Continuing the tale of our shopping trip on Saturday evening, after our Gap spree we moved on to Filene's Basement, where I found a very nice Kenneth Cole watch in a polished silver finish with a black polyurethane band; I have a brown and gold Armani I wear most often, but I was looking for a black and/or gray watch to better coordinate when I wear black, gray or blue clothing. The new watch is much more attractive in real life than in any of the photos I was able to find, especially the silvery white face; metal finishes seem to photograph badly, making shopping for any kind of jewelry online risky.
I really love watches, but have had some bad luck with them over the years. When I was living in Boston, for example, I had a collection of a dozen or so, all of which were stolen when my apartment was broken into just two weeks before I was scheduled to leave to come to DC. (The thing that made me most upset about the break-in was not the stuff that was taken but that the thieves smoked cigarettes and ground out the butts on my floor and rummaged in my refrigerator, drinking a couple of beers and eating a piece of my leftover birthday cake!) Additionally, when I was younger the battery-powered watches I owned often would stop running within a few days and seemed to drain quickly (my mom, though, had an even odder problem in that early battery-powered watches used to start running backwards when she would wear them); with quartz movements, though, I don't seem to have that problem.
In probably unrelated matters, though for some reason this discussion reminds me, my normal body temperature is closer to 96.8° than 98.6°, and I also seem to exude some kind of corrosive enzyme; the doorknobs in the house where I grew up are pitted and scarred, especially the one I used most, on the inside of my bedroom door, and my mother says she could always tell when I'd been the last person to drive the car before her because the steering wheel would be slightly tacky as though it had been melted. What a lousy, low-level superpower, though, not much better than Meg's fingernails in the "Super Griffins" segment of the Family Guy "Viewer Mail #1" episode.
Chris: "We demand obedience!"
Meg: "Or else!" Her fingernails grow.
Guy: "Is that all you can do?"
Meg scratches him on the arm.
Guy: "Ow! That kinda hurt! Is that bleeding? Well, I guess it's all right, ouch though!"
the battery-powered watches I owned often would stop running within a few days and seemed to drain quickly (my mom, though, had an even odder problem in that early battery-powered watches used to start running backwards when she would wear them); with quartz movements, though, I dont seem to have that problem.
Huh. I didn't know that. I have the same problem. (I get BOTH! And quartz watches are not immune.) I don't know whether it still happens - I gave up on watches.