Proper technique needed to nest a setWatch() within a separate setWatch()

Could try using the exact code I posted, with no modifications other than the pin names? It might help to ensure we're on the same page.

Then the CS line could be added later.

how is it possible to 'Or' a boolean with a data byte in that line?

Try it - boolean values get converted to 0/1.

The code itself is a hack to try and get a little faster decoding of binary data - since at the end of the day this is what you wanted. I started off with print(e.data) and added the extra code when that worked.