From Alain de Botton's excellent new book The Architecture of Happiness I've learned that the private home Le Corbusier built for the Savoye family in Poissy, France in 1931, a house with a flat roof, leaked terribly. The house was to be a "machine for living" and the flat roof was supposed to be functional and economical. But a leak over the son's bedroom -- a leak that sprung immediately after the family moved in -- caused him to get sick. A chest infection turned into pneumonia and poor Roger Savoye had to spend a year in a Chamonix sanatorium recovering.

My flat-roofed Brooklyn apartment building doesn't leak on me, but I contracted pneumonia last week. I had it once before, when I was little. Back then I bragged to my friends that I'd conquered something that can kill people. My current convalescence, keenly timed for my birthday, has been in Minnesota. I anticipate my stay will be much shorter than that of M. Savoye.