Henney Motor Company

Interesting fact for you Henney folks out there.....Did you know that the Henney Motor Company was contracted to develop the World's first modern electric car?
From Wikipedia:

The 1959 models all ran on a 36-volt system of 18 sequential two-volt batteries. The 36-volt cars had a top speed of 40 mph and could run approximately 40 miles on a full charge. After the 36-volt system was realized to be impractical, the Kilowatt drivetrain was redesigned by Eureka Williams as a 72-volt system for the 1960 model year. It employed 12 sequential six-volt batteries. The 72-volt models were much more practical than the 1959 36-volt models. The 1960 Kilowatt boasted a top speed of nearly 60 mph with a range of over 60 miles on a single charge.

If you're interested, click here for the full wikipedia article.....

Too Much Of A Good Thing...

Water Intoxication......it's real.....and deadly. Consider this A Bad Case of Wanderlust Public Service Announcement.....I'm watching the news bright and early this morning and there is a story that really hits home with me. A woman was in a contest called "Hold your wee for a wii," put on by a Sacramento radio show. The point of the contest was to continue drinking water and see who could hold their bladder the longest, winner gets a new Nintendo Wii. This woman ended up drinking two gallons of water before dropping out of the contest. On the air she complained of feeling light headed and having a headache. The DJs joked and laughed about the health risks of drinking too much water and a listener even called in and warned them of the serious dangers involved with the contest. They laughed and said it was not a problem since the contestants had all signed releases prior to the contest. The contestant went home, crying and in pain, and was found dead later that day. The coroner announced cause of death as 'water intoxication.'

I myself suffered water poisoning a year ago. I was at the pub with friends and had volunteered to be designated driver that night. The band was very good and my friends were having fun and I ended up staying there for nearly five hours, drinking water, enjoying the show and waiting for my friends to be ready to go home. I had the waitress bring me probably three pitchers of water over that time and around midnight developed a terrible headache and was stumbling around as if I had been drinking too much beer. I told my friends to come with me now or take a cab home, they opted for the cab and I headed back to my apartment in Fremont by myself. I was in terrible pain when I got home and wrapped myself up in a blanket and tried to sleep. I had heard of water intoxication before and was slightly concerned about what was happening to me. After waiting out the pain for two hours I called poison control and told them what was happening. They instructed me to eat salty foods. I found some leftover beef stroganoff in my fridge that Rachel had left for me and started chowing down. Since I was by myself, the poison control center stayed on the phone with me for a half hour or so until I began to feel better. They explained what was happening to me as I waited. Basically I had diluted the water in my body so much that the concentration of salt (an electrolyte) had dropped to a dangerous level and was causing the cells in my body to swell. The cells in your brain are enclosed by your skull and when they swell and press against your skull, you get a headache and begin to feel light-headed.

So, my heart goes out to the three children who have no mother anymore because of the irresponsible stunt of a crummy radio show. Luckily I had a skilled poison control specialist and some of Rachel's delicious life saving beef stroganoff on hand or I could have faced a similar fate.

A Tale of Two Cities

SAN ANTONIO

61 degrees

SEATTLE
29 degrees

One of the greatest things about being in school again is getting up early on a snowy morning like today, watching the morning news and waiting with breath held just like all the other kids to see if school is cancelled. My late-night snow dances have paid off! Not that I don't love my classes, but snow days are so much fun!

The arctic invasion has come and gone, I've been watching with great interest over the past couple days as two cold fronts rolled in to Seattle, one regular one, and one from the great frozen North. Front #2 brought a few inches of snow with it and I swear I saw polar bear fur floating in the wind, it's Sooooo cold out! Rachel flew to San Antonio yesterday afternoon, only a couple hours before the flakes began to fall. I know she's upset to be missing a snow day so I decided to post a few pics so she can telecommute to Snowy Seattle, at least until she gets home tonight.

Here are pictures from the first front rolling in at sundown on Tuesday. There was some pretty good wind associated with this first one and more than a few of our neighbor's houses lost more shingles, many of them newly installed from the last windstorm......

Rocky investigates the freshly fallen white stuff, upon deciding it poses no threat, he switches into SNOWBALL ATTACK mode....

Pictures for Rach, hurry home so we can go play!

HAWKS WIN!!

Thank you Mr. Babineaux!!! Yes, we were there, if you saw the game I don't have to tell you how incredible it was!!! Best football game I've ever been to! Never have I seen a stadium shake and roar like Qwest field that night!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Hope everybody got smooched at midnight!! We had a great time. Rach kicked off the day in style with a surprise visit to the day spa. I've never been before, it was awesome!! I hung out in a weird looking smock thing and drank herbal tea while people rubbed my feet and smeared odd-smelling goo all over me. I was also treated to a brutal fist fight outside the window of my relaxing spa pedicure room courtesy of one of Seattle's housing-challenged people and a horse carriage driver. I'm entirely serious about this. I heard everything, but couldn't get up to watch because there was paraffin wax all over my feet. I asked the pedicure lady to narrate the action for me while I listened to a long bout of loud cursing, yelling, a body hitting the ground, a woman screaming "HELLLLLPPPP MEEEEE," and three police cars, an ambulance and a fire truck arriving at the scene. All this while I relaxed to the sound of gentle new age music in my manly spa-smock with a lavender scented pillow on my eyes........best pedicure EVER!!! Also cool because I am now publishing for the entire interweb to see that not only did I enjoy my day at the spa, I would go again in a heartbeat!

We spent longer at the spa than anticipated and were running late for our New Year's Eve rendezvous in Portland with Tina, one of Rachel's long time friends. So I threw the Radar detector into the Jeep and raced to Portland making it in record time! On the way down however, Rach discovered that she had left her brother's house key in Seattle, a slight problem since that was where we had planned on staying the night and he was out of town. No biggy though, Rach's cousin and her husband agreed to put us up for the night which was very cool of them, they even watched our pooch while we went out to the bar. We did the New Year's thing at a country bar called Bushwhackers, pretty uneventful but still very fun and it was really great to meet the infamous Tina.

Wow, anyway, the reason I sat down to write this post was to announce our plans to go to Italy for spring break. I'm very excited, I've never been to Europe before. We decided on it the other night when we were eating at La Rustica. Rach simply asked "Wanna go to Italy?" I said" sure, let's do it!" And that sealed the deal. So, any tips, hints, advice or anything Italy-related that the blogosphere could offer me would be GREAT!!!

Oh, and I wanted to share this video of two old Italian ladies duking it out, god forbid if I see anything like this while I'm in Italy, I might laugh so hard that my eyeballs burst! Divertirsi!!