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gaydar at the rock and roll hardware store Tuesday, September 19 2006
The weather was cool and there was a little rain light rain today, but it was nothing to stop me from taking the dogs on their morning walk in the forest. Later we all drove to Marbletown Hardware ("the World's Only Rock and Roll Hardware Store") so I could get pieces of the ever-useful material known as galvanized perforated angle iron, which is great for compact structural needs such as can present themselves in the late stages of a solar collector installation. The Marbletown Hardware stereo is always tuned to WKZE, which has an eclectic enough playlist that sometimes they're not playing rock and roll at all. So there I was, in the World's Only Rock and Roll Hardware Store listening to Blue Grass.
While there in the store, I saw a youngish woman staring perplexedly at a paint color palette trying to determine something. She glanced up at me and didn't see what she was looking for. But there was a guy across the room who had what she wanted. He was a fit middle-aged man wearing what appeared to be a form-fitting pink sweater and carefully coifed (though thinning) hair. The woman asked the gentleman if she could borrow him for a moment and then asked if the two colors she was holding up were the same. He said something, I don't recall what, but I did notice he spoke with a European accent. "Thank you," said the woman, in a way that indicated she was a complete stranger to the gentleman. Then she continued, by way of explanation for her intrusion, "You looked like the kind of person who would know." Evidently this woman's gaydar was coming up with the same information as mine had provided.
On the drive back from the hardware store, I stopped with the dogs at the Secret Spot along the Esopus, where I harvested scrap lumber was down from from destroyed decks upstream. We also waded all the way across the creek, and the water was noticeably colder than it had been during that August heat wave.
Later, using pieces of that galvanized perforated angle iron, I got the frame for the Solmaxx collector into the position where I needed it, about 60 degrees above horizontal (18 more than my latitude so as to maximize winter heat collection and limit the possibilty for snow to accumulate on it).
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