Ever since the pedestal sink went into the new bathroom, it’s drained slowly. I mean, really slowly. Ridiculously slowly. We’d tried several trouble shooting measures — checking the U-pipe of the drain (could it be clogged already?), using Drano (ew!) — but nothing seemed to work. It still drained about a teaspoon a minute.

Just before we both left town, Dre and I admitted we were stumped. Today I decided to call a plumber because I had a theory that some caulk or grout from the remodeling project had gotten down the drain and clogged up the pipes. A snake would fix it, right?

The plumber came by this afternoon and the first thing he did was turn on the water to see how slowly the sink was draining. After 20 seconds he said “Oh, your drain stopper isn’t sitting right.”

Then he reached around behind the sink and fiddled with the stopper hardware for 10 seconds. Then he turned the water back on and it drained just fine. He looked at me apologetically.

“Wow, it’s just like tech support,” I said. “Except for I feel even more stupid.” Then I paid him $100, which is the company’s minimum charge for dispatching a plumber to your house. Just call it a dumb-ass tax. (Actually though, it was worth every penny because I don’t actually care what the problem was: we couldn’t solve it and the plumber could. Therefore, he deserves the pay.)