Tag: Toys

Guns, cars, tools, knives etc.

Something Different

Toys

Even though I’ve pretty much decided that the Tissot Classic is my watch for life (background here), that doesn’t stop me looking around at other watches.  And if I’m doing the Lottery Dream stuff, I look even more.

Here’s my problem (stop me if you’ve heard this before):  my criteria are firm, and immutable.  They are:

  • manual wind only
  • as plain as possible (no silly moon phases, tourbouillons, etc.)
  • no “diver” watches
  • no steel straps
  • no gold case:  rose, yellow, white, whatever;  steel only
  • no “trendy” brands (which would include Rolex, Omega, Tudor etc.)
  • cost:  no higher than $6,000 (in the Lottery Dream category)

Then in my wanderings, I discovered Schaumburg watches, and I got excited.  From the blurb:

Schaumburg watches have been produced since 1998 in a small factory in the idyllic town of Rinteln, in the Schaumburg region of Germany. This exceptional watch brand specializes in producing mechanical watches of high quality and attractive design. Every Schaumburg watch is handmade, which is why the company’s watches are true works of art. Schaumburg watches are exceptional in every detail.

So, to recap:

  • New company (!)
  • German
  • hand-made
  • reasonably priced (for a hand-made watch)
  • high quality
  • interesting designs — different, even eccentric, but not self-consciously so)
  • hand-wound (also automatics, but no interest in those, of course).

Try these two.  First, the Unique 30:

…and the Unique 33:

I like that Industrial Revolution look, very much.  Had they been around back then, I feel that Isambard Brunel would have worn one, without question.  (They make IWC’s Engineer line look quite fussy, even effeminate.)

And each Unique is under the magic $6,000 mark.

Now… where did I put that lottery ticket?

Back Story & The Brand

Toys

After I talked about my favorite watch of all time — Tissot Heritage — a couple of people wrote to me to ask about the brand.  (I’m astonished that people had never heard of the amazing company, which sells more watches than any other Swiss brand, period.)

Here’s Teddy Baldassarre’s take on the whole thing, and like his other discourses, it’s excellent.  For those with a limited budget but are interested in a super-accurate chronometer, by the way, it’s worth noting that Tissot makes the cheapest such in the whole market, and its performance equals many of the (very) spendy models like Rolex.


(They typically cost between $800 to $2,000 depending on the model — but the chronometer’s action is automatic, and therefore of no interest to me, a self-winder devotee.)

Yer welcome.

Not Interested

Guy Stuff, Toys

Never having had the financial wherewithal to buy any upper-end watches, I’ve never let that stop me from looking at the market — just as not ever having had the money to buy a Ferrari hasn’t stopped me from looking at expensive sports cars and that market.

Yet even if I had the funds, I’d never buy a Rolex watch.

I know, Rolexes are (generally speaking) well-made timepieces and may be worth the moolah necessary for their acquisition.  All the cool kids wear them — which is actually a negative for me, of course — but besides that, if you want to get a watch that will essentially last your entire life, the Rolex is a good bet.  And of course, if your hobbies take you underwater, then Rolex reigns supreme.  (If like me you’re unwilling to venture into an unfamiliar medium filled with things with teeth and murderous intent, then obviously this would not be a factor.)

But the reason that I’d never buy a Rolex is that they’re big, chunky and bulky, and while that may be the current fashion (another reason for my unwillingness), I’m more of the dress watch persuasion.

And of course, because I prefer a manual-wind over automatic- and quartz (battery-powered) watches is yet another reason.  (Of digital watches we shall not speak:  in other words, if you want to extol all the virtues of your $25 Casio-type watch, please restrain yourself because that just irritates me.)

Here’s a typical Rolex (I say “typical” because like members of certain ethnic groups, they all look the same to me):

Oh, and did I mention that I can’t wear metal bracelet straps because I have hairy arms, and the stupid things catch on and tug at the hairs until I rip the thing off and throw it across the room?  (I know, the Rolex might survive such an action, but whatever.)  It’s pretty much leather for me, in other words, and Rolex doesn’t like their watches to be thus equipped, so screw ’em.

Finally, like the aforementioned Ferrari, Rolex also plays reindeer games with potential customers, restricting access to certain models, thereby driving up the price and thus making them all the more “exclusive” (i.e. only available to the gullible and status-hungry). I’m not going to play that game, ever, in any market.

And for those who want something of quality like a Rolex but of sane pricing, here are some alternatives across all five popular Rolex models:  Submariner, Datejust, GMT, Explorer and Daytona.  I’m not in the market for any of the alternatives, of course, because they’re all still chunky and use metal bracelets straps.  For the watch geeks on the same topic, there’s always Teddy Baldassarre.

My biggest fear is that my beloved Tissot Heritage model may one day break irretrievably, and I won’t be able to find a replacement.  #Discontinued #OldSpiceFreshRedux


(yeah, that’s my hairy wrist)

Better Than Yeti Or Stanley

Good Stuff

LOL well that didn’t take long.  DOGE merch is now for sale.

Honesty compels me to state that I know the person behind this cool idea (the wife of one of my best friends), but I get absolutely NO kickback or other such reward for punting it on this website.

Honesty also compels me to state that it’s kinda spendy, but no more so than the aforementioned Yeti / Stanley stuff.

Grown-Up Sippy Cups

Guy Stuff

This is a silly topic to discuss, but whatever.  Even though I am by no means triskaidekaphobic, it’s nevertheless Friday the fucking 13th, so here we go.

Back when I worked in an office, I always used a coffee cup with a lid, because knocking an open cup over your PC keyboard was not one of life’s pleasantries, both in terms of the actual mess, and the hassle involved in cleaning the gunk out from under the keys.  Likewise soft drinks:  never a can, always a bottle with the screw-off top.

It’s a habit I’ve carried into my private life too, not only for all the spill containment, but also because these thermal cup thingies keep my coffee hot in case I forget to drink it quickly.  (I’ve talked about this topic before, under different auspices, but note the El Cheapo Magellan thermal cup I mention in passing.)

But it appears that this is no longer enough.  Advancing age has brought with it advancing clumsiness, and the problem with all these wretched thermal cup thingies (as you will see) is that very few of them have a screw-on lid — they all, even the nosebleed stuff like Yeti, have a simple press-in lid with a rubber gasket to hold the lids in place should the thing be knocked over.

And alas, with continuous use do the rubber gaskets deteriorate and loosen their grip, which means that if you do knock your adult sippycup over, the result is the same as if you’d just been using a regular plastic glass filled with the drink and (if necessary) ice:  a veritable flood of sticky liquid all over the floor.

Which is what happened to me the night before last, when in trying to move my tall Magellan sippycup over so I could see the beloved face of New Wife, I knocked the fucking thing off the side table and yea did the lid come off the cup, emptying the contents of ice and OJ all over the frigging carpet.

So yesterday was spent visiting various retail establishments, trying to find a container with a screw-on lid that wasn’t the size of a Thermos flask and resembled more a coffee cup, like the Magellan.

Total failure — and I went to Academy, Cabela’s and finally, Wally World, where I got what I was sorta-looking for, except that it’s tall and skinny rather than short and squat.

It’s also too capacious, at 16oz where I was looking for something in the 10-oz-12oz range.  But at some point one has to resign oneself to what the world actually provides rather than what the world should provide.

Earlier on I did find (and purchase) one such thing with acceptable dimensions and the proper screwtop from Cabela’s, but it’s so fugly that I was worried that New Wife would forbid its use in the public domain, and confine it to doing duty as my night-time cold-water source on the bedside table.  Surprisingly, she agreed that it’s kinda fugly, but likes its patriotic theme.  So she agreed to let me use it.

(Yes, she’ll be becoming a U.S. citizen as soon as the DHS/State Department/whoever gets their collective ass in gear.)

All this could have been avoided, of course, were I just to apply a leetle care in the handling of coffee cups — I could use actual china cups or ceramic mugs like civilized people do, and not have to look like an overgrown child with an expensive fucking metal sippycup.  But that’s the world I live in, and so it goes.

Anyway, having said all that, I’m off to make myself another cuppa in the tall black thing.  And by the way, it works really well at keeping its contents hot — actually, a little too well, as my scalded tongue will attest.  I might just go for the Patriotic Barrel instead… alert the media!

If I get too irritated by these two replacements, or if New Wife Puts Her Foot Down With A Heavy Hand© after all, they will be sent off in disgrace to live in our travel trunk, which we break out when heading for an open-road adventure and style is not a prerequisite.  They will join the regiment of other utensils which have been found wanting.

Whereupon the whole bloody search for the impossible sippycup dream will resume and my irritation, never far below the surface, will explode once more, to the consternation of New Wife and the chortles of my Readers.

You bastards.