see when you enter the place. The living room, with bits of the dining room visible through a portal in the dividing wall the background. Note the hardwood floors, exposed brick walls and lack of a giant inflatable bottle or other beer advertising paraphernalia.

A couple of geeks I know commented that they’d have decorated the place with server racks and obvious computer gear. This is the housing equivalent of putting a yellow spoiler and a VTEC sticker on a Honda Civic. Despite the fact there are seven computers, two professional programmers with actual computer science degrees and ethernet and WiFi throughout the house, it doesn’t look like an electronic surplus store. Geeks do not have to live in Radio Shack squalor.

Paul relaxes in our incredibly comfy couches while watching Xena vs. Lexx.

Just kidding, the show doesn’t exist. But some of you got aroused for a moment, didn’t you, you sick little monkeys?

This is where I like to “get my read on”.

We are the best-fed bachelors in the neighbourhood, and here’s where the magic happens. At least this is where the magic happens before dinner, hur hur hur!

When company comes for dinner, a dishwasher is a godsend!

The kitchen has a “window” that looks onto the dining room. The dining room table — a Parsons table, for you design fiends — is the first piece of furniture that my parents bought after we moved to Canada in 1974. Note the fully-stocked bar in the background and candles at the ready on the dining table. Yes, ladies, I’m taling to you.

The fireplaces have since been bricked in, but there’s just enough room for a brick brazier containing the Ubiquitous IKEA tealights™. To the left of the fireplace is the music studio, with my old analog 4-track recorder, Paul’s 8-track digital recorder, one of my stereos, my trusty WaveStation synth and a karaoke machine (it’s the silver box at the lower left), which functions as our vocal amp.

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I’m going to miss the place.