Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 84 - IndiDANa Jones

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

In this episode Soren talks about a Scary dream he had, and Dan survives a harrowing encounter in a park.  As always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks to Raycon!.  Go To buyraycon.com/qq for 15% off your entire Raycon order. And thanks to Hawthorne. Take your quiz and get 10% off your first purchase with code QQ:  hawthorne.co.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the only show that isn't afraid to ask pre-planned softball questions so that there isn't a lot of dead air. Sorry, a lot more dead air. I'm one half of that podcast, a TV writer, the reigning champion of bubble pop on the AARP website, and a man who climbs into his attic every few months just to touch old termite droppings and worry. Soren Bui.

And now, for the moment you've all been waiting for the other better half of this podcast bringing the big energy and the fall down funny intro jokes daniel o'brien daniel say hello touching termite dropping droppings huh yeah let me sit with that for a little okay yeah i think that's pretty sad i think that's a sad why are there because they're they're old why don't you just get rid of them you don't know you never know if they're old so it's constantly falling with termites it's constantly falling out of the wood especially like in attics and stuff if anybody you ever had a termite infestation in the house in its entire existence, then there'll still be some up there.

So even when it's falling out, new stuff is falling out. It doesn't necessarily mean you have new termites, but every house has had termites at some point in its existence. So I just go up there and I try to figure out if I've got them and there's no real good way to tell. Are you more, so quick question. Are you, what'll send you in to a spiral faster? And I ask this knowing your history.

Sites, proof of bedbugs or proof of termites? Oh, bedbugs for sure. Oh yeah, okay. Bedbugs is terrifying. That's, because that means you gotta like up, that's a, there's a terrifying. Because that means you got to like up. There's a ticking clock on that. And with termites, it's like everybody gets them eventually. You can tent, you can do spot treatment.

There's easy, you don't have to remove all of your furniture from the house. Open up all of your outlets and either bake the house or do some other treatment like you would with bedbugs. Bedbugs are a nightmare. I've never had either. As far as I know, I didn't have termites in the house growing up. Or if we did, I was kept in the dark on that. And I've never had bedbugs knock on wood.

I'm sure I do. It seems like an absolute nightmare. My thing is still ants i'm still yeah if i this this house i was staying in new jersey for a while towards the end of my stay there because it was turning from winter to spring uh the ants start to come into the house and i was on like uh a ground floor that that was also like like vaguely basement floor around a corner um so like prime ant territory and it's not it was never as bad as it got in in la where ants are terrible but it's still like i saw a few and alerted everyone i i knew it was like there there are more ants again and all my friends were

like yeah it's the time of year it's time you're like you're gonna get ants are gonna are gonna show up it's it's what what happens and i just thought this is not the audience for my madness these people aren't gonna enable me don't they don't recognize the ant threat yeah uh we we had bed bugs in our apartment like 10 years ago something like that and it was so awful and you're in denial for a lot of it. And if it would have just been me, it would have gone on forever because I don't get little bites or anything like that. I don't itch.

I don't have any sort of reaction to them. So I would have been living with bedbugs forever and not even known I had them. But you do see signs of them around your house. You see like down the baseboards or on your sheets. Little smears. It's awful. It's awful. We had to move all of our

stuff into a kitchen. All of our furniture into a kitchen. Open up all the outlets. Open up everything on the house that was possible. And they came and sprayed and then they baked the house. Well, apartment. Don't get them. No, I won't.

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should we get into the show where we ask each other questions? Nah, let's do other stuff. Let's do some fun other things. Okay. I'm sorry. I have a guess for the birthday present that you were going to give me in 2017. Okay. If you're right, what's it going to do?

I mean, are you still going to be excited when you get it? Do you still want it? Well, I don't know if I have an exact guess. Can I say a couple of things that will drive our audience crazy because it will only infuriate them? Yes, please. Because it's just adding more mystery.

Sure. The person that you commissioned to make this thing. Do I know this person? Yes, you're aware of them. Okay. Did this person... Has this person recently contacted you regarding a question that I asked this person?

No. Oh, okay. Man. I really, so. I put together a whole like wall of string connecting ideas. Because I asked a mutual friend of ours to make a custom thing for me. That I was going to give as a fun like party gift. To a bunch of the people that I grew up with.

Like a shared present that we would all have. I was like oh this will be fun. It will be very specific to our group. And like off the top of my. I didn't have a price in mind for what this thing was. But it was like just a cute little thing. That my friends would get a real kick out of. And I reached out to this person. And I was like make me this thing. I'll was like just a cute little thing that my friends would get a real kick out of and i reached out to this person and i was like make me this thing i'll tell you all

all the details for how i want you to make it can you do that and he said yes for 2800 dollars and i was like i think that is too much money to spend on a fun gift for a friend i also think and here's where like my my brain went immediately because i never stopped thinking that that that i'm the main character i thought the thing that i want to get is very similar to the thing that soren is getting me and so this person after i contacted them was like soren Soren, I think Daniel's onto us. He wants a similar present. What do I do? And you came up with the number $2,800 because that is just about the exact right amount that will scare me off doing this thing because it worked. Even if it was like half that, is still expensive i would like spend fourteen hundred

dollars on a gift for my friends and if they were like how much did you spend i'd be like ah nothing i'll never tell but if it was twenty eight dollar twenty eight hundred dollars they'd be like oh this is this is fun i'd be like yeah it was twenty eight fucking hundred dollars i spent almost three thousand dollars on all of you yeah and then they'd be mad at me and they'd be right to be mad at me yeah it, it turns out that custom commissions of anything are pretty expensive. Yeah. Oh, I'm trying to get custom furniture. Maybe I should go to you if you would be cheaper.

Is this serious? Yeah, this is serious. I'm trying to, I want two, two, Jesus Christ, why didn't I go to you first? It's two 20-inch wide bookcases with four shelves, and they're connected with, you're going to be mad at me, plumbing. Gas pipe. Yeah. Gas pipe.

That's the one. The stuff that you make. Right. You want the black piping, right? Yep. Do you want it painted black right yep do you want it painted black or do you just want it to look industrial and like it's natural i want to look industrial gunmetal okay yeah yeah i mean i could i could make that for you um all right let i i want to

ask one more question and uh you can tell me the answer or not and i won't i won't say anything afterwards i'll just like keep my mouth shut so you won't know if uh you're even within the right ballpark can you say the name of the person you're asking to customize something for you yes do you want me to say the name of the person randall this is great it was it's not randall this is so good i really i was so excited a because i thought i solved the mystery and uh no just that i was just excited because i thought i solved the mystery because i thought why would it be 2800 and i really i i saw the whole scene of him reaching out to you and being like he's on to a sword what do i do like, tell him $2,800. Like I saw you rubbing your hands together

and knowing the exact amount of money that would be too much. The right amount to send me away. Ruining something for you so that I could give you this gift in 2027 or whenever you fucking get it. Yes, correct. No, that's not what's happening.

Although, God, that's a perfect guess because Radal is somebody who I think would do something really cool and somebody who would take years to do it. No, that's not what's happening. Although, God, that's a perfect guess because Radal is somebody who I think would do something really cool and somebody who would take years to do it. Absolutely. And no matter what I said previously,

he's worth every penny. I'm not going to spend $2,800. That's absurd. But go to him for all of your custom needs. He's great and a good guy. He's made some really cool things for me in the past. He made me an action figure that I just adore. He made me, for a birthday once,

he gave me like a, what's it called when somebody's possessed? Exorcism, like a little box full of exorcism stuff. That's like all custom made and very cool and neat. He's great. Yeah, great guy, fantastic artist. Apparently, I forget where he's from, but apparently they don't have buddy prices.

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Yeah, you know, these are great because I don't have to do anything and you just go. The comment is more of a comment. Yeah, you know, these are great because I don't have to do anything and you just go. The comment is more of a story. So I was recently, I took Jackson, my dog, on a nature walk in Williamsburg, Virginia. It was like an hour, not an hour, like a mile loop in nature. And I took him off the leash. He's very well trained.

I don't know why I'm explaining myself to people who are going to complain in the comments of this. I'm not listening to you. I took him off the leash because it's what I did. And we're wandering around in the woods. And I had to pee. So I went to go pee on a tree. And I took a while to find the right tree. And then I was trying to maneuver myself around what's the what's the best

spot on this tree so that if anyone is coming from any direction i'm i'm i have the best shot at protection and not and and not ruining anyone's day and uh all that is to say that i was just like very dumbly shuffling around this tree for a while with Jackson a few feet away. We're both off the trail and he's off the leash again. And my mind is very focused on finding a comfortable spot to pee. And then I see a three foot long black snake slither away in the leaves and and and listeners i did not handle it well i did a little i did a little yelp and i i turned and yelled to jackson but i didn't i didn't turn and yell to him like get out of here there's a snake you i'm protecting you as as you expect me to do i turned to him like a peer and i was like jackson what do we do and he didn't notice the snake which is good because he would have freaked like me and uh i

ran the two of us back to the actual trail part of the trail uh not that i needed to go anywhere because the snake was clearly the adult in the situation. Who was like, I'm just going to get out of here. And I clutched Jackson on the trail and laughed for a while. But was really disappointed in how my instincts went in that situation. Because it could have gone real bad. The snake could have bit me. The snake could have bit Jackson. And I was not the reason i talked about finding taking so much time to find a preferable spot on the tree is i really want to drive the point home that i'm i'm shuffling aimlessly and making sudden

and erratic movements i'm really just like like darting around this tree quickly in a scary and unpredictable manner. I could have very easily startled a snake and the snake could have reacted as his nature intended him to do. I was very lucky that the snake was like, this guy's going through something. I'm out of here because I was not looking for snakes. I was not prepared to handle a snake and you know, it's a mile loop. So, so no one was going to die or anything. I could scream or I could, if one of us got bit, travel in one direction or the other. Black snakes aren't horribly poisonous or anything like that. But these are things that I comfort myself with after the fact.

I didn't do this kind of safety math when I saw the snake. I saw the snake and asked my dog for help. And I was very disappointed because instincts are something that I really rely on not having to train for. I've always been pleasantly surprised by my instincts in the past when when a car ran a light and hit me i my brain turned off and i i jumped in the air and like absorbed the hit in the best possible place that you're supposed to absorb a hit when a car hits you and i was like oh good i'm glad like whatever part of my brain that's in charge of that took over it it seems like that guy's really on the

ball and then this snake shit happened and and it was just me at the wheel i mean it could have been worse you could have just forgot you had a dog in that moment and ran away which i think leaving the dog yeah just like okay just you the self-preservation part of you in fight or flight just forgets that you even have something else that you're responsible for and you ran you didn't do that you grabbed your dog i think that that's and stood there i i grabbed him and stood there got him off the ground away from the snake i think that that's heroic dan i think i think the snake was like i think the snake was kind of on its way at that point okay i've looked it up by the way there's only two species of all black snake in virginia uh and one is the northern black racer and the other one is the eastern rat

snake they both look very menacing to your credit neither one is venomous yeah it's it just it it really sucks to to to see what i am in the moment to learn that that i asked my dog what do we do and like i meant it that's what happens when the pure animal instincts kick in i turn and i recognize the real alpha. And I'm like, boss, what's next? I don't, I mean, you were collaborating. You were giving him some input on the situation as well. You weren't trying to take over. You got your dog to safety first. And then you said, well, now what do we do? I don't know, Dan. I think you're,'re i wouldn't i don't think you're a coward in this circumstance i don't think i'm a coward either i just think that like i'm not the guy you

want leading your band when the when the snakes come out when it's apocalypse times or no we're not yeah let's not even wait for the apocalypse normal nature you don't want me in charge in the woods. Okay. I had a very similar experience. All right. Where we were hiking in Colorado and we were hiking at like 7,000 feet. There are no rattlesnakes that high, but I've hiked in LA before and encountered rattlesnakes. And I was with my brother and his wife and my wife. And then at the time, each one of us had a child. And I was with my brother and his wife and my wife.

And then at the time, each one of us had a child. And I saw something that looked like a rattlesnake crossing the path. And I said, freeze out loud. And everyone did. No one was like, what? Everyone stopped. And it turned out to be just like a bull snake. But we just let this thing pass. And it was was huge and it was very scary looking at the time and i was so impressed that everyone was just like willing to take orders like that even the kids i said freeze and everyone was

like yeah okay what's up man and it was like i'd heard freeze because that's what i did in the moment stood there and hoped the snake decided that i was a waste of time um so is your question have i however i reacted poorly in the heat of the moment like yeah or just been disappointed or surprised by um your instincts, the part of your brain that you can't control, that you haven't trained for. Yes. So I do this thing occasionally, maybe like once every other month, where I'm in a dream and something terrible is happening in the dream. And I need to scream and I can't because I'm so scared. And then I'm like trying to calm myself

down enough to make a noise. And in doing so, I make a noise in real life. I make like a little whimpering noise, or I say something in real life that my wife then hears. I may have talked about this on the podcast before, but it's, um, I was having a dream where something, it was like zombie-ish, something bad was happening. And my son was there and we were walking and he was grabbed into some darkness. And I was so scared that I ran away. And in the dream was so scared that I was shouting and shouting. And in the dream, I was so scared that one of my testicles went up inside of me. And so I was trying to make noise and shout for help from

anybody and running the opposite direction, not like jumping into the darkness to get him. So feeling very cowardly in the dream and screaming and then whimpering out loud and my wife being like are you okay are you okay it's a dream and me waking up in whimpers saying ronan's gone and my testicle is inside of me and then her saying you're dreaming i think that's such a stressful... I mean, like, I imagine that anything related to children is the most terrifying, tragic nightmare to have at all. But adding the testicle thing is also like...

Even in Dreamland, eventually you'll run into other people and they'll be like, where's Ronan? And you're like, he's gone. But there's this other pressing matter that I think we might be able to reverse. The Ronan thing, we got to move past that. I'm focused on this right now. I have another problem that I want to bring up. And like, once we fix that, then I'll be able to think straight.

And we can get back to this Ronan issue. We'll circle back. The nice thing is that when you're cowardly in your dreams, generally, they stay there. The cowardice stays there. But in my particular circumstance, it doesn't always. I say things out loud, and then now it exists in the world too. And I don't get to have that just like privacy of, okay, well, that was just a dream. It's fine. I was awful in the dream, but it's okay. No, I mean, all this is said out loud now. And so then I have to explain to my wife what the dream was. I had to tell her what I did.

And she goes, and you ran away? Oh, wow. Yeah. I thought she would give you the benefit of the doubt and just be like, well, yeah, you're... A dream is the only place where you would run and and leave him that that that feeling has to live somewhere and it lives in a fantasy land but she is interrogating you assuming that this is uh a trial run for how you would actually behave if if your son was swallowed by darkness yeah it kind of felt like that it feels like dreams do that dreams are like

oh you know what you're not prepared for is this we should we better work on that and they'll just like give you a thing for you and like let's see how you deal with this scenario and uh and when you see how you actually would in the dream it's like there's a lot of humiliation that goes along with that because you don't generally handle things very well in the dream no i'm not a hero in my dreams no i i am am often crashing a car and even if i and like i i have frequent dreams of of uh a lot of people have these where you're like on a road that gets uh steeper or more narrow or twistier just some way where you're you're driving a car and you're not completely in control of the car and you're just like doing your best. It's like, you know, I'm creative all day. So like when I'm sleeping, my brain's not going to like

really reach for metaphors. It's going to be like, this is a stress dream, you idiot. This is a stress dream about control. Ta-da. Look, a there's a dragon in it now does it feel more like a dream all right good uh so i have a lot of those dreams and like either the car comes very close to crashing or it doesn't and i am maintaining it but there are other passengers in the car criticizing how i'm not maintaining it well enough. And that's the most frustrating dream to have, where it was like, at least if I'd crash it, I could feel what crashing a car is like, but now I'm just getting like nagged by strangers.

I wonder what that's all about. You have other people who are there telling you how bad you're doing, even though you know you're doing badly? Yes. That's rough, man. Sorry. Hawthorne is a premium tailored personal care brand that's making it easy for guys to feel

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Yeah. Quick question. Go. You and I aren't what you would call weed smokers. Absolutely not. That's not really our bag. I want to tell you a quick story, though. Okay.

And I want to tell you if this is, I want you to tell me this is uh cool or if this is really just sort of sad um all right uh when i finished my breaking my last episode of our show uh i i do this thing where whoever the ep was the executive producer who helped break the story i'll get them a little something like i'll get them some whiskey or something like that just to say thank you for ushering the story through and helping me um and i did that and i have somebody who i work with who uh enjoys uh marijuana and so i was like ah i know that i can get that now because i live in california i'll go to med men and pick something out nice and i did that and in picking out this stuff. MedMen is a chain of legal marijuana stores in Los Angeles. Yeah, it's a cannabis dispensary that looks like an iTunes. I mean, an Apple store.

It's like everything's in a museum. There's glass cases of gummies everywhere. And you get to point to what you want and they collect it for you. So they have this drink called can which is uh it like a i don't know a seltzer that's infused with cannabis and oh it's can because cannabis right geez all right this is like a like a brief sidebar tangent but one of the main reasons i don't think i could ever be a weed person is their from jump insufferably into their stupid cutesy fucking names it's so it's so lame it's so embarrassing to hear anyone list off product

names it's just disgusting it must have just eaten them up inside that they couldn't call it a bud just like drove them crazy uh so there's a drink called can. I bought this stuff for him and I was like, what's the, there's like a singular cans to that. And here's, if you want to know the taller ones, Dan,

the tall cans, do you want to get, take a guess at what they're called? Not tall boys. Hi boys. Oh, eat my fucking ass losers. Jesus. Oh, eat my fucking ass, losers. Jesus.

So I can't believe we put nerds in charge of drugs. That sucks. That's so dumb. I was like, well, how are those? And the one was like, I haven't actually tried them yet. I was thinking about like saving one for a day where I don't have work the next day. And I was like, I don't know what that means. And I bought one impulsively. I bought this tall boy of a cannabis drink. And I was- For you?

Yeah, for me. And I was like- You're the tall boy in the thing. I was like, at some point, I'm just going to have a day and I'm going to drink this. And then I waited and waited and waited. And I knew that it was in the back of my pantry. I wasn't really thinking about it much, but then all of a sudden a day arrived that like really presented itself as you've got nothing to do today. Your son is at school. Your, uh, your daughter's with a nanny. Like you have, you don't have the responsibilities. You're not working today. What if you just went and drank it somewhere? And so I don't have a lot of places I can go to go drink it. Like I can't drink that in a park, I don't think.

I don't know. And so I went up to the cemetery and- Oh my God. I found a tree under a, I was like this shade under a tree in a section that I'll get to later. And I just sat there up on this hill and drank this thing by myself. Now, I don't even drink alone. As far as alcohol goes, I will drink

it, but I do it in social occasions. I have some in my house that's been there for over a year because of quarantine. There's nobody to drink with. My wife and i just don't do it unless there's a party and so uh i just don't use anything alone and here i am sitting in a cemetery hiding away in a cemetery like a ninth grader trying to hide my drink in my backpack so that nobody sees it and uh chugging this high boy did you can i can i ask did you uh tell your wife hey i'm gonna go and do this this this very strange thing in this very specific place um so if if you can't find me i'm here like did you prep her to let you know like hey i'm gonna i'm gonna do some mind-altering thing no in a second or this is this is 127 hours you're just sneaking out i just all right yeah had my arm gotten pinned up there

i would have had to cut it off yeah uh no i didn't i didn't prep her at all for what i was about to do i just because i had some other errands that i wanted to run too so i was like i got my bike today i'm gonna go do these things i will go up on this hill and then i'll just like let it let it wash over me so i went and sat up there drank this thing and then I'll just like, let it, let it wash over me. So I went and sat up there, drank this thing. And then just like, because I had some time to kill where I was just waiting for this thing to hit me and see what it was like. I started looking around at the graves. Now the way that the graves are in Los Angeles, I'm not sure if this is true everywhere. They're just plaques in the ground. It's not like big tombstones that stick up or like,

you know, not like a mausoleum type stuff or the big marble coffins above the ground this is everything from a distance this just looks like a big rolling grass hill and then as you walk over it you see all the little plaques in the ground so i start kind of just like looking at them because they're there and i realized that i'm in the kids section that i have i'm sorry there's a that's not an organizational structure that i understood cemeteries to have yeah well it is um there's a place where you can uh they will sometimes a cemetery will carve out like you'll see like a little gated area within a cemetery and And a lot of times that's for children. There's also in this particular one, it was a grass plot that wasn't as big as some of the other ones. And so you can fit more plots within that area because they're, I don't know if they're

newborns or what it was. So also the plaques are smaller. So I realized that I'm there and I'm feeling pretty bummed out about that and decides I need to get away from this. And so I left and biked around for a little while. And I don't, I don't recommend it. I don't know. I don't think it was like a, a pleasurable high. I didn't feel like, you know the way you drink at a work event, and then you leave, and you're like, I could do anything. The world is my oyster. I didn't feel that way. I was just very cloudy.

I couldn't remember the things I had already done. At one point, I was going to go cash a check, and then I started looking for it, and I realized that I'd already done it. I was like, didn't feel great, didn't have any new ideas. There was nothing I gained from the experience and I at the but I left it feeling just very very miserable um I don't really have a question for you regarding that Dan other than am I all right that's yeah I think I think you're right that's that's a uh a fascinating story and I think like even the cemetery thing i think i will uh play up my

reaction on the podcast when you tell me that and say things like jesus but i understand there's like a room there's a romantic beauty and certainly a peacefulness to cemeteries and there's like a connection to a larger world doing that so i I don't actually think that's a silly or sad or even macabre thing to do. I think that that as a choice makes sense to me. I don't

again, I don't I don't really know what like what Weed Brain does, especially Highboy Brain does. The impulse to read the plaques like what weed brain does, especially high, high boy brain does. Um, the impulse to read the plaques is a strange one to me. I feel like some part of my brain would kick in and be like,

I'm going to, I'm going to stop you from doing that. Cause, cause there's no like, like best case scenario, you're not in the kids section. And that's not great. Also, like they don't separate like, and here's the people that were glad are dead.

There's not one of those. You're not going to stumble onto that in a cemetery. So I would, hopefully my brain would, would, would stop me before I start reading the dates on the little plaques. Yeah. So here's the weird thing about those, the kids dates. I shouldn't say kids. I think it's, I think it's babies, honestly, because weird thing about those, the kids dates, I shouldn't say kids.

I think it's, I think it's babies honestly. Cause it's, they don't put a, uh, this date to this date. There's just a date on there. And then there's like a lot of text of like, uh,

you're with the angels now, like that kind of stuff. And that's what made me realize where I was. But, uh, I, I always think like I'm bigger than that, that even when I'm,

uh, I'm high or, uh, I go on some adventure and they're like, hey, listen, when you're bungee jumping, you're going to want to do this and this and this. I'm like, yeah, but not me. I'm different. I can handle it. And so I think I can hack everything. And saw that and was like this.

I wasn't prepared for that. But it also didn't i mean it didn't didn't haunt me or anything i was just like this is a this was a dumb thing to do yeah i need to leave this is a was a bad idea and then just like it didn't i don't know that it set the pace for everything else but it was just like a shitty high and i yeah don't like i do think there is something and there there's probably a question in here, or we just keep talking about it, but there's something in your initial decision

to, like, I'm going to get myself a new treat. That is very familiar to me. And as a person who does drugs, and I can't remember if we talked about this on the podcast or as a person who does drugs as a person who doesn't do drugs and as a person who doesn't drink anymore i don't i'm looking for like what is a what's a what's an adult treat what's a thing i can do that that is like party time and and there are very limited options i've brainwashed myself into thinking it's running uh which is a nice little trick but really i certainly i get that impulse

of like i handed in a script a couple weeks ago right before we recorded and i thought okay i did this thing and now and and and now someone should have should have made a new movie for me to watch. Yeah. Because I deserve a nice thing now. And there are very, very few options of just like, I'm going to really treat myself. The gross way that I do it is I'm lactose intolerant. So if I want to give myself a real treat in the moment, then I'm going to make something with a lot of cheese in it. If I have like two subsequent days where I don't have to go anywhere or do anything

or be responsible for work, where I'm allowed to just be near a toilet for 48 hours and it's like look i just handed in a work assignment and i'm making stuffed shells you fucks and that's just that's just what's gonna happen and i know that what i'm doing is poisoning myself but it's not the kind of poison that kills me and uh and i i i know what the consequences are and that's i'm gonna deal with it i've i've i've signed the contract i know what i'm getting into just let me do it let me enjoy 25 minutes of eating cheese and then two days of misery i don't think that's different that much different than like drinking like that's's the plan, right? You're like, I finished something. I deserve a treat.

I'm going to drink and I'm just going to sacrifice tomorrow. Forget it. Like tomorrow's a write-off. So I think that's a pretty normal impulse. And I feel the same thing. My treats generally for myself though are really benign. And they're like, yeah, I know the sandwich shop that I really like. I'm going to drive all the way there. I'm going to get my sandwich. I'm going to get a little Dr. Pepper along with it. I'm going to get chips. It's going

to be great. But I was feeling like I haven't treated myself in like a reckless way in a long time. And that was, there was something so exciting about the prospect of that. And that it was just sitting there right in front of me. Like I could just buy this thing. Some point I'll have a day and it will be my day. And like, that will be so much fun. And it was just such a letdown. That's a bummer. Did you, is your wife finding out about this via this podcast or did you, did you tell her about your weird, sad day? No, I told her about it. Okay. How did that go? your weird sad day no i told her about it okay how did that go she was like okay are you gonna do this again yeah it's so the weird thing about being in a writing job is that you have a hiatus and sometimes you even get towards like the end of your season and you don't have

work every single day during that time now that's not something that like somebody else in your your significant other wants to hear about every single day like i'm not when i tell her i have the day off she's like all right well there's like a thousand things that we need to do with the house are you gonna do those things i'm like oh no it's my day off yeah um and also it's if she's working and i'm like sitting around not doing anything like that doesn't feel very good to her so i was was like, I'm not like, why would I rub it in her face that I'm going to go do this thing right now? I'll just tell her afterwards. And I did. And she still had kind of the same reaction, which was like, there were so many more productive things you could have been doing. And she's right. There was a lot more that could have been doing, but I really tried to

cram everything into that morning so that I was like i'll have a free afternoon yeah and i did and i burned it and it wasn't worth it huh well uh i don't i that can be the end of our show here dan okay yeah is there i wonder if there's if that feels like a downer. If there's anything fun to say. I don't really think so. Trying to think of anything else that I've done. No. The wagon.

The wagon's it. Okay. Well, I think we can wrap up the show here okay um uh great talking to you as always no no no i hold on a second there's one more little there's like some logistic stuff we have to do we do these things where i i say like uh where you can find us on twitter and everything like that um i'm one of those people that my gmail is just, you look at it on my phone, it says 16,000 unopened. And I know that I sent this to myself and then didn't open it so that I'd recognize where it was. So I just, I'm going to need a couple of minutes to find it. In the meantime, maybe you could just fill some time.

Sure. I know that you wintered at the shore over the past month, famously. Three months. The past three months. Okay. And I know you were nervous about making friends and i wanted to give you a chance to talk about any new friendships or relationships or persons that you may have met down there and uh the relationship blossomed and you can

how you intend to like nurture that relationship once you're back in the big city? I made one friend. I mean, he's not even a friend. I am so excited about the way this went because I got to be mysterious for the first time in my life. I'm never mysterious. There's a coffee shop that I went to frequently. They had like an outdoor area and I would get coffee from there every day. And sometimes I would sit down outside and there was another regular and he knew everyone in the whole town. He was a youngish guy, some somewhere in his twenties. And he knew every single person and was always chatting. Like his thing was to come to this coffee shop and chat to everyone. I don't know what else he was supposed to do with his day or, or, or his life, but that's what he did with his time was

chat to everyone and know everyone's stories and like tell other guests the stories from the guests that had already left he was just like the town information hub and i've been there i've been coming to this coffee shop for like two and a half months and uh i was always guy on computer who didn't talk to anyone and minded his business and then one day this guy finally worked up the courage to talk to me he knew my name was daniel because you say your name when you order a drink and they say your name when it's ready and he was like daniel good morning i don't i don't know anything about you and i said that's interesting and i felt so cool saying

that because that's such a weird fucking answer. I wasn't giving him shit. I wasn't going to tell him. I knew that he said that as a way for me to open up and say like, okay, well, yeah, I'm new in town. I'm here for a few months, whatever my story is. But I said, that's interesting because I wanted him to sit with the fact that he just said, I don't know anything about you to a stranger. I want you to think about how weird that is, fella.

And then he did for a while. And then he was like, what are you doing here? And then I was like, I'm a writer. So I did fill him in on my stuff. Like, I didn't want to, I temporarily suspended the social grace. I didn't do what I was supposed to do in that situation because I wanted him to think about his words. And I did that and it felt cool. His name is Brandon. He does something with computers.

I don't know. On Twitter, you can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc or me, Soren Bui at Soren underscore LTD. You can go find our CFO Bacon at Make Me BaconaconPlease on Twitter. That's P-L-S. Or you can follow QuickQuestion at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. We have an email, QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. And you can follow, find, hire our producer, sound engineer, editor Gabe Harder at GabeHarder.com

someday in the future. Do you think it's clear that I said that's interesting in like an intriguing fun way? I didn't say it in a sarcastic way. I'm not a dick in this situation. I mean, I am, but I'm not in like a cool story, bro. I didn't say it like that. I said it in a, in like, I'm kind of an alien kind of way. Did that come across, do you think? To the guy? To our listeners. I don't give a shit about this guy. Yeah, I think you're fine. All right, good.

Bye. All right, bye.