I was reading the September 2009 issue of Scientific American Magazine. It was a special issue on origins. One of the smaller articles was on the origins of the vibrator ... it was invented around 140 years ago, and when electricity came to common use, the vibrator because a household appliance before the iron did. Obviously it must have been invented for some non-sexual use and then someone found out the happy misuse accidentally, right? Wrong! It was invented to make doctors more money.
It turns out there was a common ailment at the time called hysteria that affected women only. The treatment for this disease was for a medical doctor to, by hand, rub the (ahem) "pelvic" area of the affected female until the patient underwent (ahem) "hysterical paroxysm". That's right, your great grandmother went to the doctor to get a little something something. No wonder she wanted your mother to marry a physician. This procedure was time consuming, however, and it was found that what sometimes took the physicians hours to do by hand, could be done in a few minutes by use of the aforementioned mechanical device. Doctors could see more patients and deliver more effective treatments.
The Scientific American article is not online, however Wikipedia has an entry on the disease. Ah the good old days, when the air was clean, you could get a soft drink made with cocaine, and your doctor gave you personal service.
Makes you wonder what people will think of our society in another 125 years.
20 October 2009
And Now For Something Completely The Same
First Off, congratulation to Matt and Vivian, homeowners and now neighbors. Good job.
Last weekend was typically busy, but not necessarily from work. It started with a bang ... in a bad way ... a friend was visiting on Thursday and had their car broken into at my apartment complex. Window smashed, gym bag full of dirty clothes stolen. What scared me was there could not have been ten seconds between the time the alarm went off and the time that I arrived on the scene. Scary, yes because if I had seen the individual involved, I probably would have done something stupidly manly, and someone (probably me) could have gotten hurt. It turned out that there were a series of car break-ins around my house.
I took Friday off to attend the funeral of Troy's father, Jim. I had met Jim on several occasions and I liked him a lot, he was a very friendly, talkative man. I shall miss him. Maeg and I drove down to Lincoln, and it was as pleasant of an service and celebration as you could expect under the circumstances, very crowded, and I was glad to have the opportunity to attend.
Later on Friday I went dancing. Couldn't miss all the birthday jams, Merinda, Micah, and Jenny.
Micah didn't just have a birthday, she was a winner too!
Jenny makes a bold fashion statement, and those are her dancing shoes, not the boots she came in wearing.
Merinda dances into a new year.
The gentleman dancing with Jenny above is Geoff. He is from Ireland, is in town for work, and a terrific dancer. I now have my first Facebook friend in Europe. Naturally I took a few more pictures here.
Saturday I hung out with VK during the day and amongst other things, we watched some football, including a bit of the disappointing Husker loss. Later on we picked up Kevin from work and went over to Merinda and Becky's (now Mezcal Brothers-less) birthday party. No band, no matter, we had a great time, which had nothing to do with me dominating another game of Qwirkle.
Quoting Maeg "These four concentrating on the bar either means really good things or really bad things." --photo credit: Maeg
This is everyone doing their best zombie imitation a la Michael Jackson Thriller video.
The birthday girls danced it up all night... --photo credit: Matt
...and so did everyone else. --photo credit: Matt
Goodness, you can hardly go online without running into pictures from this event. Here are some from me, Maeg, Matt, and Lisa(from Facebook).
On Sunday I slept in and missed church, a disturbing trend. I had a couple errands to run, so I did so around noon and headed over to VK's. It turned out she was not ready for my visit (it was planned, more in a second), so I went to the Ice House on 108th and Maple to watch some football. It turned out to be way too ADD for me, I like the set up at Farrell's much better.
Around 1500 I headed over to meet up with VK and we went on a walk specifically looking for trees to take photos of for an art project. We walked around Standing Bear Lake and the neighborhood taking colorful photos. The trees aren't quite done yet.
It was all quite serious.
The project is not finished yet, I may post a few of the project pictures somewhere, here are the not quite ready to be called art quality photos ... yet.
After all of that was finished, VK made some chili, and we watched some football. The Bears game started around 1900 and I was enjoying it when all of a sudden these Desperate Housewives appeared out of no where and I was forced to leave ...
... and my Bears later lost.
Last weekend was typically busy, but not necessarily from work. It started with a bang ... in a bad way ... a friend was visiting on Thursday and had their car broken into at my apartment complex. Window smashed, gym bag full of dirty clothes stolen. What scared me was there could not have been ten seconds between the time the alarm went off and the time that I arrived on the scene. Scary, yes because if I had seen the individual involved, I probably would have done something stupidly manly, and someone (probably me) could have gotten hurt. It turned out that there were a series of car break-ins around my house.
I took Friday off to attend the funeral of Troy's father, Jim. I had met Jim on several occasions and I liked him a lot, he was a very friendly, talkative man. I shall miss him. Maeg and I drove down to Lincoln, and it was as pleasant of an service and celebration as you could expect under the circumstances, very crowded, and I was glad to have the opportunity to attend.
Later on Friday I went dancing. Couldn't miss all the birthday jams, Merinda, Micah, and Jenny.
Micah didn't just have a birthday, she was a winner too!
Jenny makes a bold fashion statement, and those are her dancing shoes, not the boots she came in wearing.
Merinda dances into a new year.
The gentleman dancing with Jenny above is Geoff. He is from Ireland, is in town for work, and a terrific dancer. I now have my first Facebook friend in Europe. Naturally I took a few more pictures here.
Saturday I hung out with VK during the day and amongst other things, we watched some football, including a bit of the disappointing Husker loss. Later on we picked up Kevin from work and went over to Merinda and Becky's (now Mezcal Brothers-less) birthday party. No band, no matter, we had a great time, which had nothing to do with me dominating another game of Qwirkle.
Quoting Maeg "These four concentrating on the bar either means really good things or really bad things." --photo credit: Maeg
This is everyone doing their best zombie imitation a la Michael Jackson Thriller video.
The birthday girls danced it up all night... --photo credit: Matt
...and so did everyone else. --photo credit: Matt
Goodness, you can hardly go online without running into pictures from this event. Here are some from me, Maeg, Matt, and Lisa(from Facebook).
On Sunday I slept in and missed church, a disturbing trend. I had a couple errands to run, so I did so around noon and headed over to VK's. It turned out she was not ready for my visit (it was planned, more in a second), so I went to the Ice House on 108th and Maple to watch some football. It turned out to be way too ADD for me, I like the set up at Farrell's much better.
Around 1500 I headed over to meet up with VK and we went on a walk specifically looking for trees to take photos of for an art project. We walked around Standing Bear Lake and the neighborhood taking colorful photos. The trees aren't quite done yet.
It was all quite serious.
The project is not finished yet, I may post a few of the project pictures somewhere, here are the not quite ready to be called art quality photos ... yet.
After all of that was finished, VK made some chili, and we watched some football. The Bears game started around 1900 and I was enjoying it when all of a sudden these Desperate Housewives appeared out of no where and I was forced to leave ...
... and my Bears later lost.
15 October 2009
Weekly Journal?
Oddly enough, it sure seems like this blog has become more of a weekly journal of my activities. It's certainly not a cutting edge repository of fresh political thought ... oops, there is no fresh political thought. At some point my life might slow down enough to post something thought worthy ... meh, probably not.
Last Friday I went dancing. No real surprise there, but it was "hat" Ben's birthday jam, and that hasn't happened in, well, a year.
That's really nice form Ben!
I don't what is scarier, me or my camera.
Margaret claims she was winking at me, but think she just ate a sour gummy worm.
More of this tomfoolery is here.
When I woke up on Saturday morning, the world was (ugh) covered in white. Photo opportunity!
Some of these pictures are really nice.
Sunday Jenny had an impromptu dinner party, and I forgot my camera. It was full of lasagna and laughter. That's all.
Last Friday I went dancing. No real surprise there, but it was "hat" Ben's birthday jam, and that hasn't happened in, well, a year.
That's really nice form Ben!
I don't what is scarier, me or my camera.
Margaret claims she was winking at me, but think she just ate a sour gummy worm.
More of this tomfoolery is here.
When I woke up on Saturday morning, the world was (ugh) covered in white. Photo opportunity!
Some of these pictures are really nice.
Sunday Jenny had an impromptu dinner party, and I forgot my camera. It was full of lasagna and laughter. That's all.
08 October 2009
Caught Up At Last
Really not much to say about last week. I was on call at work, and there was a planned outage on Friday night, so no dancing. Jenny had a bike ride and bonfire at her parents house on Saturday night, so I went to that, only got two calls. It was out near Syracuse, NE and not a bad drive at all.
It was so cold that they are actually freezing these hot dogs for later, not cooking them.
Pam has a great idea!
Fire and smoke make for some interesting pictures.
After the bike ride, Jenny was too tired to haul herself around.
I took a few more pictures but really it was too cold to move.
One more interesting thing happened this week. I finally got myself to a Madness Sale (Ben Rasmussen's band) show, and as double bonus, All Young Girls Are Machine Guns (a.k.a. Becky Lowry) played too. The pictures are off of my iPhone, so a little grainy.
Becky wowed the crowd, barefoot.
This sale was such madness that someone stole Ben's hat!
It was so cold that they are actually freezing these hot dogs for later, not cooking them.
Pam has a great idea!
Fire and smoke make for some interesting pictures.
After the bike ride, Jenny was too tired to haul herself around.
I took a few more pictures but really it was too cold to move.
One more interesting thing happened this week. I finally got myself to a Madness Sale (Ben Rasmussen's band) show, and as double bonus, All Young Girls Are Machine Guns (a.k.a. Becky Lowry) played too. The pictures are off of my iPhone, so a little grainy.
Becky wowed the crowd, barefoot.
This sale was such madness that someone stole Ben's hat!
07 October 2009
Catching Up: Staycation
As is my usual tradition, I took the week following Cowtown Jamborama off as a vacation. It's a usual thing, mostly because I'm too sore from all the dancing on Monday to do anything, and it's a nice time of year to take a vacation.
Monday I mostly just worked on the Cowtown photos and relaxed, but Tuesday I had plans to go meet up with Jillian and go to the zoo. As an added bonus, she had a guitar to lend me so I could start lessons.
I guess I wasn't the only one worn out from all the weekends activities.
We took a ride on the skyfari, where we spied all kinds of animals like rhinos, cheetahs, ostriches, and ...
... Maeg? Who let her out of her display.
I took many more zoo pictures, who knew?
Wednesday started out to be kind of a disappointment. I wanted to go golfing, and I thought I had a certificate for a free round, then I read the fine print ... oops. After running around for ninety minutes, I finally gave up on the golf, and went for a hike on the Bellevue History and Nature Trail just north of Haworth Park.
Even I know not to eat wild strawberries.
Even when you know there is a bird in picture, it can't always be easy to spot.
We kind of surprised each other.
If you take your camera on a nature trail hike, you might as well take dozens of pictures.
Thursday was the big road trip of the vacation. VK and I were going up to Ponca State Park near Sioux City. On the drive up we went by VK's house in South Sioux City, learning about the old haunts and histories of your friends is one of life's little pleasures.
School was in, kids not around and so we (almost) literally had the park to ourselves. I was interested in the park because it is one of two places in Nebraska where the Missouri River is not channeled. It turns out that the unchanneled Missouri River looks a lot like the Platte River. Now it much more understandable how the settlers crossed the river without a bridge or ferry, however, it turns out that the highlight of the park wasn't the river, but the gorgeous bluffs that the park sat on ... and the weather.
Not everything was perfect, squirrels kept running right in front of the car, VK had never been stung by a bee before and got it twice, and we took a late afternoon hike that was longer and felt more like being lost than we wanted. However I'll remember this trip for years.
Three state lookout: Nebraska (in the foreground), South Dakota (across the river), and Iowa (away on the right). I think I'm getting a look too.
Our picnic spot in one of the campgrounds, VK packed a tasty lunch.
I went up and down this twice, three out of four trips went well. VK's car is in the picture.
They say this tree is 365 years old. I thought it would be more lofty or something.
Somewhere around 200 feet straight down.
Well you have to include one artsy picture.
More of this road trip can be found here. Be sure and ask me (in person) about the bald eagle. After we left the state park, we drove up and down the streets in Ponca to see what kind of houses were available in small town Nebraska. We then went over to Sioux City to see the other house VK grew up in, and then dinner at Outback. After an uneventful drive home we got our cars and she went home, and I went to game night.
Friday I actually did get to golf, but not where I wanted to. I ended up down in Plattsmouth at Bay Hills, and shot an 82. It was a good round that got spastic at the end, finishing double bogey, birdie, double bogey, par. Later that evening, I went dancing at JNO for a very special occasion, Vivian's birthday jam! Amazingly there are no photos of the event, although Matt put up a YouTube Video about Vivian's birthday and it has the jam in it.
On Saturday there was a "goodbye" party for Pam. I use quotes because she isn't going anywhere soon, but eventually. After that I went over to Kaleb's for game night. Again, there is a disturbing lack of visual evidence that any of this actually took place. I remember it, but what if aliens or the government implanted the memory to cover up what really happened ... meh, I've heard goofier conspiracy theories.
On Sunday was Vivian's birthday party, and there are tons of pictures from that. It was at Platte River State Park at the Turkey Run Shelter. More beautiful weather and great friends.
I think you can tell from our hair that it was just a little windy at the top of the tower.
Our group always seems to have a large supply of frisbees.
Donna made the pinata ... from cement and superglue evidently. It destroyed that stick and made at least two people bleed.
Vivian liked her cake, and her gifts, and well, the whole day.
I took a bunch of pictures, they are found here. Matt also took a bunch, you can find them here.
Monday I mostly just worked on the Cowtown photos and relaxed, but Tuesday I had plans to go meet up with Jillian and go to the zoo. As an added bonus, she had a guitar to lend me so I could start lessons.
I guess I wasn't the only one worn out from all the weekends activities.
We took a ride on the skyfari, where we spied all kinds of animals like rhinos, cheetahs, ostriches, and ...
... Maeg? Who let her out of her display.
I took many more zoo pictures, who knew?
Wednesday started out to be kind of a disappointment. I wanted to go golfing, and I thought I had a certificate for a free round, then I read the fine print ... oops. After running around for ninety minutes, I finally gave up on the golf, and went for a hike on the Bellevue History and Nature Trail just north of Haworth Park.
Even I know not to eat wild strawberries.
Even when you know there is a bird in picture, it can't always be easy to spot.
We kind of surprised each other.
If you take your camera on a nature trail hike, you might as well take dozens of pictures.
Thursday was the big road trip of the vacation. VK and I were going up to Ponca State Park near Sioux City. On the drive up we went by VK's house in South Sioux City, learning about the old haunts and histories of your friends is one of life's little pleasures.
School was in, kids not around and so we (almost) literally had the park to ourselves. I was interested in the park because it is one of two places in Nebraska where the Missouri River is not channeled. It turns out that the unchanneled Missouri River looks a lot like the Platte River. Now it much more understandable how the settlers crossed the river without a bridge or ferry, however, it turns out that the highlight of the park wasn't the river, but the gorgeous bluffs that the park sat on ... and the weather.
Not everything was perfect, squirrels kept running right in front of the car, VK had never been stung by a bee before and got it twice, and we took a late afternoon hike that was longer and felt more like being lost than we wanted. However I'll remember this trip for years.
Three state lookout: Nebraska (in the foreground), South Dakota (across the river), and Iowa (away on the right). I think I'm getting a look too.
Our picnic spot in one of the campgrounds, VK packed a tasty lunch.
I went up and down this twice, three out of four trips went well. VK's car is in the picture.
They say this tree is 365 years old. I thought it would be more lofty or something.
Somewhere around 200 feet straight down.
Well you have to include one artsy picture.
More of this road trip can be found here. Be sure and ask me (in person) about the bald eagle. After we left the state park, we drove up and down the streets in Ponca to see what kind of houses were available in small town Nebraska. We then went over to Sioux City to see the other house VK grew up in, and then dinner at Outback. After an uneventful drive home we got our cars and she went home, and I went to game night.
Friday I actually did get to golf, but not where I wanted to. I ended up down in Plattsmouth at Bay Hills, and shot an 82. It was a good round that got spastic at the end, finishing double bogey, birdie, double bogey, par. Later that evening, I went dancing at JNO for a very special occasion, Vivian's birthday jam! Amazingly there are no photos of the event, although Matt put up a YouTube Video about Vivian's birthday and it has the jam in it.
On Saturday there was a "goodbye" party for Pam. I use quotes because she isn't going anywhere soon, but eventually. After that I went over to Kaleb's for game night. Again, there is a disturbing lack of visual evidence that any of this actually took place. I remember it, but what if aliens or the government implanted the memory to cover up what really happened ... meh, I've heard goofier conspiracy theories.
On Sunday was Vivian's birthday party, and there are tons of pictures from that. It was at Platte River State Park at the Turkey Run Shelter. More beautiful weather and great friends.
I think you can tell from our hair that it was just a little windy at the top of the tower.
Our group always seems to have a large supply of frisbees.
Donna made the pinata ... from cement and superglue evidently. It destroyed that stick and made at least two people bleed.
Vivian liked her cake, and her gifts, and well, the whole day.
I took a bunch of pictures, they are found here. Matt also took a bunch, you can find them here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)