On Time

Last Sunday, when the U.S. switched to Daylight Savings Time, I was resetting my "good" watch when the knob suddenly stopped making the hands turn forward. Today, I finally got around to taking it into a repair shop. The guy there told me that I had apparently stripped the teeth off a central cog, which would be an expensive repair. He recommended that I just set the watch by turning it backwards, until that no longer works, and then bring it in to be fixed. That sounded like a sensible approach, especially since, he reminded me, "You only set your watch twice a year!"

I thought about that for a moment, and then told him to go ahead and repair the watch now, and I'll pick it up when I get back from my upcoming business trip. Why? Well, I leave tomorrow, and in the next 3.5 weeks, I will be changing my "cheap" watch from Minnesota time to:

- Atlanta time, then to
- Paris time, then to
- North Africa time, then to
- West Africa time, then to
- Paris time, then to
- Cincinnati time, then to
- Minnesota time.

I guess there may be a reason that I've stripped the teeth off a cog in my watch.