I came home from a late nite work session around 11:00 p.m. and went to empty the dishwasher before going to bed, as is my habit.

Except the dishwasher hadn’t drained, and no amount of pushing “drain” and wishing hard would make it do so.

My father was nothing if not up for a daunting home maintenance challenge and so, despite the hour, I got out the toolbox and set to work in his image.

An hour later I’d found the problem: a tiny piece of plastic, smaller than a nickel, lodged in the first hose along from the sump. It took a lot of clamp-undoing and manual-water-draining and tube-sucking and tube-blowing to unearth this as the cause of my woe.

Thirty minutes later I had the dishwasher back together and now we’re back in business.

I’m happy to have inherited a little of my father’s indefatigability.