February 7, 2024. 7:52pm
A Simon Sinek parable randomly popped into my head today where he describes that he bought a bag of marbles and two fishbowls. Each marble represents one week, and he’s set aside fifty-two marbles times the number of years remaining until he reaches 78 years old, which is the statistical average human lifespan. That’s one marble a week for the rest of his life. At the end of each week he asks himself, “Was this a week worth living, and did I inspire someone?” If his answer is yes, he moves the marble to a second bowl. If the answer is no, he throws away the marble because he wasted it. If I’m honest with myself I must say I’ve asked myself that question several weekends over the past few months. No marbles. And that somewhat bothers me.
Two Sundays ago I was startled by the sink water suddenly turning on in the powder room. The ceramic valve insert failed on the hot water tap, which I remedied by shutting off the hot water from beneath the sink. It should have been an easy repair except the handle screw was corroded. The brass screw was so badly seized that a quarter-turn of a screwdriver stripped the screw head. I tried a few delicate approaches on and off last week (e.g., WD-40, screw extractors) until this past weekend when I committed to the extreme step of boring out the screw with a drill bit. Tonight I arrived home and found that my replacement parts had arrived by mail, and it only took about fifteen minutes to replace the valves on both the hot and cold water taps. I guess you can say I’m (up to my wrists) in hot water.
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