one easy thing

 I had noticed problems of late with the front door lock; it was very hard to get the bolt to go all the way into the catchplate, and a few times I came home and found that while the door was solidly shut, the lock was not holding - and so it opened as soon as I pushed on it. (This made me nervous and more than once do a VERY fast run through in my house to be sure no one had been in it; no one had).

I had taken to locking the screen door, too, which wouldn't offer much additional protection because it could easily be forced, but I figured anything that might slow down a would-be burglar would help.

(I didn't worry about when I was AT home - I could force the lock to hold then by leaning hard on the door from the inside, and there's a second, old, deadbolt that I don't have a key to, but that I can lock when I'm in the house. So at least I felt secure at night - I would be MUCH more concerned about a home invasion than a burglary; I don't really have that much stuff that would have a great deal of value on the open market and what valuable stuff I have is either too big to move (the piano) or is well hidden (it would take some effort to find my jewelry given the idiosyncratic place I keep it)

It got really bad yesterday, so this morning I asked for the name of a good locksmith when I was at work. I tried calling him, got no response or call back. I was mildly anxious about it - wanted to go to Denison tomorrow and would like to securely lock my house; I do have neighbors who look out for such things but they're often not home on Saturdays). 

So I called another place that I saw good recommendations for, but suspected they just did car keys. Yes, that was all they did. I sighed and thanked the guy and said "I guess I'll have to try to find someone else, anyone you recommend?" and he named the guy I had called but when I said "yeah, I couldn't reach him" he laughed and said "yeah, he takes a lot of time off." But then he recommended someone else. I called him, got a voicemail message about "I'm out for outpatient surgery Wednesday, if it's after that time leave a message" and I worried that maybe he was STILL out. But there are LITERALLY two locksmiths in my town who do front-door locks, so if he wasn't available, I was out of luck. I left a message but felt like "okay maybe I just cancel the Saturday trip then?"

(I did not feel up to trying to fix it myself. I am pretty handy but in matters of electricity, gas, and home security, I prefer to leave that to people who ACTUALLY know what they are doing).

Fortunately the guy called me back a few minutes later - and yes, he could come out early afternoon, we set a 12:30 time (and I steeled myself to wait, that's my experience with every other workman in this town, they're a good 3-4 hours after they set the time). But I went home anyway and made lunch and threw some laundry in the wash. And as I was finishing my lunch, at 12:32, there was a knock on the door: there he was.

I showed him the problem and said I didn't know if it was the lock mechanism or the catch plate for sure but I thought it was the catch plate and he messed around with things a bit and then got a big Dremel-type tool and started reaming out the area that the bolt shoots into. (It was a bad sound. Very much like a dentist's drill and I didn't like it). But a couple rounds of that and it was fixed. I asked him if it could have been that it's been so dry here and he said yes, a lot of houses are shifting a little bit, and that was probably the exact cause of the problem. He also lubricated the lock but said it was fine - which is good, I can keep using the same key (I have a spare in my desk at work just in case, and I've contemplated having an extra made and giving it to a trusted person at church in case someone needs to get in my house for some reason if I'm out of town).

He seemed like a nice guy; I'll have to remember him if I need any more lock work or if someone I know needs it. Certainly the fact that I got him out on the same day and that he came out when he said he would earns him a good mark in my book.

It wasn't CHEAP but in the trifecta of "good, cheap, fast," you don't always get even TWO of those things any more, so I don't mind paying for it. And now I have the security of knowing my front door will lock.

***

Edited to add: AND my taxes are done and in. The CPA called yesterday and I totally forgot I had said I'd go pay him and sign the forms for electronic transmission until I was seated at my desk and had completed a "pomodoro" worth of research reading.

So I went over there and did that - small refunds from both the feds and the state, and the CPA is less expensive than one of the big-corporate services I HAD used (and who fouled up one of my returns badly a few years ago - which was when I went to this CPA for help clearing it up). 

Then I came back home here and did the rest of my day's research reading.

I'll have to see how the weather looks tomorrow but hopefully I should be able to go to Denison for something fun.