Lock and Load

Well, I think the Clariton-D has done the trick and I can conclude that I was experiencing allergies and not the onset of a cold. Scratchy throat and some light-headedness gone. The light-headedness is especially a problem for a work commute on the highway that I normally do.

So I'm home today.

I took advantage of the day off to take care of my broken front door lock. Sunday night the door lock mechanism died. It just kind of spun around. The dead bolt still worked, so no worries. And I had a spare door set from when I got a new door a couple years ago but told the installers to use the original set.

On Monday, I mistakenly locked the door knob lock on the way to work and then spent a small amount of time fiddling with the lock to unlock it so I wouldn't worry all day about being able to get into my home at the end of the day. I had copies made of the new lock key over my lunch hour and planned to install the new stuff this weekend.

But I decided to take advantage of the day off, and after only a little over a half hour, I have new locks with all the old keys swapped out for new keys on all the key chains. It would have taken a bit longer but I used the plate mechanisms already in place since they were the exact same model as the new ones. That saved time and saved wear and tear on unscrewing and re-screwing plates into the door and door frame. And it saved me the time of filing down one of the door frame plate for the dead bolt that was installed a bit high a couple years ago, but only became a factor in ultra low temperatures when the door twisted just so and then did not match up with the bolt plate. This last winter confirmed that my fix worked since I had no problem closing the bolt.

So now I have a nice shiny brass door knob set.

And I get to return to work tomorrow.

But I do now have an unexpected afternoon of free time to waste. That's quite the rarity at this stage in my life.