sWatch

Swatch Aluminum Cased Chronometer

I think I need a new watch. It was losing time, so I bought it a new battery and it's still losing time. In the past I've had a couple of old watches cleaned in hopes of resurrecting them, but it hasn't paid off. That might work for something like a Rolex, but it doesn't seem to work for your run-of-the-mill watches. So I need a new watch. I mentioned this at lunch the other day and my gang pointed out that nobody else wears a watch anymore, they all get the time from their cell phones. I don't have a cell phone, well, actually, I do, but I don't carry it around with me. I probably don't really need a watch, but I have gotten used to wearing this one and I kind of think that if you are going to wear one it should be able to tell you the correct time. Mine has lost almost 40 minutes since I replace the battery a month ago. Of course now that we have gone off of daylight savings time it's only 20 minutes fast, so in a couple of weeks it ought to be right on time. For a day.
    I had a little trouble finding this watch. I went to Fred Meyer's (the local mega mart) to pick up a Timex from the rack of a hundred. I couldn't find one that was big enough to fit around my wrist. I am not the most muscular guy, so I was a bit surprised by this. Used to be clasp-type metal wrist bands would have a dozen or so holes punched in the clasp so the size could be adjusted to fit. These watches had only three holes and they would not enlarge enough to fit. So I went to the jewelry department and picked out a Seiko, but it was too shiny, so I took it back. I must have gotten desperate because my next stop was the watch shop at Washington Square, our local mega mall. I just wanted a plain silver watch and I found one. It's a chronometer with a couple of extra buttons and a couple of extra dials, but it's analog, it's silver, it has a large face and it fits my wrist. Sold.
    Looking at in the store it appears to have a set of tick marks around the outer edge. I wonder what they are for? Turns out they aren't for anything, it's just the manufacturers name (Swatch) printed in little tiny letters. There is also a little square so there are seven distinct characters, the pattern repeats four times, so the edge is divided into 28 sectors, which must be good for something. I have no idea what.
    This watch is made out of aluminum, which makes it light weight and kind of cool. Not as cool as titanium, but why the eF would you need a watch made out of titanium? That just seems like a foolish amount of overkill, and extra expense to boot.
    My watch was especially cool back before the TSA turned up the sensitivity on their metal detectors. I could walk through the metal detector wearing my watch and no alarm would sound. Neener, neener, neener, TSA.
    Now I need a new watch, but I don't want a new watch. I like the watch I have. I just want it to run. Seems like you ought to be able to replace the guts in something like this, but somehow I doubt whether the economics are there. I looked at the Swatch web page yesterday and it was funny how none of their watches appealed to me. Is my watch that cool, or am I just getting old?

P.S. Looking at the picture I noticed that this watch has a calendar function. I never used it. You have to adjust it once every month that doesn't have 31 days, and that's half of them. Plus, you have to remember. The extra buttons are for the stop watch function. I used to play with it on a regular basis until it went wonky. I think I would rather have a regular second hand, which this one doesn't. The big second hand is for the stop watch function. The regular tick, tick, tick second hand is on the small dial at the center bottom of the face. The small upper dials are also for the stop watch function. The one on the right shows tenths of a second, and the one on the left counts minutes, though they don't show anything until you press the stop button.