Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 FR, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper does his best to control the universal human urge to buy things just to have them, but is likely to succumb to advertisements for the Kala Pocket Sundial to replace his wrist watch.
In fact, the prospect of using a sun dial instead of a watch to tell time so fits into the keeper’s out-of-the-loop life style that he is as excited as it is safe for a man of his years to get: Imagine a device that gives the time within 10 minutes or so of what it really is, cannot be used on cloudy days or during blizzards or at night when the keeper doesn’t care what time it is, and that does not require either batteries or winding!
The ads say the pocket sun dial was the result of 23 years of development by the Kala watchmaker family in Austria, and while a price of $61 gives pause, the keeper looks back on his history of buying things just to have them, and is about ready to spring for the Kala Pocket Sundial, which, incidentally, can be used anywhere in the world as a compass, if the sun is shining, that is.
Sometimes when her phone is out of reach, Phyllis asks the keeper what time it is, and he can hardly wait until he can pull out his pocket sundial, check for the presence of sunshine, and say something like, “Well, Babe, it is somewhere around three o-clock, you are facing northeast, and the cocktail hour is obscured by clouds.”
Phyllis will obviously be most appreciative.
