Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Swamp Boys of New Jersey | Episode 298

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Soren and Daniel once again find themselves in the middle of a podcast about home maintenance, as Daniel reckons with sabotaging his own washer and almost taking credit for fixing it. He also tries to make sense of driveway contractors who negotiate against themselves. Soren, meanwhile, explains efflorescence, revisits the joys of attics and crawl spaces, and describes the particular misery of hauling out a possum that’s been dead too long. Stay damp out there, folks.Thanks for ASPCA for sponsoring this episode. To explore coverage, visit ASPCApetinsurance.com/QUESTION.  The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance.

I've got a quick, quick question for you all right I want to hear your thoughts on to know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you all right The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? How did you get? When do I be? Remember?

What's it out there? Where did all that? What do we know? Oh, forget it. I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're going to find it I think you'll have a great time here

I think you'll have a great time here So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question With Sororna, Daniel, the podcast for two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast. Senior writer for last week tonight with John Oliver, author

of How to Fight Presidents and occasional guest writer for 1,900 Hot Dogg, Daniel O'Brien, join us over a coach, Mr. Soren Bowie. Soren say hello. Hey, everybody, I'm Soren Bowie. I'm a writer for American Dad. I know of 1,900 Hot Dog.

I occasionally plan to be on their podcast and then it falls through and then neither one of us. follow us up. Thank you to ASPCA PET Insurance for supporting quick question. To explore coverage, visit ASPCA petinsurance.com slash question. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company

or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. I'm working on another long-form comedy article for a hot dog based on... Even those chops up. Yeah, it's based on a book that I'm reading. And the book is, I don't want to spoil it for the listeners slash future readers. It's not a good book, as you can expect from the kind of thing that gets covered by hot dog. If you don't know, Hot Dog covers like cursed media, really bad books.

old shows, movies, albums, you name it. They've got it covered with some of the best, finest, long-form comedy writers that the world has ever produced. And I'm reading this book, and I, the, the third chapter in a row has started with the author saying, so, yeah, you know this. It's like, you can't. And I say, so is my, is one of my favorite nerds in literature. Sure, but you can't start chapters with so, yeah.

So is your seller door. I know. I remember back when they first started and they were kind of figuring out what their website was and you could kind of write whatever. I would pitch to them a thing that I still think is very funny and I would write it, but I just never going to write a comedy article again in my life. It was going to be about, it was going to be from the perspective of the guy in Braveheart that gets shot in the ass with an arrow when everybody else is fielding themselves. that's just about like how to avoid that it's tough because if you're on the opposing side of that of that war you see some guy pull his ass out you're like I know no one said to lose the arrows yet but let me just get this he's not even looking I'm not going to get a better time

they get that out yeah like they all moon them and then like everybody's like oh shield's up and then the arrows take a little while to get there and one guy is just like no This is going really good. I am enjoying winning these guys. Look, I know it's disrespectful to moon them, but also, guys, have you ever just, like, felt the sun on your ass? It's wonderful today. And there's, like, a breeze. Why are we doing this more often?

Oh, that's why we're not doing it more often. Somebody should have warned me. We all did. We out shields. That's great. that you're getting array for them. I love those guys. Sean Riley, obviously, as everybody knows, and Robert Brockway, two of our best friends. Yeah. There's a little East Coast hot dog group email chain that I'm so humble to be a part of,

because at this point, I've only written one article for that site, and these people have been doing it for years. But I'm looking at this email chain as we're trying to coordinate like a hangout, and it's Brockway and Brennan McGinley and Alex Schmidt and Mike Drucker and and Dinar Doyle it's just like fucking hit after I hit I can't I can't get over just the the high level of writers that they have here yeah that's great I didn't realize Mike Drucker was doing it too yeah let's get into our show though soren I've got some quick questions for you I got some cool questions okay I'll get to answer those about the wife and about lies and the lies we tell to our wives Oh no That's fine My wife doesn't listen to this podcast In fact I'm not sure she knows it exists So this is a perfect topic for us

I'm gonna bring some scenarios your way Okay And see what you would do And I'm gonna tell you what I did So scenario one Okay You're hanging out in the upstairs part of your house And you hear from the basement

Honey it happened again And that means flooding in the basement That's like our like romantic code in our house. It happened again means that there's water in the basement. So I go down there and I see, or you see in this scenario, you see that there is water indeed pooling around your washing machine. And to say around your wife. She's leaking. It's not coming. The water is not coming from a place that it has come from before. Oh, a surprising unique location. Yeah. Okay. And can you identify the location?

I can identify, you can identify the location. You know exactly where it's coming from. Okay. Like let's say the first time your washer was leaking, there was like a pipe in the back behind it that was shooting up water. This time, it's more subtle. It's coming from the machine itself. Yeah.

And your wife is like, I don't know what I did. I must have screwed something up. Help me, there's water on the floor and it's coming from the washer. And you know that you can fix this. you can make it go away. Yeah. There's, you know how to fix it already. There's two, there's two choices here, Soren.

You fix the washing machine and you look like a fucking stud. And you look like a handyman. You look like marrying you and buying this house wasn't such a stupid idea after all. Because suddenly this guy with very little handy experience is handy. he steps up and he does it and wife says oh my goodness my hero what can't he do option two is you say I know how to fix this because I am the reason it's not working right now oh no you fucked it up yeah but like you don't have to take the honest door right you could just be the hero you could just be the hero either way you're fixing the leak it's still like really good

But in one scenario, you're a brilliant handyman and another one, this is, there'd be, in fact, even less water if you hadn't screwed up in the first place. What did this you do? Did you break the drum? No, so I was doing my monthly maintenance check in the house of just going through like all of the different things. I have an insane checklist of things that I go through to that. That's right. I fix and adjust. and one of them is checking the filters on the washing machine.

There are three filters on a washing machine. And when I saw the water pooling in, and I saw it was coming from where one of the filters was, I knew immediately I didn't put that back in, right? And there was like a real, I tell my wife the truth. I'm like, this is my fault. I'm going to fix this. But there was a second where I was like, I can just...

Not tell her. I can say, honey, why don't you go upstairs for a second and let me see what I can do? And by the time she comes back, the problem is solved and I can look like a genius. I settled on the truth because I think in the scenario where I just fix it without telling her that I broke it, she is savvy enough that she wouldn't just assume that I'm suddenly very handy. She would like, how did you fix? She would want to know. She would be excited about it.

How did you do it? How did you fix it? How did you know what was wrong? You never know how to fix things. What's changed? And then the lie would have to keep spinning. So I figured I would tell her like, hey, I didn't screw this thing on right, but it's fixed now and it'll never happen again. And isn't it?

Incredible. Isn't it better in a way that now we understand how it works? Was it the filter that's down like the bottom left corner of the Washington? In the front. Yeah, that little one is just a panel that pops off. Yes. You fucked putting. You fucked putting that one.

It's because the very first time I was doing it, it's a new washer. So you can like watch a little, you scan it and you watch a video that shows you how to do it. And the video is a helpful animation that has the filter come out and you clean out all the stuff. And then you put the filter back in. And in the animation, they turn the filter twice and then the animation is over. So I turned it twice, even though the animation was probably just like, we don't need to tell him, turn it until it clicks and was tight. Surely he won't like rewind this and count the turns.

Surely he'll just turn it like a human being. Nope. Not this rule follower. Hi, I love my dog Jackson. He is 13 years young. I have had him since he was six months old. He is high energy and stupid, and I think he's going blind, and he stinks all the time. And there is not a single thing in the world I wouldn't do for him.

He is the best thing in my house after my wife. We love him! Sometimes we call him The Jinks, because he reminds us of the famous real estate developer. And sometimes we call him Darlene, because he reminds us of Kuk from the show Ozark. he is full of multitudes In today's world we insure a lot from cars and homes to cell phones

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This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. Thank you, ASPCA for taking care of Jackson, Jinks, Starline. I'm going to get I'll tell you the truth here Dan I'm doing a third option that you didn't give me which is I I get really upset at it there's a lot of like pageantry to my upsetness I'm like oh god I don't know it's probably not your

full it's fine well it's just these how to get appliances and then I will be like I'm gonna I'm gonna fix this and then I will wait and I will wait probably a week before it's finally like fully fixed and I won't tell her when it's fixed. She'll just ask and I'll be like, yeah, I finally got it done. And that means is that now this process looks like something that took a full week to get done. And I was working on it the whole time. I mean, there's a there's a lot there, but it's probably not your fault is like that's an act of violence. That is true. True. It's true gas lighting. But it's true. That's probably not. In fact, I know it's not. But who's to say?

You would have done something weird that I didn't see. And then I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait and it's going to be. So like, I'll give you an example. We have our fridge. We have a water dispenser on the front. And occasionally, instead of just going, shh, while pouring out water, it goes,

shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, like that. and it's like the water comes out really slow and that's the sound or that's like the water sputters too yeah the water sputters and it sputters out and it comes out the choppy and it comes out much slower and I was like

shit I'm gonna have to figure out I mean I'm gonna take probably fridge apart like we need this water we're depending on this water on the outside and I look it up and it's like generally this problem is just the filter you go back you go up on top of the fridge you take the filter out to untwist it

take it out and then put it back in And sometimes like air gets in the line or whatever. And I was like, oh, that's so easy. I was like, should I fix it yet or should I let it become a problem that I become more of a hero for fixing later? And there was like a real battle in my head of like, I want to use that water filter. But also I haven't had a win in a while. Yeah.

It would be nice if I had this. I had to fix the water in our guest bathroom tub was leaking and that's a slightly more involved fix than you want it to be you need to like get a whole new part and turn off the water to the whole house and unscrew like if it's leaking from the faucet on the tub non-homeowners and dummies you might be surprised the water is coming from the faucet I need to take off the the handle and pull a filter out from there and put a new filter in.

And this was a case where I tried to do it once and the flippers who had worked on our home before we got there had, uh, uh, ar, our, or, or, uh, with their, yes, just like a flipper. Just that flipper noise. No, sorry, I was being a seal and it was using its flippers. Oh, I see. That's very good. Yeah. The flippers.

It's not, it's not the most famous association with flipper and, it's not. It's not, but they. I do understand the visual house that worked on this beforehand. The flippers. Yeah, the flippers, oddly enough, screwed it on too tight. So I had to get another tool to get this certain nut off the part. And so it became a multi-day process where like turn off the water to the house, try to get this thing, realize I can't get the thing off, put all the parts in the shower back,

turn the water back on, go somewhere else, get a tool, come back, then take it apart, then find what kind of filter I need for my brand of shower, then go to a store to get that come back. The filter that I needed broke off. The old one broke off inside the unit. So I had to like go in and use different tools to take that out and then reinstall the whole thing and there was no more leak. And I did all of this stuff and I learned a lot along the way. Yeah. And I thought, fixing this is great. You know what would be even greater? You know what kind of guy I'd like to be is the kind that doesn't need to say all of the stuff that I did. The kind that doesn't even need to say, hey, honey, I fix this thing. I'm going to just sit and wait. And one day she will say, you know what? There's no more leaking in the bathroom. And I'd say, oh, is there not?

Huh. That's why I say with your water situation, I might not tell her. Until she tries it again. She's like, it's not leaking anymore. And then I could be like, oh, yeah, I took care of that. It's like, how much better is this going to be? Because she doesn't use the guest bathroom. Neither of us do.

How much better is it going to be if maybe months from now she notices that it's fixed? And I say, oh, yeah, I took care of that while you were at work. How great would that be? And I want to say like I held out for maybe five hours and then that's pretty good I found a way to tell her I found a way to get that information well here's the problem with that's approach is that I've done things like our bathroom our guest bathroom had the paint was like chipping on the walls from wherever somebody with claws was reaching for the toilet paper shortly because there's like chip paints taken out of the wall in that area and it was driving her crazy

and she was like at some point I'd like to get these I'd like to get these touched up, meaning like, somebody will have to do it, but it's not going to be me, but I could get someone to do it. And I was like, no, no, no, I'll take care of that. And then there was a day of my hiatus where I was like, let's just bang this out and did it and then didn't tell her to this day. I'm not sure she realized that it never happened. It's like, it's one of those situations where I was like, she'll come home and she'll

be like, oh, oh my God, this is done. That day never came. Yeah. It was a problem to her while she saw it. And then when she didn't see anymore, it was though the person. problem had never existed. Well, come on. It's wild that my thoughts don't change, but my reactions to them do.

Like when I fix it, I thought she might go months before she realizes I fix this. And then a few hours later, she might go months before she realized I fix this. And between now and then, I might break several things. So I should look to think some more wins in my column first. Yeah. Yeah, I feel that all the time. I'm going to, maybe, I don't know if this is going to blow your mind or not, Dan. Have you done work under a sink yet?

No. Okay. You're going to eventually have to do something, like change out of faucet or there's going to be like a leak in your pee trap or whatever. Is that what you call your toilet? That's, so if when you have these things, you're going to have to get under there in this very, awful little space, work above your head, and try to loosen bolts, basically. Yeah. It's awful. Gravity is not your friend there. Oh, it's all, yeah, and there's no way to get leverage. There's no way to find purchase on it underneath there. There's a tool called a

basin wrench that will change your life. And I think that even though you don't haven't had to do any of that work yet, you should just go get one of these. Okay. It's like a kinked, it's a kinked wrench. It's a wrench that at just the very head of it, instead of being straight with the handle portion, it's just at a 90 degree angle. And so you can slide it up there and it

allows you all the torque that you need because there's also like a little attachment at the bottom. And it makes it so much easier. And I've done a lot of work without it and then I did work with it. And I was like, what? How was nobody telling me this existed? I

could rush out and go get that right now, but there's a small chance that I might already have it. Because when I talk about the kind of guy that I want to be, the person who like fixes a thing and doesn't say anything and just lets it be discovered, that is who my dad actually is. And there are so many times where I'm working on something. And I'm like, God, I wish I had this fucking, I don't have any of the fucking goddamn things that I need. And I was like, let me just see if maybe my dad has already given it to me. And like nine times out of ten, It's in a box in my car that he snuck in there or just like part of a tool kit that it didn't investigate thoroughly enough.

And it's like, oh, it turns out I have everything a new homeowner needs. And he just didn't specifically say, this is when you're going to need this, this is where you're going to need that. It was just like, I left these tools here. And if you open your eyes, you will. Yeah, I can only give you the tools. I can't help you use them. needing credit is like a big part of when I do a big job I need it so bad because like so it's stuff that you you have no idea how to fix you're panicked and then like you invest the time

into learning how to fix this one very specific thing and I'll say just doing a search to figure out how to use it that requires its own skill set yeah you have to know like the glossary of terms to get you where you need to go and then once you figure it out and you're like oh that sounds ambitious but I'll try it and then you do it and you're successful you're like well someone has to go on this fucking journey with me yeah because I'm not just going to be like oh it's fixed and her be like okay great thanks because that's not enough you that wasn't enough of a thanks even though even though I know it doesn't matter when I'm when I'm watching a show or reading a book I don't need to know how hard it

to make that thing. It doesn't make it better for me as a viewer. I don't need to know how difficult it was to mind the poison that makes my phone work or whatever people did to get my, the cushion in my chair where it is. That doesn't make the cushion softer or the phone more impressive. And by that logic, I know it doesn't matter that I had to go to two stores to get the league fixed in the bathroom because what matters is that the league is gone and that's that's the main

that's the whole story if we could even call it a story but it doesn't matter like but I had to go to a store and talk to a man and tell him I need this part and he's like you need the full part half that's broken and I was like

I know it's broken it's still in the wall somehow I was like, oh, and I had to talk to him, and it was very vulnerable to talk to a person. I'm shocked. You talked to a human being that knew what was going on. That's never what's happened to me, where I go to like a Lowe's or Home Depot, and I'm like, hey, I'm trying to put new spikets on the outside of my house. And they're like, a what? I'm like, spigit. I am all about the more expensive local hardware store for all of my things, because I can come to them with very specific.

to them with very specific problems. That's a good idea. I need this part. I need this one eighth size, blah, blah, blah thing. And I could also come to them with like a broken piece of something in my hand and be like, do you know where this goes and do you sell a better one of these? And if they don't sell it, then they know where I can get it after I go to that store. Yeah.

And it's very, very handy to talk to the old timers at the local hardware stores that are being pushed out of business by our glorious. future. We do have an ace that's really close to me. And I do try to get a lot of my stuff there for the same reason that that guy who is, I have to assume, 120 years old, I walk in there and it's intense because there are narrow little aisles that you can barely fit in by yourself, forget a second person. And then everything's all over the place. There's like screws on one wall and then three aisles over is where you'd get nuts and stuff. And you're like, okay. This is rough. But then you go to the front and you just say, now at this point I know, I'm like, hey, I need this thing.

I need the gasket for the back of my toilet. And he's like, oh, yeah, I'll blah, blah, blah. It's over here. I'll just show you. Yeah. Which one are you looking for? Oh, I don't know. Okay, well, just tell me the shape of your toilet.

And I'm like trying to describe me. He's like, okay, I know what you got. You got a Kohler. All right, it's going to be this one. And that's, that sounds like my local hardware store where like I can't, it's so small that I can't just keep to myself and stare at things until I find it because they can see me. They can all see me. So I can't just like, no, I'm just looking around because then they'll be like, what are you looking for? And I will help you find it. You have to talk to me. Yeah. I, listen, I like the

process of fixing things. I really enjoy it. I enjoy. And it's, this is not my only realm of like supposed expertise in the house where like she has certain things that she has certain things that She will just be like, I'm never going to learn this. You're going to have to just do it. It ranges from all of the things that break in the house to like electronics where it's like the kids want to watch TV. She's like, I don't know how to turn all this on. Like, oh, what? There's a television.

But like there are certain things that she's just not going to ever bother. She's just like, why would I? You're the one who does this stuff. And when that stuff work, and like, I, so my process is, something breaks, then I got to watch a bunch of videos on it, watch a few different ones to see if, like, somebody else is doing it a different way. Yeah. Or if I'm going to fuck something up. Because a lot of times, you'll, like, watch one video and the other guy, I'll be like, don't do it this way. I, very crucially, I watch YouTube videos about, like, how to recalk, like, the drain trap in a kitchen sink.

And, like, that seems so easy and really smart. And then I look at the comments and it's like, this is going to destroy your fucking plumbing forever. Don't do it. Everyone is on the same page. This random plumbing influencer who's apparently caused so much damage. That's killed a bunch of drains. When our washing machine broke and I was like, it wasn't spinning anymore and it's just collecting water inside of it. I figured out that it was the motor.

And they're like, here's what you got to do. You got taking the machine apart from the top down. You pull your washer out. You take the lid off with all these screws. And then you just start taking shit apart until you get all. all the way to the bottom and that's where the motor is. And this one guy was like, don't do it. Just tip it up and you can get the motor from the bottom.

And I was like, that's so smart. And then all the comments were like, you will die. Your washer will fall on you and crush you. You have no idea how much a washing machine weighs. If you tip it up and you miscalculate and it falls on you, you will die. And I was like, oh boy, now I've got a decision to make. I want to do it the easy way. Um, I have another scenario before you soaring.

Oh, we go ahead. Hold on. I just have to qualify that I made my wife sound like she was intentionally ignorant to certain things. That's very true. But the reason that she is, that's like totally fine is that the amount of things that she's doing around the house far outweigh all the things that I do. The amount of invisible labor that she's doing and like not telling me about. She's doing the dad thing where she's just like taking care of. of it and being like, why would I tell him the story of how the complicated this was?

I got it done and it was for the house. It was for all of us. It's the same in my house. I mostly exist when things break, but that the house continues to function is the work of my wife. And I'm noticing it a lot this week because my wife is away and nothing makes me appreciate her more than when she's like gone for a week because I'm like, I know how to handle the kids. In fact, the kids are better when they're just with me. There's something about having the mom around that makes them all super emotionally lazy and, like, bad and, like, testing boundaries. But when it's just me, like, they're much better. And but the thing is, the house is not, there's like plants and there's sweeping up that needs to happen.

And there are all kinds of complicated stuff that she's usually taking care of. And I'm just not thinking about. And I'm like, oh, fuck, she's doing a lot around here. Yeah. It's crazy that toilet paper is just always there, huh? What a cool house that we got. Yeah. Me trying to wash the kid's sheets, I mean, like, these still stink.

When she does it, they don't stink. What's going on? Why would she do this to me? She knows a better way. I have another scenario that is not necessarily a fixing thing scenario. But it is a, it's littered with opportunity to lie to your wife and look cool in the process. Yeah, okay. I'm on board. We wanted to get my, our driveway paved because it was just a much of rocks and I hated it.

And I called one place and they were looking at like Google Images of my house and they said, we'll have to like get close to measure it, but we think this is $7,500 to $9,500. And so I reported that to my wife and she's like, eek, I don't love that. And neither of us know what this is supposed to cost. Right. Before we even started this process, she was like, it would be great if we didn't have to spend more than $5,000. That was the number that we picked, I think, out of thin air, but clung to. Sounds right.

I got my second opinion of this guy to come to the house and look at it. And I walk out the door and the price is $5,000. Oh. I walk back in the door into my house and the price is $47.50. it's lower oh oh oh wait okay all right got i have and there are two options and they're both true where i could just present the same facts and and say wife uh he started at 5,000 um we got it down to 4750 how do you feel about that and i could let that implication just sit in the air and let her believe that I talked him down from 5,000 to 4750, which is not without precedent. She has seen

me talk people down from prices before. I've haggled and it's worked and I don't like doing it, but I've done it successfully. And it's one of her favorite things in the world is to talk someone down on a price. And I haven't, that's not a skill that I used to have. It's a skill that I've learned. This was not a case where I talked him down. We stood outside and was at the driveway and he said, $5,000. And I said, I'll have to talk to my wife. And he said, you're not going to get a better price than $5,000. He was like, no, you don't understand them.

I have to talk to my wife. And he says, 4750. You put a sign advertising my company. This is a busy street. Put the sign in your lawn, 4750. And I was like, sir, please. Please let me talk to my wife. This is not a negotiating tactic.

I need to speak to her because she understands money better than I do. I don't want you to hurt your own business, you know? Like, don't do anything else thinking that this is a strategy on my part. Like, I have to, like, please let me go and tell life. I, of course, again, decided to tell her. We got it down to 4750 because he negotiated against himself. And I had no part in this. just because I don't, I don't know, I know the game that I've set up is here's two scenarios

and here's one where you lied to your wife. I still don't want to lie to my wife. It still seems like a bad thing to do. But I was like walking in there, I was really close being like, the first number that she heard was 75 to 95. And the number that she wanted was no more than five grand. I can walk in here with 4750 and then maybe. Maybe we can go to Chili's tonight because of my shrewd negotiating.

He won't reward you. You know what you've earned, Dan? You've earned some dairy. Okay. In this scenario, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to lie to her because I am, I don't, I'm so bad with numbers. And for the same, like, I don't have any context for how much things cost. But even if I did, I'm still bad.

I'm like, I'm not good at it. And there's something broken in my brain regarding it. And so I need her. I depend on her for that kind of stuff of being like, well, we did this. How much should this cost? Right. No. She'll just know.

And I'm like, okay, you're in charge. I still don't know that this is a good number. I only know that it's better than the other numbers I heard from a different guy. Like my neighbor from across the street was looking at the driveway, admiring it because it's fucking beautiful. And he was like, do you get a good price for that? And I was like, hey, I don't know. I got a price. And it's not the biggest number there is.

Right. It's possible that someone could have done it for two. I genuinely don't know. And I'm not interested in investigating that. And like, I never know if I should tell any of the workers that I've ever asked for quotes on things. If I should lead with like, hey, just so you know, I don't know anything. you could tell me any number and I'll believe you

so like please don't take advantage of me like I don't let everyone know from the beginning that like if you're used to negotiating and being a shark like please set this game on easy mode for me because I just don't know I don't know and I know that me telling you

this means that you're going to charge me more but I don't have a choice if I told you what I thought a driveway was supposed to cost, then you're going to charge me for that. And you're going to laugh at it. And then you'll go to hell. That's, yeah, I also, I worry with, like, driveways, I have this terrible memory of, like, consumer advocates on the news being like, we followed these Irish nomads who have been going

from driveway to driveway telling people they will fix their driveways. And then they do have to work. And then they just disappear and their business moves on to another town, like the music man. And thinking, oh, okay, note that for when I'm an adult, there's driveway scams. Why did you say Irish nomads? That's what they, because I'm pretty sure that it was a situation or it was like, I don't want to say the other word, but it was Irish and then hard G word. Sure. Back in the day.

I, I, I, traveling Irish. Sure. I'm just a little bit flustered because of all of the like construction and maintenance people I've worked with. The ones who did my driveway are distinct in that they had heavy Irish accents, father and son team, both with really strong Irish rogues. And I didn't think anything. I was like, hey, cool. The first thing that comes up. Possible paving scam and lower bucks, Irish accent? Oh, no. Well, but I mean, it's also, there are, there's a strange thing that happens with particular markets of construction that I don't totally understand what's happening, but there's, it's cornered by certain ethnic groups. Like, if you think there's a lot of renovation projects, particularly in Los Angeles, guaranteed there's an Israeli group that's going to be working on your project. And that's in your, you can't be like, why?

Can anyone explain to me why we're here is Israeli? It's just, that's the way it is. And like why specifically Driveways is like a proprietary Irish scam? That can't be. I don't know, Dan. Oh, no. I think, and then when here, first comment is, because it's on Reddit, first comment is, I've heard of this is a typical Irish traveler scam. I did not know what's going on in the U.S. though.

Oh, yeah, it happens in the U.S. all the time. you would think that like if it if it becomes enough of a known thing that by 2025 irish scammers would be like that are on the driveway thing we got to do something else we got to move on we got to be shed and that that be our scam like you'd think that they would try to distance themselves from their reputation yeah but maybe they did maybe your driveway is the one maybe they're turning out really this is somebody else who's like they're irish traveler scammers they hit new jersey in the multi-state area fuck man that's nuts so okay scenario three go ahead do I tell my wife about this conversation

no no absolutely not not till the driveway cracks in half it's done right you already got it done it's done it's so nice I love it yeah I'm sure that you're fine then I think that this if I'm remembering correctly from whatever it was nine is on your side or whatever the fucking news outlet was they were like they did they do half the work they didn't have the full supplies and like buying it would be a nightmare so they would do have to work to show you that with good faith that they were getting started and then they just ditch town yeah they just leave and go somewhere else so if yours is done then I think it worked out great yeah I think so too I think I am too small and too dumb to really scam in a big way.

I think they still probably got the sweeter end of this deal. And I'm just lucky that they could have done crimes on me. They're like, ah, it's such a small driveway. Let's just fucking knock it. Let's do one. Let's knock it out. Let's do one honest one before we move on to Pennsylvania. We do one for them and one for us.

Okay, well, good luck with that. I hope that that works out well for you. I'm in the middle of a home renovation project in our garage, and I am at every single turn, terrified that I'm being taken advantage of all the time, all the time. And my wife is so much more shrewd, and I depend on her deeply for that. It sucks. I mean, it's possible I'm... nostalgic for a time period that didn't exist but but i i like to believe that there was a time

when people just wanted to do uh honest work for people who were going to pay honest money for it and now it's transformed in like everyone is con men now right like everything is scans everything is like i'm just trying to fucking win everyone's always just trying to win and like even me i'm trying to like, I don't know how much a driveway is supposed to cost, but I want it under what the expert is telling me. I want to feel like I'm winning in this situation, and I'm sure he wants to feel like he's winning too. And it seems like maybe this wasn't always the case. Maybe it was. Maybe there were more snake oil salesmen back in the day, this nonspecific day.

Yeah, I think it was easier to disappear probably back then. I think now, like, there's, you do have more power probably than you realize or I realize in that. they're so dependent on referrals and like good good reviews and stuff that and that to create a business is not easy and so they're like not going to go change the name or they're not going to change it like bankrupt it and go open a new business that's very similar right it's it's really hard and so I think that it's they're like look we want to do a good job for you yeah this is how much we think it's going to cost it's possible that during the actual process we realize oh no there's a snag and it's going to cost you more. Like, I would love that kind of affrontness. I don't know. I don't know how to get it. Certainly for this potential scam in waiting, I'm going to hang on to the sign that he gave me. And if the driveway cracks, I'm putting that sign right back out. So everyone knows. This is this company responsible for this. Yeah. Oh, man. I hope that it's good, Dan. It sounds like it was pretty painless the whole thing all it was was very painless they did it really uh quickly

and i got to i got to watch them do it and uh one thing i will say uh bad about this company is that uh when shay and i were doing our own landscaping stuff i ripped out a giant piece of concrete that was in our front lawn uh that was like this weird like we had a straight sidewalk that went to our driveway and then it there was like a completely bonkers um four-sided non-rectangle non-square uh shape of concrete that was like filling in some gaps i ripped that out and filled that with with uh grass and sod and stuff just so that weird weird block was uh not part of our lawn i didn't know where to put it and like concrete is not a thing you can just leave out on the curb for someone for someone else and that there's like you can you can pay to have it dropped off somewhere or you

could do what uh ultimately my plan was i'm going to break this thing apart with my sledgehammer and over time put like a handful of of rocks in the garbage at a time and oh yeah andy dufran approach yes 100 just walking through the street kicking it out of your pockets just falls down the legs in my pants yeah um but in the meantime it was just this like huge fucking thing that was sitting in the rock driveway and the driveway people were like, we're going to get rid of your rocks and he points to the concrete thing and like, we're going to get rid of this. We're going to put asphalt. We're going to put it to seal it down. And then we're going to put asphalt on top of that. And everything's going to be great.

Everything was, he was, it was yes to everything, by the way. I was like, sometimes we get leaks in the basement. He was like, the driveway is going to fix that and put three inches of asphalt. And I was like, well the only difference between you and the other company I called was that they said it would be four inches of asphalt and he goes we will give you four inches of asphalt it's like man he's saying yes to way too many things he's really cool about a lot yeah yeah oh man that's terrifying the one knock against them that I will at this point level is they this big chunk of odd concrete is not in our driveway anymore but it is moved to the other side of my house and not in a way that is like let's get this out of the way so we can take it later and they forgot about it it's like hidden like designed to be hidden from me like it's I've never seen a more cut and dry case of like he is not going to discover this concrete for a couple of days yeah oh no it was like tucked on the side of my house that I never go to and it's like obscured from the street by a tree and it was if

If not for the fact that I'm constantly looking at my house and looking for leaks and looking for bugs and looking at the grass, I wouldn't have noticed it for days. But because I'm the OCD monthly maintenance checklist kind of person that I am, I saw it immediately. And it was like, huh, I really thought I wouldn't find this. That's some like really childlike work to hide this. He only needs to not be mad at us until we're gone. Yeah. Does your driveway slope down to your house or down to the street? It slopes down to the house, unfortunately.

Oh, no. I mean, that's, that's always been the case. I mean, like, we can't, unless we're doing like a really major renovation, we can't like change the shape of our block. I know, but, well, okay, have you tried, since they've done this, have you tried just pouring water down it? no but uh the rain has done that it's rain since yeah okay and it was fine all right yeah is is the the fact that your driveway tips down to the house part of the reason that

you're saying down to the house as in like angled towards the house yeah it is angled towards the backyard okay and you guys which is still not ideal yeah um So when we first got the house, we had to completely overhaul the basement and put in a sun pump and a water management system because there was signs like moisture and there's some pump and these, it looks kind of like grates or vents along the bottom of almost every wall in the basement where the wall and the floor meets. like they had dug trenches along the inner perimeter for water management and there's french drains inside your house yes yeah there's one wall where they didn't do that and water only in the specific circumstances where we've had flash floods water seeps in from that wall and we call the guy who did our water management system and we're like hey you did this thing and there's still water getting in and he's like yeah that's the side that we didn't do because when we tested it

it was dry and I was like well test it again is super fucking wet it was just because this is a crazy storm yeah and he was like well it was dry when we tested it and we didn't want to do a wall that didn't need treatment because we didn't want to overcharge you for anything but now if you want we can treat that wall but you know the water needs to go somewhere is sort of like the the line that he said, which I think is, is true. I feel like a flash flood, and we're really talking about like two minutes of the hardest and strongest rain you've ever seen. I've sat in the basement and watched it come in.

That's a lot of water, and it needs to go somewhere. And I think paving the driveway is going to do some amount of work towards fixing it. But otherwise, it's just like you, you know, what house is 100% waterproof from... They're not. amount of rain. Those torrential rains are just like, there's nothing you can do about them. And like it just, there's just more water than even like a sum pump can handle. Yeah.

Yeah. It was also I, because I recognize that I have some compulsive tendencies with things. And going into the basement to check for leaks was something that I was doing with too much regularity that I, like multiple times a day I would just like go down there. and like look for leaks because sometimes I had found it and uh I was talking to rewarded right and I talked to my my therapist about this and she was like why don't you just like not go down maybe you could just like check every couple of days check for moisture because like what happens and I was like well sometimes most of the time I go down there and there's no water but sometimes there is water and it wouldn't have been found if I didn't go down there and she's like well

it'll still be there if you check every couple of days and I was talking to her further about this. I'm like, yeah, I know I shouldn't do it. It's very reminiscent of similar behavior I had when I lived in Los Angeles. And I was really worried about ants. I was, because I had like an ant problem at my apartment and I would constantly, I couldn't sit still

because I was like, get up and check for ants. And sometimes there weren't ants and that was good. And sometimes there were. And that was also weirdly good because it confirmed that I was right for walking around and looking for ants. And she was like, I don't think that does confirm that you were right.

I think that it's just, it's, you're like perpetuating this behavior and you shouldn't do it. And I had all these ideas in my head. And then one day, it was raining. And we were getting warnings that it was going to rain really hard. And there would be like flash flood warning. And I was watching TV with my wife. And then it was like, I think I'm just going to sit in the basement with my for a while. And I took my chair and I sat in the basement.

basement and um believe for not ants start to show up in the basement as like that's not we don't normally have an ant problem in the basement that was an LA problem and I just carry those scars with me but the ants were coming because the water had flushed them out of their home and so where I'd seen the ants suddenly the water was coming and I'm sitting here like very upset that there's water coming into my basement but also thinking like I'm fucking right about this I sat and I stared at the wall and then the ants came and they were like they were letting me know hey the water is coming and like you should be here to catch the water and I don't know what the lesson is there I don't know the lesson was yeah your neuroses was like rewarded yeah so now you will continue to be worse and worse no I get that yeah we have the foundation of our house I've been underneath our house in our crawl space as uh uh connoisseursons of the podcast will know that at my old house, I would get down on my crawl space pretty regularly. Just in, I just sort of enjoyed being down there for the same reasons that you do

with your house where I'm like, well, let's get a, let's go kick the tires. Let's just get a look at what's going on into the house because nobody else is going on in the shed. So I, I do that in this house. It's worse. It's way worse because first of all, this house has been remodeled a few different times before we ever owned it. And so it's a maze down there. It's not just like you get under and you can see every direction. It's tough to get in. around. It's like, and it's small and cramped. And the biggest problem is, do you know what efflorescence is? Yeah, I do. But some of our listeners, it's the, it's like migration of minerals through like a porous substance. So your concrete. Our listeners weren't even close.

If you look at concrete and there's like a white, fine powder on it, that's a salt that's collected on the outside of the concrete because there's moisture in the concrete and it's just leaching. It's like reaching to the outside. So efflorescence isn't a great thing. It's pretty bad. It means that you've got like a lot of moisture down there. Sure. And so I just get under my house, put on this whole suit that's terrible and doesn't breathe,

crawl under my house and just stare at this efflorescence. And I'm like, if I don't, if I just did nothing about this, would my house just fall down? Is it, am I the only one responsible for the fact that my front wall hasn't fallen off my house? Because I should not be the only one in charge of that. But if I bring somebody in and I'm like, hey, can you just take a look at this for me? They'd be like, you need to retrofit for earthquakes. I'll be like, yeah, that's not the problem I'm having. Can you tell I need to fix this problem?

Yeah. And it's so wild. They're going to say, yeah, that's a fucking problem. It's so wild what buckets are anxiety will fill that they say, you need to retrofit this for earthquakes. I'm just like, no, earthquakes are natural. I mean, if it's going to kill me, it's going to kill me. That's fine. What do you look how look at the salt on this rock then tell me yeah does this is the concrete just going to crumble at some point and how do I fix that and then like some people early on we were buying the house they're like well we can pin and plate and that just means that they put these plates on it and they make it more secure on the walls but like at some point you might need a sister wall and I was like what does my house need a sibling what are we doing and I guess what that requires is like they dig away your entire yard

and they pour concrete in to just reinforce the wall. And I was like, oh, whatever, I'll run my other options. Like, we've got to draw the water away somehow. And so, like, so much of my life has been dedicated to, like, just checking the outside of my house. I mean, like, be honest with me, how this is water getting to you? Like, is water getting into the foundation and where? It was, it ended up being a good mental health lesson, I think, for me. As much as I joke about, like, my therapist was wrong.

I stared at the water and then the water came, hooray for my, my, my spider sense for ants and water. But like the actual lesson is when we discussed it, she was like, when you watch the water come in, what did you do? And I was like, well, nothing. I mean, we put towels down and we have a shop vac that collects water, but really when the water is coming in, when there's that much water and with that force, it just comes in. And she's like, yeah. And it's like, yeah. And it's, doesn't it's not slower because you're watching it and it's not it's not drier because you were down there with your book while your wife was snuckling by herself watching TV on the couch you did make this situation better and being caught it and like being aware of it in

advance like it means you um you suffer twice when you think about the worst case scenario and then you live the worst case scenario, then you just get it twice versus just like coming downstairs after rain and being like, all right, time to clean this up. So it's a good lesson, I guess, ultimately. I guess so. And now I feel like kind of better about the ants. If I go to the basement and I see the ants, then I'm like, thank you for the heads up. This means water's coming. I'll get the shop back ready. But also, I mean, it is a huge, when I'm owning rains at my house, I get up in my attic. Just do it. Like I just get up there and I'm just like checking all the vents and seeing and making sure that there's enough Henry on them that they're not going to leak.

And I ever and it makes it's like comforting to me. It's like at this point, seeing that it's not leaking and being up there and hearing the rain of it and knowing that the house is dry, I'm like, it fills me with a joy that I don't get anywhere else. I just went backpacking with my brother David and we could talk about that on a future podcast but it was a few days away from home that I hadn't spent since we got the house and it's it's really wild to me and I get home at like one in the morning after the trip and the next day just how soothing it is to go to the like to check what's new with the basement even if what's new with the basement is nothing we're just like I have I've been away I've been

in May. I've been so far away. All right. How's the old girl doing? What's new? What's going on over here? What are we got? There's some stains on the floor.

I like to see that. Something happened here. Yeah, you feel like a detective too. You're like, let's see. Let's get a real sense of what happened over the last six days. Yeah. This wall continues to change color. No.

Don't enjoy that. Not going to do anything about it, but it's good that I've got eyes on it now. yeah I mean well the problem that you are rewarded frequently like that when I the only reason I get up in my attic is because there was one time where one of our closets the ceiling of the closet was like suddenly bubbling in the drywall and I was like what the fuck and so went upstairs like chase it up the wall chase it all the way up the wall to the attic and found out that one of the vents around the vent had been you know they got a cut out portion of the ceiling to get the vent through there was no gasket on or anything there's nothing there

covering it. So it was just a hole straight up into the world. And like water was coming down that vent, the size of that vent and then draining all the way through the wall and just like getting everything wet in there. And I was like, we need to move. It's like I don't think that's enough water damage for us to have to move. Like she'll talk me down. And then I and but I wouldn't have found it. I would have like and then like I'm neurotic about it. So I'm going back up over and over again. And occasionally I'll find another one or I'll find some other thing up there. that I'm like, ah, this is a new thing that I would not have discovered otherwise. And I'm fucking right.

And then I didn't fix that. It's, and it worked. It worked that I was crazy. I know. It's, there's, it's not great. It's not a great lesson. The one out of hundred times that your anxieties reward you. That's not great.

My, my mom recently moved from Colorado to, to Wisconsin. And her house that was in Colorado was a wood cabin in the woods that my parents built. together before I was born. And that has become increasingly more dangerous because it's in a pine forest that's like threatening to burn all the time. And every time there was a lightning storm, huge anxiety for her. And now she's in her new house in Milwaukee, they got a crazy lightning storm. She was telling me, she was like, it was so fun.

It was so fun to be in a lightning storm. I haven't felt, I haven't enjoyed a lightning storm in probably like 60 years because because you're always worried about your house at that point and like whether it's going to be a forest fire. And so it's the same way. We're like, I lie in bed listening to the rain at night and it's the least soothing thing I've ever heard in my life because I'm like, is that an extra drip on hearing?

Every form of weather is a threat. Absolutely everything. It's a really windy day. You could be like a crisp fall, windy. day that anyone else in the world would be like, God, I'm really, I should really be present for this. This is like wonderful. And you will be like, fuck. What's that doing? Yeah, what's that we're doing? My house is creaking in the wind. That's going to be blowing some leaves into the top gutters. And I don't have access to the top gutters. Oh, fuck. Oh, should I get a big ladder?

How am I going to put the big ladder? Where am I going to keep that? I'll get on the roof and I'll just lean over the edge and I'll scoop with my hand. Surely that will work. I love having a house and being a homeowner. I didn't actually think I was ever going to own a home because my generation is fucked for homeownership. Yeah. I love it so much. I also hate it so much. And I was in the office. Our offices in New York. My co-worker Sina was visiting from Colorado and another one of our co-workers, Eric, the three of us were walking out together. Eric is also a homeowner in Jersey. seen as the one with an apartment. And he was like,

you're like, you Jersey homeowner boys, how you liking it? We're like, ah, we love it. Going to our homes. Going to our houses, leaving the office, going to our houses.

Yeah. And Eric says, I actually kind of hate it. And I go, I do too. My wife, my, my house is always wet all the time. He's just like laughing to the point of crying. He goes, my house is also wet all the time. And I'm like,

I'm living in a swamp. But we're just like deliriously laughing. We live in swamps. Yeah, my brother and I talk about when we get together and like, because there's always something fucking wrong. And it is, it feels very much like being a detective where you're like trying to solve one crime and you're looking for a handgun. And you like dig through a dumpster and find the body of a child. And you're like, well, that wasn't the thing at all. This is where it works. Oh, no. Why did I look? Working on trying to get a lawn going. And we have a

a crawl space accessible from the backyard that we don't do anything with. We had like the water management guy went in there to like clean it up and and lay a bunch of what looks like garbage bags on the floor and walls to keep it something dry, safe from the elements elements. We never even use it for stores. We just don't even think to use it. And as I was walking around in the backyard, I went to open the door to the crawl space, which I've used multiple times, but just not in a while.

and the door was getting stopped by the ground, doesn't open all the way now in a way that is like, is my fucking house sinking? Oh, no. I'm not going to worry about that. I'm going to close that door right back up. And in time, I will forget this. And then if I don't know about it, then no one will know about it.

Maybe the house will forget too. Maybe the house will forget. The ground will forget to eat it, maybe. And I don't know shit about fuck, but I'm like, maybe this is a summer thing. And then in the winter, the house will rise up and then I can use the crawl space again. Yeah. I mean, the other day, I was very concerned that I had another dead animal in my crawl space because you start to smell to the floor. And the first time that happened, I was like, there's something behind the oven.

Something is sticking here. And it didn't occur to me until like I got under down on the ground to like look on. underneath the oven and I was like, whoa, I smell that really badly. It's coming through the floor and getting down there. And like having to clear a dead animal out of your crawl space is horrid. It's like one of the worst jobs in the world because they're already decayed enough that you're smelling them. And then you have to, your face has to be close to it.

You don't have a choice because you're crawling. And you have to use your hands to whatever you're going to do, scoop it into a trash bag or whatever. And so like at some point you've got to touch this thing with, I'm sure, I mean, rubber gloves on. But I've pulled like possums out where like, I'm like, okay, I just got to pick this poss them up and put it in this bag and my face is six inches away from it. And I go to pull it up by the skin and the skin just completely comes off day and a full. That's what I was going to say. Like they're not, they're not dead their hole. They're not like, they're not keeping it tight

in death. Oh, it's like, yeah, skin, everything comes off. And not only does like the viscera come out, but just like maggots are falling out from underneath the skin. And I'm like, just, can I? Can I I set a fire down here. Would that rid of my house? I need to get rid of this somehow because there's no way I can live knowing this is down here. It's wild the amount of times

I thought maybe we can just move. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this problem. Yeah, it's like water damage is the most terrifying thing in the world to me because I don't know how to solve it. I don't know like when your roof, underneath your shingles gets wet and then you get past that like flashing

that's under there. I'm like, I don't even know how you go about fixing that. If you've got a big piece of plywood up there and the middle of it has a big soggy wet spot that's now compromising your entire house, what do you do? You cut that open and put more in and then patch it and glue it into place?

That doesn't seem even more structure. That seems even structurally worse. Not big umbrella. We just leave. We don't stay here. Yeah. We have made it nicer than it was when we got it. So now it's someone else's turn to see what they do with it for a year.

And we will go back to renting an apartment somewhere. Yeah. And then when something is wrong, we call someone and yell at them. And it's, that's a dream. All right. Well, thank you everybody for listening to Quick Question of Sorn and Dan. You knew that. Dan.

If you like our theme song, that's by Me Rex. If you like this podcast, that's by Gabe Harder. You can also watch a video of this podcast. If you go to YouTube, you can see the hand gestures that Dan and I are. The feud of hand gestures we're doing as we're trying to deal with the helplessness of homeownership. And if you like this podcast, a lot, and you're like, God, I wish there was more of this. You can always get more of it for the Patreon. We do another version of this podcast.

That's a little more unbuttoned, a little more untucked. That's it. Thanks for listening. Bye. your thoughts all I know what's on your mind I've got a quick quick question for you all right the answer's not important I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite

How did you get When do I be in remember What's it out there Where did all that Oh forget it I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best random comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it

find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here