It's even getting cooler upstairs, outside of the bedroom. It was still warm last night--about 84F. This morning, it was down to 79. Over the weekend, it peaked at exactly 90F.
The upstairs thermometer is a indoor-outdoor digital unit that had its exterior wire broken off--we had to get the probe outside so it could read the temperature there; we tried putting it around the door, which eventually sawed it off. I'm hoping to get a wireless digital unit before long. Digitals look nice and scientific but not as authoritative (in a picture) as the old, dirty dial in the last entry that read 97.
We got that thermometer somewhere. It's easy to read (and photograph) from inside the house. Before that, we had a "mercury" thermometer, with the little red line that expands and contracts with the temperature. But you can't read those from inside the house. So when I went to work in the morning, my wife and I had a little ritual. We have developed many little rituals over the years, and this was one of them.
When I got out on the front porch, I looked at the thermometer. Then I gave her the finger. Lots of fingers. This morning, it would have been seven fingers held up (five on one hand, two on the other) and then six fingers (five and one) to tell her that it reads 76. Clever, eh?
Of course, I got that system from covering high school basketball games--when a player commits a foul, the referee uses fingers--two fingers, then four fingers--to tell the scorer that the foul was committed by #24. If the number has a zero in it, he either holds his hand in a circle (thumb and forefinger) or else "draws" a zero in the air. He doesn't have to worry about numbers higher than five--high school basketball rules don't admit to the existence of 6's, 7's, 8's and 9's, so they aren't allowed on uniform numbers.
But in the real world, we are often at 6's and 7's, so if I was carrying something, I stuck it under my arm and used two hands. The left hand always said "five," so she could focus on the other hand (rather than adding 3+3 or 4+2; let's make it easy after all!).
Of course, where I live, the weather gets cold, too. So what happened in winter? I would signal "6" and then give a thumbs up, which means "above." If it's colder than that, "1" and a thumbs up.
The coldest temperature I ever relayed that way was "1", "6", thumbs down. And then I'd hurry and get my gloves back on. (For those of you that don't use Imperial measures, as the U.S. does: -16F translates into "really cold" in Celsius: -27C.) Of course, we've gotten way colder than that--but I didn't have to stand in it and relay temperatures.
That system was fun, but it came to a crashing end due to a summer windstorm that blew around garbage cans, empty Walmart bags, leaves, shingles and small animals. It also dislodged the cheap mercury thermometer from the porch pillar where it had been hung and sent it crashing onto the walkway next to the house. That was the end of that and led to the dial thermometer being purchased at a rummage sale. It's done well.
But the digital units are tempting me, and the siren call will get me before long. My ultimate dream (one of them) is to get a "personal weather station," that wirelessly relays readings from my yard to the internet and out into the universe. That would be way cool. I've got the broadband internet, but all the equipment costs about $400. So it won't be happening for quite a while.
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