Some of you might remember how my fancy smurf-blue Optimum Time watch died literally AS I walked into the start box at Greenwood. It did this weird funky number thing before the display completely died so I just figured the battery was dead. While the timing of it’s demise couldn’t have been worse, I thought it was no big deal.
I got a new battery about a month ago and finally last weekend I remembered to ask the SO to change it for me. Because me plus electronics is a really really bad idea, just ask every laptop I’ve ever had. He whisks the watch off to the garage, where all of his fancy tools and gadgets are, and comes back 20 minutes later and says “I dunno what’s wrong, but it’s not the battery.”. Well crap.
A little investigation reveals that I’m 3 months past the end of the warranty period. I tried the oh so fancy re-boot that Optimum Time suggested (hold all the buttons down at the same time, which is really hard BTW, until something happens). Nothing ever happened, so it was suggested I send it in. To THE UK. Shipping both ways plus repair fees? Might as well buy a new watch.
I must confess, I really only used the stopwatch feature of my watch anyway. I didn’t particularly like the beeping at intervals thing or the counting down thing. I’d rather just check my time at a couple spots on course and focus more on learning my pace than on listening for beeps. For interval work I just keep an eye on the time. I’m just not fancy about watches I guess. Or I just don’t want to set all that crap up… that could be it too.
So I did what any other logical human would do – proceeded to whine about it to everyone. My options were:
- pay to ship it back and forth to the UK and have it repaired for who knows how much (minimum $50 at the best case scenario I would guess)
- buy a new watch ($90)
- wait until a used watch comes up for sale
- buy something less fancy (read: CHEAP, because the Great Coconino Penny Pinching has already begun) that will still work for me.
Luckily Hillary came to the rescue (or just wanted to stop the onslaught of whining… whichever) just before I added the cheap one to my cart on Amazon and offered to send me her old OT watch. Bloggers are the best. Bonus points – it’s yellow. Still fitting in with my color scheme.
Stupid Smurf watch… RIP. Your life was short and tragic, despite living in your original box and being used like 10 times. But welcome to the family, Sunny! May you fare better than Smurf.
