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preparing for solar downtime
Tuesday, September 27 2005
Tomorrow Gretchen and I leave for a trip to the Middle East, the spawning grounds of Western Civilization. I had a lot of things to get done before we left, and today I was running around doing them. Adding to my headaches were a pair of housecalls, the first in over a week. (I've been doing as little computer work as possible so as to have more time for my solar project.)
To prepare the solar panel for my absence, I filled it and the pipes and hoses leading to it with two gallons of antifreeze. I also replaced the garden hoses connecting the panel to the household plumbing with heartier hosiery. Then I screwed some eyebolts into the panel so I could tie it down solid in case the remnants of a hurricane should pass through.
When I fired up the basement boiler to see if it would work properly in our absence, all kinds of crazy things started happening, as if my solar controller was haunted. Valves opened in the wrong places and water was pumped into zones where it had no business. Then I noticed that a leak I'd thought I'd fixed yesterday was still spewing water. This time there wasn't anything I could do about it that didn't involve draining the expensive antifreeze I'd just added. To avoid draining that antifreeze, I'll have to install a new draincock to allow vapors to escape from the cooling solder without being forced to burrow tunnels (future leaks) through it.
This evening Gretchen and I picked up our old friend Eulayla from the Kingston bus station. She used to housesit for us all the time back when we lived in Brooklyn and this marks the first time she'll be housesitting for us up here. After we picked her up we all went out for a late dinner at the steakhouse place attached to the Quality Inn near the Kingston traffic circle. I know "steakhouse" doesn't sound very Gretchen-friendly, but she'd heard this place has a salad bar and veggie burgers. "You never hear about salad bars anymore," Gretchen said as we drove up, adding, "Were they an 80s thing?" "Yeah," Eulayla said, "they got replaced by sushi."
The steakhouse was doing its best to be a TGIFriday knock off, from the cluttered walls to the overly-upbeat cadence of the waitpeople. Unfortunately the veggie burger came with American cheese (which is technically a "cheese product"), something I had not put in my mouth in a very long time. It had an unappealing texture and tended to stick to the roof of my mouth like mutton.
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