Alkalinity?

[waterbear]

IF your chlorine levels are very hight the only way to get an accurate pH reading is with a properly calibrated pH meter. Most pool stores do not use them, however. My opinion (and anyone please feel free to correct me if you think it is in error!) would be to:
1) let the chorine level drop to under 10 ppm (mix your sample of pool water with an equal amount of distilled water...a shot glass is a good measure) and then test it and multiply the reading by 2. This way you can test up to 10 ppm Cl instead of 5 ppm)
2) Then retest your pH and if it is extremely low add borax IN SMALL INCRIMENTS to bring it up to 6.8
3) Then follow the procedure in this thread exactly to lower the TA
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=191

I noticed that you stated that the ALk was "190 (a purple color down from 240+ on the 23rd)" , Is the TA test in your kit a titration (where you add drops until the color changes) or is it comparing a reagent against a color chart, or maybe a test strip?(TA tests on pool strips are usually shades of green while TH ...Total Hardness... are blue to purple!) If it is not a titration test I would not mess with it at all until the water was tested with a titration test. This didn't register with me the first time I read it but as I reread through the post it set off a warning bell in my brain.