30 Days

Nathan and I have enjoyed watching a show the past few weeks on FX called 30 days. The show is done by Morgan Spurlock. (the guy that did the movie "Supersize Me") Each episode has a person living 30 days in a situation that is unfamiliar to them. Outside their comfort zone you might say. One episode Morgan and his fiance' lived in Columbus, OH and had to live on minimum wage. They only went with $200 each. They had to find an apartment, jobs, didn't have a car, etc. Great experiment how they were only doing it for 30 days and they were pretty far in debt due to the fact that they both had to visit the ER because they didn't have health insurance.

Now, being that we have been watching this the last few weeks, guess what happened to Nathan? You're never going to guess...he met Morgan Spurlock. Just out of the blue! He was driving a golf cart on UCR's campus with a friend, did a doubletake, whipped the golf cart around and had a "celebrity moment" with Morgan Spurlock. He was there filming the final episode of 30 days where a mom binge drinks for 30 days to prove to her daughter how bad it is for her.

Anyway, this makes it sound like Morgan Spurlock is our hero, but really, we just like his show and the way he thinks about society. We highly recommend it. It is on Wednesday nights (10:00pm in our time zone) on FX. It's real reality TV.

How are sinks and lights similar?

In addition to remodeling the kitchen, we have also been working on the front and back of the house. We are looking into putting quartz in as countertops in the kitchen. We wanted to put in an undermount sink so it wouldn't have any edges. So, we went to a couple places to price them and were surprised at how expensive they are. We know the price of steel has gone up dramatically, but it was still pretty spendy. So...we went to good 'ol Home Depot and looked at their kitchen sinks. They had drop in ones that we liked for $109. Not bad at all, but they were drop in, so we asked about special ordering an under mount. Get this...the exact same sink for the undermount (using less steel, of course) is 3 times as much. Doesn't make sense.

Then today...we needed to find lights for some pillars that we are having built in the front yard along the stairs. We need about 6 lights in all, so we went to Lamps Plus because our contractor has a discount there. Carriage lights for the side of the garage doors were not bad, $70-$90 for the ones we liked. Then we looked at the lights for on top of the pillars. Same style light, just for a post instead of mounting on the side of the wall costs again, 3 times as much. I'm tempted to hang the lights on the side of the columns rather than post mounting them on top. :)

I have come to this conclusion: (I may not like it, but it is a conclusion, none the less) Undermount sinks (the more expensive kind) are usually used with granite, corian, or quartz countertops. The more expensive countertops. You've already paid a lot for your countertops, why not spend a little more on your sink? Same goes with the outdoor lighting. Everyone has lights on the sides of their garage doors, but not everyone pays to have stone walls put in with columns, etc. You already paid for the stone wall, why not dish out a ton more for the lights to go on top of the columns?

Craziness or maybe it's just reality.