Pool Covers

So I spent today up on tower between 12:00 and 2:30, with no break, no rotation, only guard in the building... And you know what happens when I do that, I started thinking. Now, first I thought about why the water level was so strange... normally there are about 3 inches of water in the gutter... today it was about 2 inches below the top of the gutter. Two options, I thought, either the torrential rains we've had over the past few days or the pool's not circulating. Normally you can tell that a pool's not circulating because the water level will drop inside the pool itself, but I had like 12 people swimming and splashing around, so I figured I wouldn't miss a half inch of water with that many bodies in it. High gutter level is a second sign of bad circulation. Anyhow, after that was cleared up (it was rain water after all) and the maintenance guy said he'd vacuum some water out onto the deck, I started thinking about pool covers. I think it was because the rope we use to pull them was on my tower where I would normally put my walkie-talkie. That or because he was telling me about how the wind put them all over the deck overnight. I think I've come up with a new device, or system if you will. It involves one straight rope, one rope that splits into a Y, and many S-hooks. It takes care of a number of problems: (1) no more having to walk the end of the rope around to the starting side, (2) no more tearing off the poor handles when pulling with a rope, (3) no more having to tie knots around the handles with the rope- that never works quite right anyway, (4) lower amount of water on the cover, (5) no more hooking the handles on your lane lines... there might be more benefits, I'll keep you posted on that. Oh, and add one of those turny-windy (that's windy like winding road, not like windy day) things to one end, and you're no longer tangling rope as you toss it onto the floor and stuff... I like it. I sketched it. Kind of. I drew the major parts on the computer then wrote and sketched on top of it. I'll scan it later to show you, but no one patent it, ya'hear! I think the guards will like it too, once they get over the fear-of-change stage that sometimes comes with new toys. (I don't fear new toys, I find them shiny and attention-keeping- maybe it's the fact that it's a toy that involves manual labor?)