here's that closed door

One effect of living in a house that's now over 50 years old is that various original parts have to be replaced. We have, for instance, had two out of three bathroom sink faucet assemblies replaced, plus various toilet parts and the garage door opener assembly. All of them done by invited professionals.

Today we finally got around to fixing something that had been a problem since we first moved in: the sliding glass patio door in the living room. It wouldn't open smoothly, and was so challenging to close again that for years now we'd just left it closed all the time. Which was a nuisance: we couldn't open it to cool the house down on summer evenings, and B. had to go around, out the front door and along a stepping-stone pathway and through a balky gate, to reach the patio where she likes to practice her viola outside on balmy days.

When we first discovered the problem, our landlord in his handyman mode made an extensive attempt to clean it out and fix it, but it didn't work. This left me feeling that it was probably unfixable, at least by handyman standards.

Now, however, I discovered the existence of professional companies that specialize in sliding door repair. (Maybe they could have fixed the pocket door in the hotel room bathroom that trapped me on our last visit to San Diego.) When I described the problem over the phone, they said immediately that the cause was that the roller assembly had gone bad and needed to be replaced. It was expensive, but it sounded like it would fix the problem.

So two guys came today, masked. Working mostly from outside on the patio, over an hour's work they wrestled with the door and its frame, wielding screwdrivers, electric drills, mallets (!) and other implements, first fixing the door itself and then installing a new deadbolt when it proved that neither the old one nor the clamp lock was working right.

Now that's done, long before summer when we'll need it. Meanwhile I sat on the couch browsing through Andrew Roberts' history of WW2, a book I definitely need to discuss with you after I've fetched his source material for one odd point from the library.

Also meanwhile, unseen by me but read about afterwards, Jamie Raskin was saying, "If that's not an impeachable offense, then there is no such thing."