Little Man

A sign of hope in the mail today - the Lee Valley Gardening catalogue.

It seemed particularly hopeful - or ironic, if you prefer - since I received it after digging a path through 1/2 metre of snow for the gas meter reader.

Lee Valley is the purveyor of many wondrous things (one of their specialties is bringing traditional Asian design to North American customers).

It's a good thing that Lee Valley is reminding us that spring is coming (when the reports from the various celebrity groundhogs came in yesterday, my thought was "only six more weeks of winter? sweet!") because Little Man's news has not been good lately.


This is Little Man. I gave him to Husband for his birthday last year. (He came from Lee Valley, too.) Little Man is actually a wireless weather station. He wirelessly communicates with a sensor in our backyard to give us instant information about the weather in our neighbourhood. I gave him to Husband because in the winter, the first words out of his mouth in the morning was inevitably, "What's the temperature?", as it tends to set the tone and, sometimes, schedule, for the rest of the day.

Photographing Little Man wasn't easy and lends an effect a bit like those new airport security scanners that see under your clothes. To the naked eye, Little Man's underwear lines are much less noticeable, but as you see, they do allow for a variety of outfits depending on the weather outside. Tonight it's -4.5°c outside and a cosy 18.9°c inside. There's also relative humidity (36 percent - is that high? We have a humidifier in here for the guitars) and a whole bunch of other stuff on there that Husband understands and I don't.

Because Little Man lives on his bedside table now, and the first thing I say in the morning is, "What does Little Man say?"

ronnie