Good Vibrations Pilgrimage!

Back in November, my husband was asked to attend a work-related conference in San Fransisco. Naturally, we jumped at the chance to leave the cold and miserable MidWest and head out to sunnier climes for a long weekend. We have family in the area, so there was another incentive to make the trip.

While hubs was at his conference, I spent a few days wandering around the city, doing all the touristy things. I took a tour of Alcatraz National Park, visited the Cable Car Museum (and got to ride on one!) and the SFMOMA. I even got a private tour of the American Bookbinders Museum (one of the city's hidden gems).

But no trip to San Fransisco would be complete without a pilgrimage to Good Vibrations! Our hotel was only a 20 minute walk from the Polk St. location, and while there was a store a little closer to us, we really wanted to see the Antique Vibrator Museum! (or at least, I really wanted to see it!) So we took a nice quick walk... uphill... the entire way... I mean, I know intellectually that San Fransisco is all hills, but it's different when you're actually climbing them.

But every minute of that climb was so worth it! It's been years since I've shopped for sex toys in person, and I didn't have the best memories of it (visiting seedy adult "novelty" stores as a young woman, feeling so unwelcome and out of place). Good Vibes was so different though! It was clean and well-lit, with a big sign outside proudly proclaiming the name of the store, and a big, open picture window. The selection was huge! And the staff were helpful, but not pushy. I quickly found a few toys that I wanted, but lingered to browse and enjoy myself. I didn't feel like I needed to grab my purchases and leave before I got creeped on.

 And.... and there was the antique vibrator museum! Which was just beyond cool. I was super impressed with how many antique and vintage vibrators they had, and how nicely they were displayed. It really was like a little museum!
It was neat to see some really old vibes, and some that looked... kinda familiar. I'm looking at you Hitachi Magic Wand!

All in all, my husband and I had a great experience at the store. It was worlds away from buying crappy jelly toys at the local adult bookstore when I was just a wee little thing. I really just felt like I was in any other store, picking up something that I needed/wanted. I didn't feel creepy, out of place or ashamed. I just felt happy, and glad to be there.

Thanks Good Vibes, for being such an amazing store, and an amazing place to buy toys. I probably won't be back to your brick-and-motor store(s) any time real soon, since I don't like in the right area, but next time I'm in the City by the Bay, you can bet I'll be stopping by!





Thanks again to the staff at the Good Vibrations Polk St store who were friendly and funny, and didn't mind me asking a lot of questions about the museum! You guys really made the experience memorable.

Also, if you're curious, I bought the Stronic Eins in purple and the Pop Tops Deluxe G-spotter, also in purple. I'll have reviews for both of them coming up in the next few months or so, so stick around!

Septimus Still Reviews!

So… Some of you might have noticed that I’ve been gone… for almost 3 years. That’s a long time, I know. But I promise, I have a good excuse. Or rather, excuses. (Why come up with one when I can come up with 3?) Anyway, here goes:

First of all, I was in grad-school. I know I had tweeted about that a few times, but grad-school kind of ate my for 2.5 years. It was… fun? I’m very glad that I stuck through it and finished my program, there was more than one point where I wanted to just say ‘fuck it’ and quit. But still she persisted, and after 2.5 grueling years, I now have a shiny Master’s Degree to show off (It’s a Masters in Library and Information Science, for those who are curious. And yes, I’m a librarian in my “real” life).

Second, depression. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it before, but I suffer from depression. I’m not on any medication at this time, but I’ve taken anti-depressants in the past, and I’ve also seen a therapist on and off since I was a kid. My depression hasn’t been bad in the last several years (moving out of my parent’s house really really helped), but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t impact my daily life.

For the most part, I’m fine. I can get through every day with little to no symptoms. But when I’m stressed (like, trying to write 2 papers and get my ass to work on time), my depression tends to be worse.

Excuse number 3, and it’s a big one: I have ADD. ADD and depression you say? Isn’t she lucky! Yeah… Anyway, I’ve been dealing with symptoms of ADD since I was in middle-school (and isn’t that just the best time of our lives?). It’s been mostly under control since I finished college, but then again, I haven’t had to write papers, and do reports and surveys, and keep track of my own deadlines as intensely as I had to when I was in school. And then, well, I went back to school. I was very impressed with how I did in grad-school, but it was because I hyper-focused on school and work. If it wasn’t a paper for school, or something that paid my bills, I couldn’t focus on it.

This is also tied in to my depression. When I slipped up, or fell behind on an assignment or work task, I got stressed, which made my ADD harder to deal with, and depressed me. Being depressed makes it harder to concentrate on tasks… and well, vicious cycle and all.

So, where does this leave poor Septimus? Not reviewing, that’s where. Not only does depression decrease your sex-drive (which makes it a lot harder to review sex toys), but it makes it harder to get and stay motivated to complete tasks at all. Plus, with me having to hyper-focus on school and work, there just wasn’t a lot of time for me to be blogging.

TL;DR? I let my blog slip over the last few years because of grad-school and the ADD symptoms and depression that can with it. I lost my domain and stopped blogging at all. Luckily, I had all of my reviews and was able to re-publish them on blogger.

I’d been thinking about getting back into blogging since I finished school in December, but a week or so ago I was approached about reviewing a new toy from a company I already love. That was the kick-in-the-pants I needed to get my blog back up and running.

So…

What can you look forward to here?

A new toy review coming soon (I hope)

A write-up of my pilgrimage to the Good Vibrations store in San Fransisco

A renewal of my own domain (though it might be slightly different - update your links!)

And much more!

Stay tuned folks, I’m back.

My Experience with the LayaSpot

A caveat before we begin. This is not a review. This is just a post (maybe a rant) talking about my experiences with a specific toy. Other people might have had a different experience, this is just mine.

This is a post that I've been wanting to write for a very long time, but one that I had actually convinced myself shouldn't be written. Recently however, I listened in to a twitter conversation about the pros and cons of reviewing bad toys, and I decided that this was something I had to write.

A long time ago (back when I was just getting into sex toys), I bought myself the FunFactory LayaSpot. I think it was the second or third toy I had ever bought, and it took me long enough to work up the nerve to actually take the thing up to the register and purchase it.
At the time, I had never even heard of FunFactory, (The only toy company that I was even remotely familiar with was California Exotics who made the set of crappy jelly anal beads I had purchased a few months earlier - a mistake) and didn't know anything about them. All I knew was that the LayaSpot looked like a higher quality of toy than the crap I had been purchasing up until then.
I took it home and was eager to try it out right away. The LayaSpot is a clitoral vibrator that is supposed to fit easily into the palm of your hand  (and therefore be more ergonomic than other clit vibes out on the market), and since at the time I wasn't big on internal vibes, I thought that this would be perfect for me.

The FunFactory LayaSpot, which I inexplicably still have

Unfortunately, I didn't get to find out that night. I took the toy home, put batteries into it (it takes 2 AAs) and turned it on. It felt nice and buzzy, especially in the tip (which was exactly what I had been looking for). I tried it out, and at first, I was pretty pleased. The LayaSpot fit nicely into the palm of my hand, and the tip sat right over my clit, transferring the deep buzzy vibrations nicely. I was really enjoying myself, and just starting to get into things when... it stopped. I assumed that in my pleasure-induced haze, I must have pushed one of the two button controls. I pushed the + button to turn the thing back on, and resumed what I had been doing. But again, as soon as I started getting into things, the toy just turned off.
This time I opened up the battery compartment (still one of the more obnoxious ones I've dealt with) and checked to see if anything was leaking. Since nothing was, this time I made the assumption that the batteries I had supplied it with were perhaps not the freshest.
So I dutifully switched out the batteries and tried again... with the same result. Dead after just a few minutes of use. Frustrated, I shoved the toy back in my toy-drawer and tried to put it out of my mind long enough to finish the task at hand.

Sometime later, I decided to give the LayaSpot another go. And to my surprise, it turned on without any problems! But then, a few minutes later... You guessed it, dead again. At this point I was so annoyed that I boxed it back up and took it back to the store I got it at.
The lady who ran the store was very nice and exchanged it for me, no questions asked. We both assumed that I had just gotten a defective item. It's annoying sure, but it happens from time to time.

I took my new LayaSpot home and ended up having many enjoyable orgasms with it, at least until it too started exhibiting the exact same malfunctions.
After a few days of normal use, it started to randomly die on my during use. It happened over and over and over again. I switched out the batteries almost every time I used it, just so I could try to get a few moments of use out of my only "real" viberator.

But it was no use, the thing was a dud and there was no getting around it. A few months after taking my second LayaSpot home (most of which time it lay forgotten and dead at the bottom of my drawer) the thing died pretty much for good. I had taken it out to give it yet another one last chance, and it wouldn't work at all. I opened up at battery compartment and found that the batteries had leaked everywhere. I cleaned it up the best I could, dumped the batteries and shoved the thing back into my drawer, this time for good.


Like I said at the beginning, this is a post that I've been wanting to write for a long time. At the time, I was just starting to get into the toy-reviewing community and was a member of a web-site with some pretty stringent rules regarding toy reviews. One of which was that "As a matter of policy ***** does not host reviews on defective products." This of course served to deter me from sharing my experience with this toy. In principal, I agree that reviews of defective products don't really help anyone (which is one of the reasons why this isn't a review), but when you have the same bad experience with two separate items, you have to wonder if they were defective, or if something else was going on.

I've since owned several other FunFactory products, including the SmartBalls (which I loved), and don't really understand how I seemed to end up with 2 broken toys in a row. I want to make it clear again that I did not buy straight from the manufacturer, I bought from a 3rd party retail establishment. And I probably could have gone back and exchange my LayaSpot yet again for store credit or something, but at that point I was so annoyed that I didn't want to deal with it.

I'm sorry that this post has been so long, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there and share this experience with you nice folks. Please let me know what you think. And if you have had any similar experiences with the LayaSpot, please, share them!