Yesterday I got a new watch. It was tired of not knowing what time it was when I was driving around. I found a nice, cheap ($20) one at Super Target. It has a plain analog face, it’s rather small, and it has a leather watchband. Analog faces look more classy than the packed-with-every-feature digital watches, and many of the digital watches had plastic or velcro (extremely tacky!) watchbands. The small face is good because I have small wrists, and so many of the men’s watches simply look oversized on me, like I was a kid playing at being a man.

I wear my watch when I go to sleep at night. I’m not sure why. It’s just a habit. I think that for a while, I slept without a clock next to my bed, so I wanted to know what time it was in the middle of the night without having to scramble around on my bedside table for a watch. Now, I think it’s just because I’m too lazy to take it off. Besides, who knows when I’ll suddenly have to jump out of bed and rush outside in an emergency? I might get outside and need to know the time!

Today I finished my book High Adventure, by Sir Edmund Hillary. Hillary is a good, if unpolished, writer. That just adds character, though. For instance, he finishes the book with, “And that was the end of our adventure!” like a schoolboy finishing his creative writing assignment. He’s very proper, too, being sure to credit everybody else on the mountaineering expedition and downplaying his own contribution.

I’ve been reading the book bit by bit before I go to bed at night (the only time I have all day to read). It’s taken me quite a while to read it; much longer than it usually takes me. That’s okay, I guess; I just have a long list of books I want to read, and have been anxious to get on with the next one. In fact, I just bought a new book today: Searching Issues by Nicky Gumbel. It’s a short book on apologetics, dealing with the seven main questions people bring up during the Alpha course.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Alpha course, it’s a seeker-sensitive low-pressure introduction to the Christian faith. Its key selling points are that inquirers are allowed to ask any question, and the course includes a dinner together at each meeting, so inquirers are invited not just into intellectual response, but into a community of faith.

Anyway, I bought the book because our church is doing an Alpha course, and I was interested in learning more about the angle from which they approach apologetics, and because all my apologetics books are very thick, and I wanted a nice thin (and unintimidating) book to give non-Christian friends of mine who aren’t readers. Moreover, some people are really not readers of any kind, and I wanted a book that would help me remember the high points of a subject when I have to explain it on my own.