In the morning, I took the repairman’s advice from yesterday and started repairing (again) our dishwasher. How many honest repair guys will tell you, “You could fix this yourself and get the part cheaper on Ebay,” after giving you a quote of $354 for the repair? Not many. To be sure, he got his $80 trip/diagnostic fee, but honested himself out of another hundred bucks or so. Or perhaps he honested himself into more, for I’ll certainly never call anyone else .

The discharge pump was faulty, he said, and it came out this morning just as easily as he said it would. “There might be one or two screws down there — I can’t remember,” he said, “but then just rotate it and pull it out.” No screws — just a simple rotation and out it came.

In the afternoon, the neighborhood boys came over, and the Boy’s new Lego set came in, so there was only one thing to do.