Earlier this week my ancient Sienna started shaking like an old wino, and I imagined that a wheel was coming off. A visit to my trustworthy mechanic — glad to have found him — revealed it sounded and felt worse than it was. Repairs came in at only a couple of hundred bucks. Annoying, but passable.

If it had been a more expensive job, that would have been the end of the line for the car. It’s reached that point. Going to have get another car soon. Some people seem to enjoy acquiring cars, but not me. I once worked with a fellow who bought a car every other year or so, trading the old one in each time. I never understood that psychology. When you have a car the object of the game is to keep it as long as possible.

Also this week, a large amount of vile water collected in our dishwasher, which we seldom use, and refused to drain. Meaning that water from the kitchen sink drain had diverted into the dishwasher because of some blockage somewhere. Would Power Plumber fix this?

First, though, I had to get the nasty gray water out of the dishwasher. I considered various ways to do that before I remembered, having stupidly forgotten, that I have a small Craftsman wet/dry vac out in the garage. The water responded to its suction, and then I applied Power Plumber to the underlying problem. It worked. How often do I get to dodge two potentially expensive problems on the same day? Not often.

That’s what we need nanobots for. To make things that fix themselves. Of course, self-repairing machines would upend a lot of the service economy, but then again the economy’s been continuously upended since the Industrial Revolution. Not that I expect to live to see such things, but it’s a nice techno-pipe dream.