Owning a House Has Ruined TV

When we moved in, we thought we'd be frugal and not get fancy Cable Whatever TV. In the old apartment, we split DirecTV with our upstairs landlords, so it was a great deal with tons of channels and TiVo and lots of bells and whistles - it was great, we loved TV. Now that we get many many fewer channels and are forced to watch commercials like total plebes, TV is such a pain in the ass. There's never anything on, we miss the stuff we like, and seriously, who makes these freaking commercials?

We do, however, get a bunch of the channels that cater to the home renovator. We gotchyer TLC, yer DIY, yer Disovery Home. It's a good thing. BUT owning a house has even ruined some of these shows for us. (Well, I should say for me. Ben takes most things in stride, while I yell obscenities at the television.) So last night, we caught an episode of Flip That House on TLC where this brain-damaged couple bought a completely dilapidated house and wanted to Flip it in 3 weeks for $25,000. Now, we just started fixing up our old house, and I know very little about most types of home renovation, but give me a break! There's no way! So it was gratifying to watch the whole thing spiral out of control and cost $40K and take 15 weeks, but my lord did it get my blood pressure racing.

That was followed by an episode of While you Were Out, which I guess I've always thought was completely ridiculous show, so my ire isn't exactly new. It was this episode, where they crap up a couple's deck in Utah. Unreal. Seriously look at that After picture. The stuffed animal bearskin rug? Gross. I kept thinking what a huge waste of time and money it was. Those poor people. Unless they liked it. Then all of humanity is just screwed.

My favorite is still This Old House. A lot of the construction stuff is not immediately applicable to our situation, but those guys rule and I love their New England accents. Tom is my favorite. And this dude's eyebrows are the stuff of legends.