Don t go in the basement full#

What kept me from doing it was that the cable man was supposed to be coming to connect us to the rest of the world, so I went up in case he got there early. Those dips are supposed to be good for you. For one wild, crazy moment, I entertained the idea of just doing like the polar bear club does and cannonballing in anyway, letting my body adjust to the temperature. I couldnвЂ™t understand how it wasnвЂ™t frozen solid, IвЂ™ve never seen anything that cold that could remain liquid except for nitrogen. When I dipped my toes in, the water was ice cold. I think of a pool and I immediately think of the echoing yells and splashes of children, but generally thatвЂ™s because the ceilings are so high and itвЂ™s set in a big roomвЂ¦right? It sounded like I was standing in an empty museum gallery when I was in a fairly tight space several floors underground. It seemed like there should be less of an echo in a room with such a low ceiling and close, windowless walls with only a door at each end. I was humming, like I do when IвЂ™m by myself, and I noticed immediately that the way sound was working was all wrong. Carson was at an interview, so I grabbed my suit and went down to doggy paddle around and kill time. The first time that I went down there, I was alone. If the building manager hadnвЂ™t shown it to us in the first place, I would have thought it was a collective delusion that Carson and I were hallucinating jointly. And yet, in all the time that Carson and I lived there, we never saw another person in there at all.

Don t go in the basement full#

Puget Lofts was by no means full вЂ“I assume the rich people who would live in such a swanky place would want to be closer to downtown. HereвЂ™s the thing, though: no one was ever down there. Cheap rent and a swimming pool вЂ“ I couldnвЂ™t believe our luck, even with the commute. I wanted to get myself back into swimming shape.Д¬arson (my boyfriend) and I signed the papers. Maybe it was just that I had dealt with so much upheaval and change since we graduated, but the nostalgia was strong, and I knew I wanted to be here. When I smelled that tart chlorine odor and felt the slick tile beneath my feet, it took me back to high school, when I was on the swim team. That weight room did exist in the basement, but so did a large, beautiful blue rectangle of pool вЂ“ far from Olympic sized, but big enough that I was impressed to find it there. When the building manager took us on a tour and hit the вЂњBвЂќ button for basement, saying she wanted to show us the fitness center, I expected her to wave us into an unfinished room full of weight machines and a sweaty treadmill. ItвЂ™s a forty minute bus ride into downtown Seattle from the luxury apartments, but we have a great view of Mount Rainier and we even have a hiking trail.ДЇor me, though, the pool was a huge selling point. Thing is, itвЂ™s kind of way out in the middle of nowhere. So maybe we would have taken it to begin with. ItвЂ™s a really nice building, and weвЂ™ve made so little money (recent college grads in the big city) that we qualified to have our rent subsidized and lowered substantially. My boyfriend and I decided to live in the Puget Lofts because of the pool.