This week, Dan and John talk about:

• Mastering the Western State Hurricanes album (The lost Western States Hurricanes record)
• John earning his first real money while playing in Harvey Danger, using it to start his own band (Money)
• John’s warehouse loft apartment between Pike and Pine with walls from old windows (Seattle living)
• Millennial Girlfriend wanting John to sell his house and buy a house together (Seattle living)
• John buying his first house and making some money from it (House)
• Looking for a house with Millennial Girlfriend (Seattle Living)
• John making an offer on a project house (Mid-century modern)
• Dan gifting John a Russian watch (Objects)

The show title refers to the guest room in John's daughter's mother's house where he could just live for the next 15 years and it would be living in the lap of luxury.

Dan had a little crazy day. John is pretty up against the wall, actually, both time-wise and because there is impending doom.

Draft version
The segments below are drafts that will be incorporated into the rest of the Wiki as time permits.

Mastering the Western State Hurricanes album (RW160)

As soon as John is done talking to Dan he is going drive across town to do the final step in mastering the Western State Hurricanes album, which is an involved process and the engineer said he sure could use John's help.

John earning his first real money while playing in Harvey Danger, using it to start his own band (RW160)

Up until around 2007 when some of his songs were getting used on TV John never had any money. Before he joined Harvey Danger he made $900 a month working at the newsstand. Harvey Danger paid him $15.000 that year which was free money because they were feeding and housing him the whole time and he was really good at saving.

At the back of the venue there would often be a cheese tray, a meat tray, and some drinks, but they were also going to have dinner in a restaurant. John is a bag lady for sure and he always put a bunch of meat and some cheese in a little bag because later on the bus everybody wished they had a little piece of cheese: ”I got you, man! I got the cheese!”

John didn't spend any money that year and he had never been so rich in his life before! $15.000! He used that money to make the first Long Winters record in 2001, he bought a van, and he started the band. By 2006 The Long Winters had become a going operation and it was the great era when people were using Indie Rock music on TV.

John's band got a couple of placements and he had a little pile of money like he had never seen before. If you amortize that amount of money over the course of 10 years of John pursuing a music career he was getting paid about $0.11 an hour, but it was money! It had happened, it had arrived, and he immediately put it into a downpayment for a house.

Dan gifting John a Russian watch (RW160)

(Example Search of the type of watch talked about in this segment)

Today John got an interesting package from Dan Benjamin. He opened it and read it and it said John was a sucker. Inside there was a very intriguing watch. The name first looks like it is in Latin letters, it says PAKETA, but when you look down at the bottom the letters are Cyrillic and presumably one of the words is ”Russia”. It probably says Made in Russia, which means that it isn't PAKETA because those are then Cyrillic letters that just look like Latin letters, but it is pronounced RAKETA, like rocket.

It is not a normal watch because rather than have a dial from 1 to 12 it has a dial that goes from 1 to 24. It is a 24 hour watch with a Captive Rotary Bezel and two dials on the side, sent to John by America's sweetheart Dan Benjamin. This is a mechanical watch, but it is not self-winding and you must wind it using the big crown.

The watch is set to 12:07 but it looks like 6:07 because 12 is at the bottom. It is in beautiful condition and absolutely stunning! Whom is a 24 hour watch made for? Submariners? Dan doesn’t know what the story is, but the reason for the Captive Rotary Bezel is that it is organized with shifts: To day shifts and the red section is the night shift or something like that, either for military or for use in a factory. They are Soulviet [sic]! Like if you live in Antarctica. It is a piece of industrial beauty!

Dan put the biggest strap on it that he had because he knew the size of John’s Hulk wrists would be bigger than his. It still barely fits, but John can get it into the first little hole and it is very comfortable to wear. John wears his watch on the inside of his left wrist which he learned from his dad who wore his watch there because as a pilot he could check the time without taking his hand off the yoke of the aircraft.

John has an Apple Watch which does not allow you to wear it on the inside wrist because the sensors don't pick up properly and when you turn your wrist to look at it it turns off because its internal gyros think it is in some different orientation. Now John has a 24 hour watch and every time he looks at it until he learns how to use it he going to go: ”Okay, now what time is it? 14 o'clock?”

John has his computer set to military time, too and he is accustomed to doing that math. It is a beautiful gift! Dan has had this watch for a number of years and the guy he got it from was from Hungary or somewhere Russian-adjacent. He lived in a small town and had found it in a small little watch vintage type store. Once Dan got it he had some work done on it.

It has a lovely vintage acrylic and everything about it is nice. Dan really enjoyed having it, but he wasn't wearing it a lot and since the first day he got it he thought it was something John would like. If John would wear it a few times a year it will be more than Dan was wearing it and Dan hates the idea of a watch that doesn't get worn, it just bothers him.

All of the decisions John is trying to make right now are based largely in matters of style and this is exactly the kind of style that John wants to bring to the world. It is a semi-unreadable vintage watch given to him as a gift by a dear friend across the country, and he is going to basically make all his decisions by consulting the watch now: "Soviet watch, what should I do in this instance?" and the watch will through its semi-rotating bezel or whatever give him the key: ”Magic bezel, where do you stop?”