the ultimate watch

I love watches. In my world, you can never have too many of them (just like cameras). So you can imagine my excitement when I recently ordered the Casio Pathfinder PAW1500T-7V, the watch Casio crowns their "ultimate" watch.

What, you may ask, merits an "ultimate" classification? Well, for one thing, it boasts a compass, an altimeter, a thermometer and a barometer. It also charts the ebb and flow of the tides (even though I am far from their reach in landlocked Salt Lake City). It displays the phases of the moon, has 33 world time zones, five alarms, a stopwatch and countdown timer. Even more impressive is the fact that it automatically synchs itself with the radio transmissions of the nearest atomic clock to render accuracy to within 1/16th of a second, all the while charging itself by the light of the sun or any other nearby light source so that you may never ever have to replace a battery! It even has an automatic backlight that is activated when you tilt your wrist to check the time in low ambient light. It is nicely designed with a General Patton military ruggedness that is ill-suited for formal events or those in search of refined elegance.

It comes packaged inside a small wooden box within a regular cardboard box, denoting it's "ultimate" status. And lastly, did I mention that this feature-packed electronic marvel weighs a quarter of a pound and looks like a manhole cover when strapped to my somewhat skinny (the only part of my anatomy that qualifies for this description) wrist?