I just got back from a trip to Houston. I had to pick out house stuff for the house we are building. Actually, I just relayed the decisions Shawn made since I have no real say in the matter.

I saw these books in the children's section at the airport bookstore, which I thought was pretty funny. I also thought it was interesting to overhear the Southwest flight attendants discussing how a Southwest pilot had exposed himself to one of the attendants. I was not eavesdropping, they were just very loud. "Oh my God, they didn't fire him? Oh, no because he's a pilot."

I rented a full size car with Priceline, something I haven't done before. I got if for $13/day. When I got there, Alamo told me I could just take whatever car I wanted. So I said, "um, how about that Cadillac over there?" It was pretty sweet. It was called a DTS. I hadn't realized Cadillac had renamed their entire product line with 3-letter names. I had heard of the CTS and XLR, but I thought they still had El Dorados etc. I am not sure there is enough distinction in the names to creating branding for each model. I also think it would be confusing to their primary demographic customer aged 60+. However, I assume it is an effort to move to lower age brackets.

I had XM satellite radio. It was great, I'm definitely getting that after school! I found an old school rap station that was fun, I think it was called the Rhyme or something like that. It made me feel like I was 16 again, rolling in my humongous 1979 Thunderbird with flip-up headlights and bench seats. I had installed an amplifier in it from a pawn shop that would only run for about 15 minutes before it overheated/shorted. So I could only listen to music for brief spurts.

I felt a little bad about building a big house, since it doesn't seem like the most socially responsible thing to do. So I went with a builder who uses energy efficient materials, tankless water heaters, sustainable lumber, low-toxicity materials, reflective roofs, etc. They guarantee in writing what your electric bill be if you keep your thermostat at 75 degrees. For us if works out to $0.02/sf per month which is MUCH lower than our previous, smaller 1920's colonials in Virginia.

We put most of our "upgrade" money into kitchen/bath and hardwood floors. I also put a good deal of thought into structured wiring. It was amazingly inexpensive to have the whole house wired for music. I also am having them do things like pre-wire above the fireplace in case we ever put in a flat screen TV up there. I'm not having them pre-wire the media room because I want to do it myself an do things like run HDMI cable, which they wouldn't do. Should be fun!