Methinks I detect...

Radon??

The strangest thing happened over the weekend while Kelly was plumbing the bathroom downstairs. An unforeseen spillage from the water pipes saturated the floor with water...obviously. Moments later, tiny, furious little bubbles started emanating from various pores in the cement, like vinegar and baking soda fizz. This strange reaction did not cease or slow down, until the floor was dry. Apparently it is not so odd for gasses to eek through the cement in the basement. It is, however, bad if those gasses happen to be Radon. So here's what I know about Radon. There's a lot of blah, blah, blah about ionizing particles and photons and whatnot, but most importantly, radon, as the name would seem to suggest, is radioactive. Ionizing radiation. Swell.

Radon is formed through the radioactive decay of uranium, which incidentally has a half life of 4 billion some odd years. There is a clear link between breathing radon gasses and lung cancer, and the EPA acknowledges that radon exposure is the second most frequent cause of lung cancer, as the gas commonly seeks solace in attics and basements.

Thankfully, Amazon sells about the only radon detector available on the market for a few hundred clams. So we bought us one of those and will have the results in the next couple of days, at which point we can determine whether or not our lungs will shrivel and our offspring shall be born with a few extra appendages. If indeed we have radon in the basement, it is a whole hairy, expensive process to install an exhaust system in and around the house. Faneffingtastic.