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daily snapple fact #27
A ball of glass will bounce higher then a ball of rubber.

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doug at freewayslowdance.com

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Turtle Power

Reina and I have turtles. 3 of 'em, that we bought from Chinatown at 2 for $5. We initially had four, but one of 'em got eaten by a bird when we first got them and left them in the sun to bask. We were originally going to name them after Ninja Turtles, but 3 ninja turtles is depressing.

So their names are CFT (see CFP), Turtle and Slider. They're red-eared sliders and there're a hell of a lot of websites about them. Turtle is simultaneously the bravest and the smallest. He's the most active and swims around like a mad man at times. Word, little Turtle guy.

I don't have any terribly interesting stories about worms coming out their butts or anything, they pretty much just sit in their tank in Reina's office. Because of this lack of activity, I get pretty excited when they do mundane shit like move to the side of the aquarium that I can see. And I'm fairly irritated that they seem to prefer the only area of the tank where I can't see them that well. If any of them ever decides to head out onto the basking rock I put out for them, I'll fucking flip out, I swear.

Incidentally, if you're interested in getting one, know that tanks, light bulbs, and water-purifying stuff can get pretty expensive. It'd be cheaper to go to Chinatown everytime yours died and buy another one.

But uh, that's wrong. Besides. You'll get to like the turtles. I like mine. They are rad.

posted by Doug 9:57 PM

9 to 9. (that's a play on words, beeyotch)

the interesting thing about working from home is that really, you're just as apt to be living at work. it's hard to delineate the two. here it is, 2 am, i've been up since 6:30 am, and i'm still at it. somehow this just happens. let's do the break-down.

pluses:
1. no traffic.
2. no morning radio shows.
3. can drink at work, no problem.

minuses:
1. need to drink at work.
2. never go home.
3. when your phone rings, you don't know whether to answer "Tru Appraisal Services" or "hey."

there are more, but my brain's starting to run on empty.

posted by Doug 1:57 AM

DUH.

The Dilbert Ultimate House This is the most rad house EVER. And when I'm a multi-millionaire, I'm going to build it. Or something similar to it. Rooms I don't need: Craftsroom. Woman's Office (uh, you know, unless you want it, Reina). Some of my favorite features: tankless water heater, flexible piping, courtyard, rounded corners, proper directional orientation/layout, thermal mass theory. I couldn't find a cost to build, though, so I e-mailed Scott Adams. Here's what he had to say.

Hi Doug,

Our best guess is $1.6 million to build on the land.

But many of the concepts in the house wouldn't cost much extra if you used them.

Scott


----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 8:47 AM
Subject: duh cost and some other comments.


> I've scoured the DUH site, and the one thing I've been wondering is,
> what would the cost be for a home like Dilberts? If you already had a
> plot of land, what would the cost of improvements be? Do you have
> these numbers?
>
> The house is incredible. I wish tract-home builders like KB and
> Griffin would take some notice and build homes with these features
> regularly. It's a breath of fresh air and if I ever make a boatload of
> money, I'm going to drop it all on a house like Dilbert's. Sans the
> observatory shaped like his head, of course.
>
> Thanks for looking into this for all of us. You've answered a lot of
> questions. This and your Dilberito thing from a few years back just
> blow me away.
>
> Doug.
>

I have about $2,000 in my bank account. Only $1,598,000 to go (not including land)

posted by Doug 3:39 PM

The Drink.

Jack Daniels is lowering the alcoholic content of their recipe from the current 86 proof to 80 proof, or 3% by volume. Apparently 15 years ago they lowered the content from 90 proof to 80 proof. I'm not sure why, but this saddens me.

About a week ago, my dad confronted me about whether or not I had a problem with drinking. I'm not sure how this came up, maybe it's the fact that Jack Daniels has been on my grocery list for the past 8 weeks (I refuse to pay more than $14 for 750ml), or maybe it's that I have an entire cabinet full of various alcohol (I'd be more worried if I had a cabinet full of empty bottles), or maybe it's that I'm pretty good about having a beer with dinner. Either, he brought it up to both me, and my mom. And she actually e-mailed me to ask me about it, as did my sister, as did Reina.

I'm not an alcoholic. But I think I understand how someone could become an alcoholic. Here's a quote from "Life After God:"

On another night at the Sylvia Lounge, with another set of cocktails, Stacey, now a divorced aerobics instructor and paralegal assistant, will say to me, "We were trained to believe our world wasn't magic - simply because it was ours. Why were we taught that magic was something that happened someplace else to other people? Why couldn't they just have told us, 'Kids, this is as good as it gets. So soak it all up while you can'?"

She will finish her second cranberry martini (Crantini). Stacey is an alcoholic now. And her face has that hard look of peole who flirt with coke. This saddens me because she is still so beautiful and because I love her more than most of the the other people in my life. But I know that the only way she can connect to the "magic" she craves is through the bottle.

As I've gotten older, though, I've learned that there is not much I, or anyone else can do in a situation like Stacey's. After awhile you understand the wawy that thingns can go wrong in people's lives; you learn all the patterns and the temptations; you recognize the ways people use other people.

The glamour of corruption disappears; the learning is no fun anymore. You don't want to waste the energy, so instead you learn tolerance, and compassion and love - and distance - and these are hard words for me to say. All of this is hard for me to say."

posted by Doug 11:09 PM

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