9.13.2003

So much to write, so little energy.

Had a fabulous night out downtown watching cops hassle public urinaters, tow trucks take away broken car belonging to one of said cops, drunken teenagers yelling about their drunkenness, and dealing with supposedly homeless but clean shaven beggars. All with great company, but didn't get home until 4:30, so was extremely tired this a.m. Had a wicked fun day in the cave today with Jordan and Gabe. Three hours of sleep adds a lot toward the hyperness scale. Karaoke sessions and pole dancing are wonderful ways to end the day.

My new little tiny kittens are doing fabulously. Mom refuses to give up either of them, so I guess we now have five cats. I haven't found a name for the really outgoing one. She likes to fight, she's fearless, and she's very mouthy. Any ideas? Her sister's name is Talula. My other cats are Gatsby, Mallory, and Brett, all named for historical or literary characters. Little one needs a good name, too.

St. Louis folk:
The Mandys are reuniting for WILD October 2nd through October 5th. I'll probably stay through until October 6th. That's a Thursday through a Monday. If you're in town and wanna hang out, let me know.

I'm reading a fabulous book: Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything Bryson has proven himself thorough and hysterical in his travel narratives, but this is sooooo much better. He delves a bit into the history of just about everything having to do with science. It's not, however, a sciency book. It is meant for everyone, and he does a great job finding amusing things to put in side notes to make even the most mundane subjects enthralling. I highly reccomend it. I'll close this post with an excerpt from the book that made me laugh.


On chemistry:

(p97-98)
Perhaps nothing better typifies the strange and often accidental nature of chemical science in its early days than a discovery made by a German named Hennig Brand in 1675. Brans became convinced that gold could somehow be distilled from human urine. ... He assembled fifty buckets of human urine, which he kept for months in his cellar. By various recondite processess, he converted the urine first into a noxious paste and then into a translucent waxy substance. None of it yielded gold, of course, but a strange and interesting thing did happen. After a time, the substance began to glow. Moreover, when exposed to air, it often spontaneously burst into flame.

...[the material] soon became known as phosphorous. ... In the 1750s a Swedish chemist named Karl Scheele devised a way to manufacture phosphorous in bulk without the slop or smell of urine.

...Scheele's one notable shortcoming was a curious insistence on tasting a little of everything he worked with, including such notoriously disagreeable substances as mercury, prussic acid, and hydrocyanic acid. Scheele's rashness eventually caught up with him. In 1786, aged just forty-three, he was found dead at his workbench surrounded by an array of toxic chemicals, any one of which could have accounted for the stunned and terminal look on his face.

Off to bed for me...another long day in the cave tomorrow.

Tchüss.

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