To create a local branch that follows a remote branch (two ways):

First way (creates the branch that follows the remote branch "origin/master" and switches to it):

git checkout -b pull-watch origin/master

Second way (just creates the branch):

git branch pull-watch origin/master

Then after switching to the pull watch branch:

git pull

Another way to pull in changes without changing your local branches is just do a "git fetch". This will grab all of the changes in the remote repository, but not merge any into your local branches. Once you've looked over the changes using a "git log origin/master", you can then just do a "git merge origin/master" to apply the changes.