Origin Story

The Stories Behind My Dad’s Omega Speedmaster

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I’ve written before about my dad’s Omega Speedmaster Professional, now my Omega Speedmaster Professional, and how he passed it down to me. But before I forget, I want to write about a few of the stories he told me about that watch. They’ve always stuck with me.

When I first got it, I thought he’d bought it in 1969. Turns out that wasn’t true. After some research, the serial number puts it around 1970 or 1971. When my dad was still alive he confirmed that timeframe. Still, an absolute classic.

One thing he told me that always made me laugh was how Omega almost never buys back their old watches, but more than once, when he sent it in for maintenance, he claims they offered to buy it from him. He always said no.

My dad was a physician assistant who worked in trauma and surgery, so the watch saw some things. He used to joke that it had been sterilized more times than he could count, which, considering where it had been, I appreciated hearing.

He told me about one time when one of the links on the band came apart while he was literally working inside someone’s chest, and the watch slipped off his wrist. They had to fish it out, clean it thoroughly, and fix the band afterward. I still have that original band, so I know it got fixed.

I can’t imagine that would be allowed now. I don’t know what the current hospital rules are, but I’m guessing “no watches in open chests” is probably written down somewhere these days, sterilized or not.

When I tell people that story, some of them are grossed out, others think it’s amazing. I’m firmly in the “amazing” camp. It’s history, after all.

Another quirk is the bezel. Instead of the usual tachymeter, his has what Omega called a pulsometer bezel. It’s what I grew up seeing on his wrist, so to me, that’s just what the watch is supposed to look like. When I had it serviced maybe ten years ago, they asked if I wanted them to replace it since it doesn’t rotate anymore. I said absolutely not. The bezel’s part of its story.

Years ago, when I was living in New York, I brought it to the Omega Boutique for maintenance. The guy behind the counter said he’d have someone take a look and disappeared into the back. A few minutes later, an older gentleman, clearly one of their watchmakers, came out excited to see it. He thought the pulsometer bezel was great and said it was a really special piece. He also told me they could do the service in-house instead of sending it back to Switzerland, which was a relief. Apparently if it was slightly older it would need to travel for service.

It was nice seeing someone else appreciate it that much. That old watchmaker was genuinely happy to work on it.

I don’t wear the original metal band anymore, it was always a little loose even when my dad wore it, and apparently that specific band design is rare now. So I keep it stored safely and use a NATO strap instead.

It’s funny how polarizing this watch can be. Some people hear its stories and get squeamish. Others think it’s the coolest thing ever. I’m clearly in the second group.

Every time I take it in for service, it still gets attention. It always starts a conversation. And I love that.

The Story of My First Movie

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It’s pretty likely that the first movie I ever saw wasn’t actually the one I’m talking about today. What I’m going to talk about is the first movie I remember seeing. I don’t even recall being in the theater for the entire thing, but I know I was there because I have one vivid memory from it. Based on the release date and my approximate age at the time, I must have been pretty young. Looking back, the fact that this movie is the first one I remember says a lot about me.

If you know me, you might have guessed that the first movie I remember seeing in a theater was Star Wars: A New Hope. It came out in May 1977, which would have made me a little over three years old. I’m not sure how long it was in theaters, so I can’t say exactly when I was taken to see it, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume I was about three. Was that a movie a three-year-old should see? The short answer: probably not. And, in full disclosure, before writing that sentence, I looked up when I first took my own daughters to see a Star Wars movie in theaters—it was Solo, the Han Solo film. They were five, so I think it’s safe to say that three was probably a bit young. (I’m not a hypocrite on this!)

I don’t recall if my mom was there. She isn’t in my memory, nor is my sister. That’s why I think my dad might have taken me by himself. All I really remember is getting up—or maybe sitting down—during that scene where Darth Vader is choking the general who, frankly, was being a bit cross with him.

That’s it. That’s all I remember just that one vivid moment. But I have a pretty good feeling that it set the stage for my love of the genre. With me wanting to write more recently this was one of those topics I wanted to write about. It also should come first before me talking about other stuff about me slightly older anyway.

Earl Grey Hot

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I started drinking tea on and off for the past 11 years. I wrote about previously how we went to fancy tea for the first time on my birthday a decade ago when we were in NY. It was a fun experience that we have since done many times both in NY and now that we live in England. We also will do our own tea at home. M does a fantastic tea with homemade scones and everything. More recently we will simply just have tea and biscuits or a sweet with the kids or when people come over. I’ve also done tea and a biscuit at while at the office or even just at a break from work at home.

When we first went for tea I had the inevitable question to answer, what tea do I want. Being someone that barely was drinking coffee for a few years at the time, I had no idea what tea I wanted. That first time 11 years ago I simply went with what I knew. I knew that Captain Picard drank and asked for Earl Grey. I figured if it was good enough for Captain Picard I might as well try it. Funny enough I rather enjoyed it. Since then it’s pretty much the only tea I drink.

Since drinking it more regularly I have researched more about the history of Earl Grey. I did not know at the time I started drinking it, it’s not an everyday tea for most people. We have the Yorkshire Gold in the house that is more of the “regular” tea many drink if there is such a thing.  I just do not drink it. I’m perfectly happy with Picards choice.

So yes Early Grey Tea is yet another reason why Picard is my favourite Captain.

What I don’t understand is why an English guy playing a French guy is drinking English tea and not having any biscuits. That something to ponder for another day. I will think much more negatively if in the 23rd century they do not have Milk Chocolate Digestives.

My Top Star Trek Captains

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When they announced that they were making a show bringing back Picard, it got me thinking about my early memories of Star Trek and my favorite Star Trek captains. For me, choosing my favorite was a pretty easy decision. I then decided to do a top 5 list of the rest. The rest being the first 5 from my childhood through my early 20s. The newer ones add a whole new complexity to the mix. Picking my 2nd through 5th favorite in this ranking was a bit more of a challenge. The order is from least favorite to number one. And if you are reading this, yes, sometimes I have free time to waste time/creative write about nonsensical topics like this.

At number five is Capt. Jonathan Archer from Enterprise. He comes in last not because he was horrible or anything. He was just so-so. Maybe the show came out too late, and I was already attached to others? Regardless, he didn’t leave a massive impression on me.

At number four is Capt. Benjamin Sisko of Deep Space Nine. With Sisko, in many ways, I liked him. I think he was a little bit more erratic than some of the other captains he contended with. I get where they were going with him in the beginning. They were trying to make him have a past and be a bit bitter. He was more unlikable to me than I think they wanted him to be. What also worked and didn’t work for me was the whole emissary thing. By the end, it got a bit weird. Later on, I grew to like him more; however, he had tough competition and is for me at number 4.

At number three for me would be Capt. James T. Kirk. I did really think about whether or not Janeway was number three. Even with so much about Kirk being awesome, I think Janeway was just badass, so Kirk is 3. Originally, I wrote this list with him being 2nd, but I reconsidered. What was going for him was the fact that he was the original captain, which also helps a lot. Only he could overact and still be cool.

At number two would be Capt. Catherine Janeway on Voyager. I find it interesting that I like Deep Space Nine much more than I liked Voyager as a show. However, I still think Janeway was a better captain by far than Cisco. She was tough and kind at the same time. Bringing together two crews and keeping them together by sheer force of will sometimes was pretty awesome. The fact that she was a woman in the Captain’s chair when there were only men before her was pretty awesome. And that was the 90s.

That leaves my favorite captain to be Jean-Luc Picard from the Next Generation. This was no contest for me. My memories of Star Trek: The Next Generation were basically what I grew up on. Picard’s style contrasted hugely with what a captain should be compared to Kirk. I know it was deliberate, and I liked it. He didn’t go on away missions; however, he was protective of his crew. He wouldn’t always be the one to talk in a team meeting and relied on his team to get stuff done. As an adult and leader of people, Picard did things I look to emulate as a leader now. I didn’t even realize it growing up. Yet he did.

With Picard being my favorite, I was super excited to hear that they were making a new series with him. As I am writing this post, I’ve seen two episodes. By the time this eventually gets onto my blog, the series will have ended. I thought the series, in the end, was great. I know many would pick Kirk as the best, yet I don’t see them making any new series for him now, are they?

For the record if I was counting newer captains the Strange New Worlds version of Captain Pike would be tied for 2nd place!

40 Year Old Ice Cream Anyone?

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The title says it all. This is a bag of 40 year old astronaut ice cream I got when we went to Cape Kennedy around 1983. Recently I did notice that bag is not vacuum sealed like it was when purchased. I am thinking it needs to go into a hermetically sealed container. I am afraid of the world ending bacteria that may be in it after 40 years.

Still it is a piece of my childhood so I did not toss it out. Yet….

The Stuff of My Childhood Nightmares

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Going to Macy’s when we were in NYC in August we took the escalator up to the 9th floor to goto the Luggage section. Between the 8th and 9th floors the escalator’s change from more “modern” metal ones to a wood one. I recall these from Macy’s from when I was a kid. Back then they very likely between more floors than this one. I remember being very afraid of stepping onto them. They were rickety and old looking even then. They also have much wider “teeth” since they were wood so it was always scary. Seeing them again brought back an inner scream of “Nooooooo”.

The Story of My Dad and MASH

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Today is my dad’s birthday. He would be 78 today. I miss you dad. I thought today was appropriate to post this entry i had written a while ago and just haven’t scheduled to publish.

Growing up It felt like most people thought that my dad was a doctor. Big reveal he was not a doctor. He was what they call a physician’s assistant. The way he always described it was that he could do about 95% of what a Doctor does. The difference was that he needed a doctor to sign his chart versus a doctor being fully autonomous. The advantage of physician assistants is its two years of medical school versus four years of medical school to be a doctor.

My dad went through physician assistant School in the mid-70s. A few years after the movie and show MASH came out. Since I was born after the show started I cannot remember a time when he wasn’t watching it if it was on TV. I’m pretty sure that if i had ever asked ever he would have said that was his favourite show of all time.

For my dad I think it was more than a TV show. He enjoy it and thought it was funny yet I also think he felt the adrenaline rush of the glorified combat situation, even if it was a comedy. So much so that I remember during the first Gulf War he had offered to go into the field. I don’t know if it was at a field hospital or at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany however I know he discussed it to some degree. Retrospectively I am not sure how serious he was. I think on some level he wanted to go however on another it was never going to happen. In the end it never did. That never stopped him from thinking of himself as Hawkeye. I’m pretty sure that means one of his friends was trapper. And remembering this particular Doctor friend who he worked many shifts together when i was growing up they were as funny together as Hawkeye and Trapper.

The Origin Of my Origin Stories

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For my birthday I felt a bit nostalgic. I finally will post this entry I wrote almost a year ago. I simply had a lot I wrote and never was sure when to post it. So here I am.

For over a year now (I started writing this post in Jan 2020) I have been thinking about things I am interested in writing about. As much as I like to share, this blog is really for me to just write above all else. That is why I jump around to several different unrelated topics. In thinking about what I write about or want to write about I broke down my writing into a few different categories. Some of them like technology or writing about the girls I’ve been doing for a while. Writing about life as an ex-pat is also not really new anymore either.

There are some distinctly new categories I decided to focus some time on as well. One of which is stories about my dad. The inspiration for that came about around the time he died. In talking about all the funny interesting stories about him he got thinking that I wanted to write some of them down. I have written and posted a few already. There are many more I just haven’t wanted to address however they seem like pretty good stories.

After I started brainstorming about ideas to write about my dad I realized I probably want to write about some things about my childhood and things that happend long ago (aka childhood or single life). The working “category” for those are my origin stories. This particular post was inspired because there’s one story I want to tell. As I started thinking about how to tell it, I realized it is really three separate stories. Each one related and building off the other one. Or that is how it flows for me. As I fleshed those stories out I realised there are more beyond those that I find interesting and would want to tell.

Another category I don’t write a lot about is work. I used to do that often. If you search the archives of this blog you’ll find many work-related posts. There used to be more. However I documented previously how I had to curtail that due to minor issue while working at Parksearch. Nothing bad happened. It was actually pretty funny, even when it happened. I can’t seem to find the right keyword to find that story or else I would share it now. Long story short I originally wrote about work long before it was common and became probilimatic with conflicts of interest. Now I simply do not do it to be safe.

If I orchestrate this properly this intro post will go up right before I start posting some origin stories. Now all I have to do is go write them.

The photo in this post is of a rocket launch pad my dad had at our beach club in the late 1980’s. My dad and rockets will be a post at some point however when looking for a photo that best sums up any origin stories i thought a rocket one was the most appropriate.

The Origin of My Near Lifetime of Being a Trekkie

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I have a problem. I like Star Wars. I also like Star Trek. If asked which one I like better I am really not sure how to answer. I have actually been asked that question. Depending on the context I have given different answers.  Now I simply say I like lots of sci-fi. Memories of both franchises are some of my earliest memories. To some degree the science-fiction things that I was fascinated with as a kid shaped who I am and what I do today. It’s only appropriate that one of the first “origin stories” about my childhood I write will be about my first memories of Star Trek.

This is a topic I have thought about it for a while before sitting down to blog.  Likely I thought way too much on this.  It was great fun to do it. In reality I do not know what my first true exposure to Star Trek was. All I can speak to is what I remember.

My first memories from any version of Star Trek was Star Trek the Motion Picture. I’m not sure if I saw it in the theater or not. There are other movies from around the same period of time that I do recall going to the theater, so its plausable I could have gone. Either way I do remember watching it.  I was pretty young when it came out.  I was 5 in 1979.  That explains why I did not at the time fully understand the movie at the time. I was also too young to get that it wasn’t really that great of a movie.  The visuals were great though. The story not so much.  For a 5 year old that was enough to get me fascinated.  I recall understanding that everyone was coming back together from something else.  I just didn’t know really what.  I hadn’t watched the Original Series.

I am assuming it was part of the story and mainly the effects that made me like Star Trek The Motion Picture so much. I say that I like it because I have strong memories that I was very excited to see Star Trek II the wrath of Khan. That movie I clearly remember going to see. I remember waiting outside what was a two screen theater near Bloomingdale’s and Fresh Meadows to see it with my dad. There was a pretty big line to go see it. Star Trek II is still one of my favorite movies of all time. What is not to like? It’s got a lot of science fiction, great action sequences, and pretty interesting drama. There’s also some great overacting by William Shatner. If I was a bit interested in Star Trek after the first motion picture by the wrath of Khan I was hooked. 30 plus years later I think it still aged well.

My memories of my first viewing of Star Trek III or IV were less vivid. It was very likely I saw them both in the theatres.  I liked both.  I was very disappointed when they blew up the Enterprise in A Search for Spock.  I thought the 4th one was very fun.  Even if not as interesting as Wrath of Khan.  The fact that the Enterprise came back was huge for me.  Each of those movies built up my liking of the franchise and kept me wanting to experience more.  I do not have specific recollection however it was likely around then I would have seen some of the original series.  Not much of it but a bit.

 It was not until I heard that they were making a sequel to the television show that got me excited.  I recall hearing about it and then being excited for months before it came out. I remember watching the first episodes and was drawn in.  I enjoyed the first season.  I think I am in the minority in saying I imagined myself as Wesley Crusher.  I mean who wouldn’t want to be a kid on a star ship making everyone else look less intelligent! I only found out later that I was apparently in the minority and reading Wil Wheaton’s blog he talked alot about the negitivity people had towards that charicter. To heck with that, I wanted to be a kid on a a starship.

By the 2nd season of Next Generation I watched much of it but not all when it came out each week.  I think with the change of Doctors just didn’t fit well with me.  In that respect I think I was in the majority when Crusher came back in Season 3.  Season 3,4,5 were like the golden age of Star Trek for me.  I watched it as regularly as I could.  If I couldn’t watch it I would record it on VHS.  At one point I had most if not all of the episodes on VHS tape.

I was curious about Deep Space Nine.  I watched the first season and then sporadically after that.  It wasn’t until much later when I saw them all I fully appreciated how awesome it was.

I could keep going on about Deep Space Nine, Voyager, etc.  By the time DS9 came out I was in College.  I was already a fan.  Funny enough there were times when I was younger that I was not as big a fan of the franchise vs Star Wars.  So many years later I am not really sure why.  I have theories but they are not worth exploring here.  It is enough for me to know that the first two movies and Season One of The Next Generation are why I am still a fan today.