What Time Is It? Thoughts on My Favorite Watches

My watch was lost in my house for six months. I found it a few weeks ago, hidden in the drawer of a desk that I use every single day to put on makeup and jewelry. I am so happy to have it back. It was a college graduation present from my parents, and I have worn it since 1999. It is a gold and silver Raymond Weil watch with a round face. 

While it was misplaced, I confirmed to myself that I am definitely a watch person. I like to know the time, and I usually set my watch fast by five minutes so I have built in spare time when I’m running late. 


My boyfriend uses his iphone to tell the time, and he was nice enough to lend me his watch while mine was missing. His watch was also a graduation gift from his parents, and it is a large round faced men’s watch from Tiffany & Co. We replaced the black rubber band it came with and now it has a simple navy blue fabric band from J.Crew’s Timex collection. I really like it, but it is a men’s watch and I have a small wrist. It didn’t really work when I wanted a more feminine or formal look. It is perfect for giving an outfit a jaunty, menswear polished look.

Soon after finding my watch, I was out to dinner with a friend who wears a purple Toy Watch, an oversized plastic watch that has a lively, fun and childish in a good-way vibe. 

I bought a white one on ebay and had it sized to fit me. It has a very large face like the Tiffany men’s watch, but the bright white color feels summery and fresh. 

It also reminds me of the beautiful Chanel J12 watch that I saw on a friend recently, but the Toy Watch is an inexpensive way to get a similar style. 

photo from Polyvore.com
http://www.polyvore.com/chanel_h2422_womens_j12_white/thing?id=35385551

When I was without a watch, I browsed a lot of new watches because I was afraid I would never see my watch again. My mom has worn the same round faced gold and silver Cartier Panthere Vendome watch for over twenty years. It is classic and feminine, and it is on my list of all-time favorite items I hope to own. Cartier doesn’t make the watch anymore, but it is available on ebay. Cartier makes another watch that I love, the Panthere, which is almost the same as my mom’s watch but with a square face. 
 
  
photos from vintagetimes.com.au and demesy.com

The watch that has stayed in my memory for the longest time is a Chanel watch I saw in an advertisement in the late 1980s. It had a gold square face and five strands of delicate pearls as the band. I really, really wanted it in middle school and since the price wasn’t listed in the ad, I thought it would make a great birthday present for me. I never got it, but I am very happy to know they still sell a similar version (or maybe the exact same style, Chanel has very classic designs).


photo from elle.com
http://www.elle.com/Fashion/Trend-Reports/Trend-Report-Pearls-and-Quilting/%28imageIndex%29/4/%28play%29/false

Summer on the Potomac River

I was born in Washington D.C., and my parents have lived in Bethesda, Maryland since 1993. But until Saturday, I had never been on a boat on the Potomac River. 

The river forms the borders between Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. It is the fourth largest river along the Atlantic coast, and it is 383 miles long. 

We jumped on the boat near Lorton, Virginia at a public dock. Once we were on the river, we were in between Fairfax County in Virginia and Prince George's County in Maryland. 

This is the Maryland side of the Potomac. 

 Mount Vernon, home of George Washington, on the Virginia side of the river.

I have not been to Mount Vernon since I was in elementary school, and I did not remember it was on such a beautiful piece of property. 

According to our co-captain, Washington owned thousands of acres of land in Fairfax County and chose this prime spot to build his home.  

 

This was my first trip back to the east coast this summer, and I love the heat. I didn't need a sweater even when the boat was moving fast. We found some coves and explored the more residential parts of the river. 

In San Francisco, I fall asleep to a noise machine playing "summer night", which is the sound of bugs and crickets. I didn't need my machine while I was in Washington, but I had somehow forgotten that some bugs bite. The mosquitoes were out on the flat water. 

As the sun went down, we headed toward the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and the new National Waterfront. 

The Masonic Temple in Alexandria, Virginia was a landmark to me when I was little. I also thought it was enormous. I lived in Alexandria until I was 8 and always knew we were home when I could see it.

 We headed back to the dock at sunset. 

Hipmunk keeps me calm

No matter how hard I try to remain calm, every time I start to book a flight I freak out. I either feel guilty for not looking hard enough to find a shorter, easier, or cheaper flight or I look at multiple sites and scramble my brain as I try to keep the different airlines, prices, flight times and layovers straight in my head. 


But now there is Hipmunk: www.hipmunk.com


Type your departure and destination cities and dates of travel into their spare home page and after a few seconds, a chart pops up. The chart shows all the flights that leave on your chosen dates. It is easily sortable by agony, price, duration, departure and arrival, and there is a button to click to view only non-stop flights. 


It even shows flights with east and west coast time zones, an addition that is very helpful for me. Since I moving to California, I often have to calculate flight times when I travel back the east coast.  I have made some embarrassing mistakes.

The three flights that I have researched on the site have prompted me to buy the flight on Orbitz. Two out of three times I did, but once the Orbitz site was slow and buggy, so I went straight to the airline’s site and used the Hipmunk information.

I haven’t tried it for hotels, but I am so happy with the service for flights. I also can’t wait to show it to my Dad, since I inherited the flight research guilt from him.

Sailing American Eagle

Let’s imagine that you have a strong Boston accent, and that you are enjoying a beautiful day on a sailboat. You and your friends have just finished a cooler of cold beers when you realize you are lost in the Nantucket Sound. 

You might ask...where the Figawi? 

May 2011 marked the 40th anniversary of the Figawi Race Weekend, which began in 1972 as a friendly sailboat race among friends. 

The race has grown from a few boats into a Memorial weekend tradition with hundreds of boats sailing 27 miles from Hyannis, Massachusetts across the Nantucket Sound to finish in Nantucket Island’s harbor. 

I was invited to be a passenger in the race aboard American Eagle, a 12 meter sailboat that was built in 1964. 

 

American Eagle was designed and built by A.E. Luders for the 1964 America’s Cup race by his Stamford, Connecticut based company, and the boat was funded by a syndicate led by Reynolds duPont. 

American Eagle’s United States Sailing boat race number is 21, a designation that shows its status as a pioneer of U.S. racing. Sail numbers range into the thousands for new boats. 

CNN founder Ted Turner purchased the boat in 1969 and raced the yacht successfully around the world, winning the first World Ocean Racing Championship and setting records in several international races. 

Turner was named “Yachtsman of the Year” twice during the time that he owned American Eagle. He sold the boat in 1976 to purchase Courageous, the 12 meter that he skippered to win the America’s Cup in 1976.

Figawi Race day in 2011 started out with thick fog enveloping the Hyannisport Marina.  

After several delays, the fog began to lift around 1pm. 

As one of the Class A boats in the race, a designation based on size, American Eagle started about two hours after the first boats left the harbor. 

The sun came out, and we had a great sail. 

As we were closing in on Nantucket Harbor, the wind died, and we and our Class A competitors lolled in the afternoon sun. 

Only 18 boats finished the race and sadly, we were 

not one of them. We dropped sail and motored into Nantucket Harbor after five hours at sea. 

American Eagle went for a short sail the day after the Figawi, and the pictures show the beautiful lines of the boat that I couldn’t see when I was a passenger.