It’s a little-known fact that if the number of steps in your house — including the ones leading into the house — isn’t even, the house won’t be level. When I learned that, it freaked me out to the point that I decided to count all the steps in and around our home. I counted the steps:

• Down to the basement
• From the basement out through the bulkhead
• Into the sunroom from the patio
• Up to the deck off our bedroom
• Up to the entrance to the breezeway between the garage and the house
• Down from the breezeway to the garage
• Up from the breezeway to my office
• Up to the front door.

The total was 49 steps. I panicked.

Next Steps

I put a Super Ball on the floor to see if it would roll one way or another. It didn’t budge. Then I grabbed my extension ladder and my Craftsman 48-inch aluminum level and went up on the roof. Putting the level on the peak of the roof, running parallel with it, the bubble was in the dead center. Something had to be wrong.

I bought a sextant and stayed up all the next night. I aligned the horizon mirror and the index mirror so the image of Mars appeared to touch the horizon. I used the micrometer drum gauge to make fine adjustments until Mars just touched the horizon. I noted the exact time of the measurement to ensure accurate calculation of my position. Then I used the angle and the time of my sighting along with a nautical almanac to triangulate the position of our house against the horizon. Dead level again.

Now completely flummoxed, I hired a team of surveyors to plot the position of our house. I asked them to bring every theodolite, GPS receiver, drone, measuring tape, compass, tripod, and range pole they had. If there were any of those items they didn’t have, I volunteered to buy them. After three weeks of work, the team foreman reported our house was perfectly level. He was shocked when I started sobbing.

The Dénouement

After the surveying team left, I was inconsolable. I went and hid under our bed, unable to cope with the discrepancy between the odd number of steps in and around our house and the fact that our house was perfectly level. Anne came in to ask me what was wrong. Through my blubbering, I managed to explain to her the horizontal planar integrity of our home, despite the fact that we had an odd number of steps in and around our house.

She calmly said, “Hey, Chucklehead. Did you count the step from the driveway to the front walkway?”

I’m still under the bed. But now it’s for an entirely different reason.

Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/

Mark O'Brien Writer, Blogger

I'm the founder and principal of O'Brien Communications Group (obriencg.com) and the co-founder and President of EinSource (einsource.com). I'm a lifelong writer. My wife, Anne, and I have two married sons and four grandchildren. I'm having the time of my life.