Friday 11/8/2017 to Sunday 20/8/2017 - A Pocket Full of Rye, Dusting Off a Typewriter & This Week's Wristwatches

As life gets busier, the windows of free time get a little smaller, and a little more planning is required in an effort to post each week.
Something tells me that it may not go that way, so these weekly posts may become monthly or bi-monthly.
Anyway...

Well, I never quite got there, did I? 

Okay, what else, what else?

Oh, okay, I got a copy of Casino Royale from The Folio Society. They specialise in hard-cover reprints of classic literature. I like them because of their attention to detail, quality of the paper,  and the fact that they commission some beautiful artwork by well-known artists to include in the books. I was wearing the Omega AquaTerra on the day this book arrived in the post. It seemed fitting. Old-school wristwatch sitting next to a hard-back spy novel in a cardboard slip-case.                                                                              The copy of Live And Let Die  was one that I scored a few years ago off eBay. I got The Leopard from a nearby thrift store for 3 bucks. The cover artwork is great. The James Joyce book came as a freebie with the Fleming, so I might give it a read some day, but I'm not sure if I fancy my chances with it. Same thing goes for The Leopard.  As I get older, I become all too aware that there are still a tonne of classics that I haven't read. The time shortens, the list lengthens. Therefore, I get more selective with my choices. Ideally, I should devote a greater amount of reading time to these books instead of wasting time watch late-night crap on TV or getting side-tracked by useless web links. 

And I suppose when I'm not reading, I should be writing. Give those screenplay ideas a good run for their money. Maybe tackle those little Bond fan fiction snippets and see if I can churn them into a few short stories or a novella. Simply for the sake of seeing if I can produce a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The blog writing is all well and good, but I feel like it doesn't really lead me anywhere, since I don't think it's the best of what I could do. As I've said before, gang, these blog posts are a first draft, so what you're reading is pretty much what spills out of my head and onto the keyboard, without any editing or re-working.

In all its glory. 

Sorry.

Switched over to the  Omega Seamaster 300. The clasp on the bracelet is a little fragile at the moment. There's a small steel rod in the hinge that is close to wearing out. If I'm careful, though, it should last me a little while longer before I need to worry about how to repair it.

Been playing a little more of The Stones lately. This happens every year as the weather gets a little sunnier. Thinking about it now, it must have been the Summer of 1986 when I bought Rolled Gold, a double-album compilation of Stones tracks from their beginnings in 1962 through to 1969. I must have worn out a stylus playing those records again and again. 

Although, the reason I'm playing more Rolling Stones is because I picked up a copy of Exile on Main St (that makes three copies on CD now) which had a bonus disc with ten unreleased songs on it. One track is instrumental and not very good, and the other is a Keith Richards version of Soul Survivor with heavily reworked lyrics and Keef on vocals, not trying very hard to sing the song and seemingly making up the lyrics as he goes along;

"I may be a fool,

Hey yeah, you've got my tool"

At least they're funny. And luckily, the remaining eight tracks on this bonus disc are wonderful. Some of them are very bluesy, with Mick Jagger blasting away on a harmonica (Blues harp, to those of you in the know) in fine form.  

One day I'll have to do a post on this band and why they mean so much to me.
Switched over to the Oris Diver Sixty Five and wore it for the last ten days. Of course, I finished playing Exile and then sifted through my other CDs to find some of their other albums. Sticky Fingers is another great one. 
I've got a theory too about this band. Even their most lacklustre albums will guarantee one classic song. This was the case, as far as I'm concerned, until around 1983. 
I'll go into a little more detail if/when I write that post about the band. 

Always been a fan of Rye Whiskey. Used to drink Canadian Club and Coke back in my younger days before I discovered Beam's Rye. I still have an unopened bottle sitting in my liquor cabinet. Not sure if you can still get it here in Australia.

Damn! A quick visit to the Jim Beam website shows that the classic yellow labelled Rye is no longer produced. Damn! Now I'm too reluctant to open this bottle, which is silly, after all. It's a liquor cabinet, Teeritz, not a museum.

I Googled this new Rye and landed on a Whiskey blog which outlines the differences between the yellow labelled Rye and the new Pre-Prohibition green labelled one that I purchased a few weeks ago. It would appear that the old yellow label recipe was a little 'mild' for some tastes. This new recipe adds a few more percentage points to the alcohol content of this nectar. I tend to mix my dark spirits with Coke, so I can't really taste a stronger kick with this new blend, to be honest. Still, I am liking the taste of this new green label Whiskey, and the 'Pre-Prohibition' moniker on the label evokes a nice, pleasant 'Hammettesque' vibe too. 
I may not have to break the seal on the yellow label after all. And yep, Jim Beam Distilleries no longer produce the yellow label version. 
Dang it. 

I took a little time on Saturday writing up a timetable for my Monday workday. The plan is to do this for each day of the week so that I have a clearer idea of the ebbs and flows of my working week. This will be a little futile because the wild card in any of this will always be e-mails and phone calls, which can chew up quite a bit of time without my realising it. 

I spent over an hour on the phone to two separate customers one day, explaining the reasons in great detail (again and again!) as to why we had quoted for their watch repairs. Customer service is one thing, and I'm good at it after 22 years in hospitality and another sixteen in retail, but there is a limit to how much time you can spend going around in circles with customers who refuse to accept that their wristwatch requires repairs due to their own mishandling or abuse of the watch. The warranty card can only get them so far and sometimes, some folks have unrealistic expectations as to what a warranty will cover.
Basically, folks, if you drop a wristwatch and it stops working, that's accidental impact and the warranty does not apply. That's the super-short version.

Okay, it's now almost three pm on Sunday afternoon and there are still a few major tasks to deal with. I've switched watches for the day, opting for the circa 1969 Omega Seamaster Chronometer;

* Wash the car - CHECK
* Washing off the line - NOPE
* Fresh washing on the line - NOPE
* Ironing - NOPE
* Bread for lunches - NOPE
* Bathroom (clean) - NOPE

Yessiree, I got my work cut out for me, don't I? 
The weekends just aren't long enough. 
Right, 3:04pm. Gotta bounce.

Have a good week, all, and thanks for reading!

 

Friday 4/8/2017 - This Week's Wristwatches.

Short post this week, gang. And here on the left is the result of the Photoshop Express app on the iPad. 

The Internet - A Whole New Way To Waste Time!
I rarely check my Twitter account these days. I set it up about three years ago when I was studying, as I was informed that I would have to create a social media account as a prerequisite of one subject, on something widely used, such as Facebook. I had no plans in hell to set up a Facebook account. Twitter seemed harmless enough. Although, I'm now at a point in life where I'd like to pare away some of the internet residue in my life and scale back on spending so much time online. 

Anyway, onto the watches. I started with the Sinn 103 chrono last weekend;

Switched over to the Oris Diver Sixty Five early in the week;

I've been preparing that Olympus Trip 35 with a view to selling it. I have two other models of this classic rangefinder camera and figured I didn't need another. This one works just fine, but it has a problem with the red flag function. Basically, if you try taking a picture in low light, a small red cellophane disc pops up in the viewfinder. Now, if you know your way around a camera and basic photography, this isn't an issue, since you'll have a good idea of suitable lighting conditions. I took a screwdriver to this camera and removed the top plate and had a look at the red flag section. Gave it a light sprinkle of graphite powder -courtesy of the tip of one of those little IKEA pencils- which didn't seem to make a difference.
Next option would be to remove the lens and  aperture blades and give them a coating of graphite. I was gonna have to buy some actual graphite this time around.
So, I may spend an hour or three taking this camera apart and giving it the once-over. Hope it works.

This little guy continues to turn the house upside-down. Madame (our other cat) hasn't accepted him yet and I'm beginning to suspect that she may never.
Every time he gets near her, she flattens her ears and hisses at him. He doesn't seem terribly fazed, and I have to hand it to him for his perseverance. And don't let his cutesy looks fool you. Leave some food unattended for a second and it's as good as gone. Anything from chicken to buttered bread, it's all fair game as far as this guy is concerned.

I wore the Longines Expeditions Heritage on a lizard strap sometime this week;

As I've mentioned in recent months, work has gotten very busy since I went full-time and I find I have less time to devote to long posts on this blog. I was thinking that I should just write a little each night throughout the week, say maybe 30 to 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, I have ideas for other posts and I could perhaps take longer to write those.
There's always something one could write about.

For example, we got word recently that the next Bond film is due to be released. In November 2019! Daniel Craig will be 51 by the time this next one is released and I, for one, will have to wait over two years to see if or how they'll eradicate the memory of SPECTRE. No mean feat.

And now here I am, 9:50pm Friday night, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Dir: David Fincher, 2008) is on TV, but I already have it on DVD and really should sit down to watch it one night soon. Without the incessant commercial breaks.

We may try to catch Dunkirk sometime this weekend. It's gotten stellar reviews. Man, it would be very, very interesting to see Christopher Nolan direct a Bond movie. A fan's gotta dream.

Finished my working week with the Omega Seamaster 300;

Another week done and dusted. So much for a short post. I hope your lives are ticking along smoothly.

Thanks for reading, have a good weekend!