I'm on a plane a few months ago and get into conversation with the man seated next to me. He's a retired architect and now spends his time with a few rental properties at the beach. He's talking about what he does but suddenly pauses, becomes reflective, and says, "I'm a lucky guy."

I shift in my seat, and give him my full attention.

He says: "I had asphalt put down on the driveway in one of my rental properties, but I got to wondering if the contractor put it down as thick as I asked him to so I went over one day and drilled in one small corner to check. The drill started smoking, and then stopped all together. But I keep a portable drill in my car so I went and got it. After a minute or two the battery died, so there I was, stuck. Right at that moment a truck comes along and I wave to the fellow and say, 'Do you have batteries for a portable drill?' Now what are the chances, right? But guess what? He did!"

"I sure am a lucky guy."

Three, four weeks later I find myself thinking about this conversation and all of a sudden it occurs to me: "Hey, wait a minute! Wait a minute! What's so lucky?!? First of all, you have a contractor you don't trust, so you have to check on him. Secondly, your drill breaks. Third, your batteries die. And fourth (as it turns out), the asphalt was too thin. Question: where's the part that's lucky?"

Answer: his attitude. He sees himself as a lucky guy.

I'm thinking about this because when we turned on the heat for the first time this season, it didn't work. It took 2 men 3 hours to find the problem: a leak. The line for the upstairs unit runs inside the dining room wall and, when contractors were working on our house this fall, they added molding in the dining room.

Yes, you're right. A nail went though the heating line. So it meant rip out the molding, cut a hole in the wall, find the leak, repair the . . .

Before meeting my airplane friend, I would have said, Oih Vey!

But now I see it this way: They found the leak.

I sure am a lucky girl.