Some time late last week, something strange began happening in my bathroom. While I’m sure your imagination and mine can conjure all sorts of more interesting sentences to follow that one, I’m going to ruin the fun, and reveal that the water in my shower would only maintain a proper shower temperature of 130° for about three minutes before becoming ice cold.

Over the weekend, this caused a few interesting things to happen:

• Painful, tortured, piercing screams from Andrew, who’s not particularly fond of or good at showers even when the water’s sufficiently hot
• My quickly becoming skilled at completing the full shower process within 2.5 minutes
• We completely stumped our plumber

It turns out that it was a bum thermostat on our month-and-a-half old water heater (which is why it stumped our plumber; those things just don’t usually go bad that quickly), which was quickly replaced upon diagnosis. According to my wife, long luxurious hot showers are now once again available in the Parker household.

I’m back in DC this week, smack in the middle of my first winter storm of the year (all two inches or so of snow, and the current falling ice/sleet). Tomorrow’s morning drive to the office could be potentially interesting.

But that’s not the weird bit; that would be my bumbling into another water-related event, in the form of a mysterious puddle on the floor of the room spreading slowly out from the kitchenette closet. I couldn’t find the source, but I reported it to the front desk this morning before heading to work. Turns out there was a slow leak in ceiling above the closet, which has been fixed, though there’s still a decent sized fan sitting near the closet to dry the newly shampooed carpet.

Oh well – that’s been my not-at-all significant news for the week. Certain others are the ones with the real important stuff to report: Welcome, Autumn, and huge congratulations to Tara and Mike!