Sugar Babies From Alabaster, Alabama

Sugar babies are women who provide intimate relationships or simple companionships to men in exchange for monetary favors or gifts. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement that can work for both those who need companionship and those who desire nice things or money. It is a type of relationship, not a business transaction, unlike other methods of garnering companionship in exchange for money. Sugar babies are not stereotypical "gold diggers." They come in all shapes and sizes and can be any type of woman in Alabaster, Alabama.

A sugar baby may be a college student who is paying her way through college, has some spare time to commit to a sugar baby/sugar daddy relationship and enjoys nice things. She may be intelligent, self-sufficient and classy. She may also be the opposite. The thing to remember is that sugar daddies are looking for different things. Therefore, sugar babies can be any combination of those things.

Sugar babies can also be independently successful women. They may have money of their own, spend time traveling as an executive for a big company, be a business owner or be perpetrator of any number of successful business endeavors. This type of sugar baby may find excitement in this sort of relationship. She may not need anything monetary or nice gifts from her partner. She may just enjoy having a man spend money on her, despite having plenty of money of her own. Many men find success attractive in a woman. Therefore, certain sugar daddies may have exactly this type of woman in mind when they seek to initiate a relationship with a sugar baby.

Monetary success and intelligence or lack thereof are not the only things in which sugar babies differ. A sugar baby's appearance is another area that may differ in Alabaster, Alabama due to cultural expectations or simply differ by personal preference. One sugar daddy may like a classic trophy girlfriend. He may want her to be young and very attentive to her looks on a superficial level. Another sugar daddy may not care how his sugar baby dresses but wants her to be athletic. Yet another sugar daddy may not care about looks at all and simply wants a woman who is entertaining.

When one envisions a sugar baby, the image of a young woman typically comes to mind. This is not always the case. Sugar babies may be older women because older and younger sugar daddies alike may prefer older women. Older women may also seek a life of relative luxury in their later years. It is a good way to have fun, receive gifts and take a break from the hustle of life.

The diversity in sugar babies also applies to ethnicity and weight. There is no set standard for any of these things when it comes to sugar babies. Any woman can strive to be a sugar baby and find the right sugar daddy for her. She can be tattooed and pierced or girl next door sweet. She can be funny or serious. She can be a lover of the arts or a computer geek. In short, sugar baby is as diverse a word as the word woman.

Black alabaster

Black Alabaster is a rare form of the gypsum-based mineral found in only three veins in the world, one each in Oklahoma (USA), Italy, and the People's Republic of China. Alabaster Caverns State Park, near Freedom, Oklahoma is home to a natural gypsum cave in which much of the gypsum is in the form of alabaster. There are several types of alabaster found at the site, including pink, white, and the rare black alabaster.

Calcite alabaster

This substance, the "alabaster" of the Bible, is often termed Oriental alabaster, since the early examples came from the Far East. The Greek name alabastrites is said to be derived from the town of Alabastron, in Egypt, where the stone was quarried, but the locality probably owed its name to the mineral; the origin of the mineral name is obscure. This "Oriental" alabaster was highly esteemed for making small perfume bottles or ointment vases called alabastra, and this has been conjectured to be a possible source of the name. Alabaster was also employed in Egypt for canopic jars and various other sacred and sepulchral objects. A splendid sarcophagus, sculptured in a single block of translucent calcite alabaster from Alabastron, is in the Sir John Soane's Museum, London. This was discovered by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817 in the tomb of Seti I near Thebes. It was purchased by Sir John Soane, having previously been offered to the British Museum. When cut in thin sheets, alabaster is translucent enough to be used for small windows, and has been used so in medieval churches, especially in Italy. Large alabaster sheets are used extensively in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (dedicated 2002) of the Los Angeles (California) Archdiocese. The cathedral incorporates special cooling to prevent the panes from overheating and turning opaque. Calcite alabaster is either a stalagmitic deposit, from the floor and walls of limestone caverns, or a kind of travertine, similarly deposited in springs of calcareous water. Its deposition in successive layers gives rise to the banded appearance that the marble often shows on cross-section, whence it is known as onyx-marble or alabaster-onyx, or sometimes simply as onyx — a term which should, however, be restricted to siliceous minerals. Egyptian alabaster has been extensively worked near Suez and near Assiut; there are many ancient quarries in the hills overlooking the plain of Tell el Amarna. The Algerian onyx-marble has been largely quarried in the province of Oran. In Mexico, there are famous deposits of a delicate green variety at La Pedrara, in the district of Tecali, near Puebla. Onyx-marble occurs also in the district of Tehuacán and at several localities in California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Virginia.

Description

Alabaster is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals: gypsum (a hydrous sulfate of calcium) and calcite (a carbonate of calcium). The former is the alabaster of the present day; the latter is generally the alabaster of the ancients. The two kinds are readily distinguished from one another by their relative hardness. The gypsum kind is so soft as to be readily scratched by a fingernail (Mohs hardness 1.5 to 2), while the calcite kind is too hard to be scratched in this way (Mohs hardness 3), though it does yield readily to a knife. Moreover, the calcite alabaster, being a carbonate, effervesces on being touched with hydrochloric acid, whereas the gypsum alabaster, when so treated, remains practically unaffected. Due to the characteristic color of white alabaster, the term has entered the vernacular as a metonym for white things, particularly "alabaster skin". The usage as whiteness also occurs in a line from the poem and song, America the Beautiful.

Etymology

The origin of alabaster is in Middle English, through Old French alabastre, in turn derived from Latin alabaster and that from Greek αλάβαστρος (alabastros) or αλάβαστος (alabastos), the latter being the word for a vase made of alabaster.[1] This may further derive from the ancient Egyptian word a-labaste (vessel of the Egyptian goddess Bast).[2][3] It has been suggested that the name was derived from the town of Alabastron in Egypt, while an Arabic etymological origin has also been suggested.[4]

Further reading

J. A. Harrell, "Misuse of the term 'alabaster' in Egyptology," Göttinger Miszellen, v. 119, 1990, pp. 37–42.

Gypsum alabaster

When the term "alabaster" is used without any qualification, it invariably means a fine-grained variety of gypsum. This mineral, or alabaster proper, occurs in England. However, thousands of gypsum alabaster artifacts dating to the late 4th millennium BC have been found in Tell Brak (present day Nagar), in Syria.[5] And in Mesopotamia, a gypsum alabaster sculpture, believed to represent the god Abu, dates to the first half of the 3rd millennium BC.[6] Mineral alabaster occurs in England in the Keuper marls of the Midlands, especially at Chellaston in Derbyshire, at Fauld in Staffordshire and near Newark in Nottinghamshire. All these localities have been extensively worked. In the 15th century its carving into icons and altarpieces was a valuable local industry in Nottingham, as well as a major English export. Besides examples of these still in Britain (especially at the Nottingham Castle Museum, British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum), that trade in itself (rather than just the antiques trade) has scattered examples as far afield as the Musée de Cluny, Spain and Scandinavia. Alabaster is also found, though in subordinate quantity, at Watchet in Somerset, near Penarth in Glamorganshire, and elsewhere. In Cumbria it occurs largely in the New Red rocks, but at a lower geological horizon. The alabaster of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire is found in thick nodular beds or "floors" in spheroidal masses known as "balls" or "bowls," and in smaller lenticular masses termed "cakes." At Chellaston, where the alabaster is known as "Patrick," it has been worked into ornaments under the name of "Derbyshire spar" — a term more properly applied to fluorspar.

See also

* List of minerals

Uses

The finer kinds of alabaster are largely employed as an ornamental stone, especially for ecclesiastical decoration and for the rails of staircases and halls. Its softness enables it to be readily carved into elaborate forms, but its solubility in water renders it unsuitable for outdoor work. The purest alabaster is a snow-white material of fine tiniforni grain, but it is often associated with an oxide of iron, which produces brown clouding and veining in the stone. The coarser varieties of alabaster are converted by calcination into plaster of Paris, whence they are sometimes known as "plaster stone." On the continent of Europe, the centre of the alabaster trade is Florence, Italy. Tuscan alabaster occurs in nodular masses embedded in limestone, interstratified with marls of Miocene and Pliocene age. The mineral is largely worked by means of underground galleries, in the district of Volterra. Several varieties are recognized — veined, spotted, clouded, agatiform, and others. The finest kind, obtained principally from Castellina, is sent to Florence for figure-sculpture, while the common kinds are carved at a very cheap rate locally into vases, clock-cases and various ornamental objects, in which a large trade is carried on, especially in Florence, Pisa and Livorno. In order to diminish the translucency of the alabaster and to produce an opacity suggestive of true marble, the statues are immersed in a bath of water and gradually heated nearly to the boiling-point — an operation requiring great care, for if the temperature is not carefully regulated, the stone acquires a dead-white, chalky appearance. The effect of heating appears to be a partial dehydration of the gypsum. If properly treated, it very closely resembles true marble and is known as marmo di Castellina. Sulphate of lime (gypsum) was used also by the ancients, and was employed, for instance, in Assyrian sculpture, so that some of the ancient alabaster is identical with the modern stone. Alabaster may be stained by digesting it, after being heated in various pigmentary solutions. In this way a good imitation of coral has been produced (alabaster coral).