In April of the year 2000, the final year of the last century, I started up a new non-profit organization. That week I shopped for office supplies, mindful of my limited resources. I bought a stapler, and I bought a box of 5000 staples. I remember wishing that I could buy a box of five hundred staples, as I doubted this new venture could ever use so many. Last week I went to refill the same stapler, and, opening the box of staples, I realized that these were the last. Some wonderful, meaningless, gratifying, mundane threshold had just passed, and I held the empty box in my hand and smiled.