May 25, 2019: New Travel Watches

Saturday. Kat is here all day today. I did some light work this morning. The thing that I have been waiting for today is my new travel watch (and Dominica’s) to arrive. We had pondered what to get because my plan had been to get a Huawei, I have been wanting one for a month, and at the last second Huawei and the US government have had this huge run in and getting one right this morning seems like a really bad idea. So I decided to carefully look for something else.

Kat had forgotten that she was supposed to teach today. So she had planned on hanging out all day, but got a call and had to run to the school to teach all afternoon. So we did not see her again until evening.

What we decided to order is the Huami AmazFit Stratos for me and the AmazFit Bip for Dominica. They came this morning and we spent a few hours watching travel vlogs and getting the watches set up. So far we are pretty happy. Mine is big and works well with my wrist, which is what I wanted. I need a large watch for my arm or it looks weird. Dominica’s Bip is cute and works well for her. Mine is all black, her’s is cinnabar red-orange.

We decided to get the watches as part of our general travel safety equipment. By having a smart watch is means that most of the time that you are able to keep your phone either in a pocket or better, in your back pack. That means free hands for safety, better alertness for safety, far less likely to leave your phone behind somewhere by accident, and the weight can be put on my shoulders rather than pulling my pants down which is always the biggest challenge that I have to long walks. We also get improved pedometer, heart rate monitor, GPS, and so forth. And they look cool.

This afternoon we did a bit of cleaning around the house. Then this evening Kat returned, and Nick, Corey, Rachel, and Tim all came over to hang out for the evening. Like we had for much of the day, we spent the evening hanging outside in the atrium. The weather was great. Nick brought over Miller Lite and we had some beers.

For dinner, we were split on what people wanted. So Tim, Nick, Corey, Rachel, and I ran out first to Quinlan’s and picked up shrimp baskets and hot sandwiches for one group, then went to Taco Bueno and got burritos for the other group. We ended up split half and half, basically. All great food.