In praise of Corian®

I have a bad habit. It's not bad because I do it. It's bad because of the way I do it. After I finish whatever I'm drinking in my cup, I clean it. That's the good part. I rinse it under the faucet and then (here comes the bad part) I shake the water out of it before I wipe it off with a towel. I shake the cup over the sink and if I don't pay attention, the cup can hit the sink. The picture to the right shows the second of the cups I've cracked this way. The sink is fine!

Both cups I've ruined were gifts - this one was from my son. That makes it even worse. I really like this cup and I continue to use it but it's just a matter of time until I can no longer use it anymore. As I wrote that, I realized that every cup is like that. Eventually, I'll break or lose every cup I like (you can keep cups forever if you don't use them). It may take a long time like the mug I dropped at work. That mug just shattered and I couldn't use it anymore but this one is hanging on. Seeing the crack will remind me to take better care of it whenever I clean it.

This reminds me of the time I was talking with a guy who, as we talked, mentioned that he was dying. I said I was sorry and he said not to make too much out of it. "You're dying, too," he said. "We're all dying. We've all got a limited time to live." It turned out he didn't have a disease or anything wrong with him. He was just trying to live his life with the realization that his time was precious and he should not waste it. He didn't want to be morose about it. He turned it into a positive motivator. I try to do that but it's too easy to get bogged down in the everyday things of life.

Anyway, this post wasn't supposed to be about that. I wanted to mention how tough our countertops and sink are. They are made of Corian. It's a synthetic material that is solid (not just a veneer over wood) and really looks nice. We had the option of getting Corian, granite or Formica. Granite is tough, too, but you have to seal it and we knew we'd not keep up with that. Corian not only looks nice but it feels good, too. It doesn't have the hard, cold feel of other countertop materials. Another nice feature is how pieces of it blend together. Our countertops blend right into our sink with no gaps or cracks where water can leak. It's all one smooth surface.

I was going to say that Corian's one bad feature is that it is a cup killer but that's wrong. I'm the cup killer. And now my cup has a crack that will remind me to take better care of it. Maybe I'll learn to do that for everything I own and everyone I know.