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It's A Hobby

Last night the temperature nose-dived. The low, at least by our thermometer, was 58°, by far the lowest since June 9th. That was 11° degrees off the average low for the last 10 days, although the average low on this date for the last four years was only 62°. Even so, it was a substantial change from what we have been experiencing recently.

In December of 2005 Barbara’s sister and her husband gave us a digital thermometer which registers inside and outside highs and lows for the day. We have been keeping track of daily temperatures ever since. We even drew up a form to keep track them, and every morning at 8:00 we record them for the previous 24 hours. I post them to an Excel worksheet, and at the end of each month I prepare a report showing all kinds of stats for the month, season and year to date.

When I show all this important stuff to Barbara, she takes the paper in hand, then immediately hands it back. “It looks good,” she says. How she knows that from such a superficial glance is beyond my power to understand. But she is not the only one; we get some good-natured teasing whenever we have a family get-together. The usual accusation is that I don’t have enough to do.

If you ask why do I do this, the quick answer is “Because I can.” But I can do a lot of things I don’t do. To be honest, I really don’t know why I do it.

We watch the History Detectives on PBS, and we always wonder why people keep such things as a ticket stub to the James Buchanan inauguration, or an unidentifiable piece of equipment that may have been on the Hindenburg.

I guess some people just like to collect things. With me, it’s temperature statistics.

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