I have this feeling we’re getting a little far afield from who we are – skimming sharks and all that. We’ve been putting photos up on the wall for decades now and I decided to pull off a couple from way back when.

Up there on top is one of the tables used by regulars – they leave stuff and others shove it around, but with respect, because they leave their stuff too. Julia brought the lamp in because she likes the extra light on gloomy days and the short days of winter. Enos said, “To H. with napkins and established the habit of just keeping a roll of paper towels on the table. Sometimes folks will pull it out from the window and get a lively card game going – or Monopoly or Scrabble. We had to go and find another game at a rummage sale, because Theo ate the “z” in a moment of pique at Howard. But I’m running on here . . .

That second picture, well, that’s where we put together a special gathering or where we go when we just want a special place to gather  . . . Maude usually claims the peacock chair these days, though back in the heyday of this picture, Judge Bob used to sit there – that’s why we call it the bench to this day. Old J.B. passed away about 25 years ago, but if I close my eyes, I can see him sitting there, waiting to hear that the jury was back in.

My husband has an apartment in Warner-Robins, Georgia and the pool there has a new denizen – the AquaVac tiger shark. I don’t know if this picture is of the exact model they have, but it is close.

He said it was running yesterday and can even climb up walls; whether of not it will follow you home and turn out to be the famed Land Shark of Saturday Night Live is at this point undetermined.

When he was looking for a picture to show me while we were ichatting, he came across another product of AquaVac – the pool skimmer. Actually, it is nice and cute, but I wouldn’t recommend putting it in a kiddie pool.

Let’s see if I can show it to you in action: Hmmm, try this link to Skim Shark.

It warmed up today, enough that I decided, “Oh, let’s put a screen in Colin’s window which faces the east, but is blocked from southern exposure by a second floor that was added over the garage. It’s in a brick corner, in other words. And it hasn’t been opened in a long time, in some more words.

I took out the inner storm window, which wasn’t stuck at all, and then I went to crank out the window. Yes, I haven’t really mentioned yet that these windows have eight panes each and crank out. It would not budge. But, hey, I was prepared; I took my trusty mallet and gave it a little tap and voila . . . it didn’t budge.

I then did a lot of things: unscrewed the crank mechanism, pounded on the frame with the palm of my hand, tapped it some more with the mallet and used a screwdriver to try and leverage it up a bit. Then I stepped back and looked at my stuck window.

I repeated these steps, plus I added getting something to drink. Putty knives were a  no go. But then, I found a piece of wood and put it against the bottom where the frame was stuck and tapped that with my mallet. It moved . . . a little, but it did move. Oh, so carefully, I inched the window open and then cleaned the window bottom and the sill and soaped them both.

With the crank reattached and the area vacuumed, I tried to close it; It got stuck. So I planed a little wood off and resoaped it and by pulling on the cord attached to a strong eyelet I had previously put into the frame, I got the darn window shut.

Then I opened it again . . . and I told everyone to call me when they wanted it closed. This may become a saga.