Just got back from the local corner shop, with what I intended to go for. Although as flapjack bars were on sale I did allow myself the luxury of buying more than the two I had planned to buy and immediately eat for a quick, convenient breakfast that's filling and doesn't need cooking or time taking to eat. Bought several more, plus allowed myself two loaves of icky-sticky jamaica ginger cake, as they were on sale for just a pound a cake. Got two, not had those in a while, and I absolutely LOVE 'em. Put me anywhere near one of those jamaica ginger cakes, with the thick layer of sticky treacly gingery gooey topping and you can bet your last penny that it will last less than 60 seconds. 120 AT MOST, before I'm down to gnawing the bits off the paper where it stuck with my teeth, and burping satisfactorily.
Time for a couple of quick lines of oxycodone, a cigar or two and then, I must get to work. IF of course, one can truly name a job which a person loves and finds just as much recreational hobby-indulgence as a job as 'work' in the first place. Since, despite spending much of my life bent over a benchtop, babysitting one reaction or another, or else garbed in full protective gear, doing things outside that I can ONLY safely do in the back garden, like taking a blowtorch to a custom-fabricated disposable vessel made for the purpose, full of phosphorus (red), and condensing the vapors driven off under a deep column of ice cold water, as white phosphorus (obviously not an indoor project on any larger than a scale using a pair of linked test-tubes and hundreds of milligrams to a couple of grams of red phosphorus, rather than preparing multi-hundred-gram batches of white phosphorus, with it's extreme toxicity, and propensity to spontaneously ignite on contact with air, and if it gets on anyone, to burn until it either exhausts itself, or burns right through one side of the victim and out of the other.
To say nothing, of course, of both the incredibly intense, flaring, blazing white-glowing green inferno itself, with it's blinding glare and the truly WHOPPING cloud of acidic, corrosive phosphorus pentoxide smoke that would come from accidental release of a quantity of several hundred grams. I've seen white phosphorus selfignite on that scale, once, after an alembic broke, and released a large amount of white phosphorus that was literally, so hot, it was not just molten, but BOILING, refluxing up and dripping back down the walls of the alembic in globules. When the glassware failed, shit, the smoke cloud was so fucking HUGE, one could see the plume of dense, white smoke take to the skies so high and wide and densely that it could be seen from a block away, at least. I didn't check to see just HOW far it could be seen, but I should imagine it was visible from even further away than that.
Thankfully I've next door neighbors who happened soon after moving in, actually the time I made my first introduction to them, to spot me walking out into the back garden dressed in heavy leathers, a protective visor and toughened blast-shield faceplate, elbow-length black gloves covered in two more layers of gloves, a middle layer of rubberized fabric mechanics type gloves, then thick, hefty fabric gardening gloves over the top of those, and had to make my first introduction from behind a gas mask, that was a bit different from most first introductions to new neighbors, in that it consisted of 'Hey, nice to meet you, I'm Lestat, and no, I'm not a terrorist, I'm autistic and big into chemistry so don't be alarmed at the complicated assembly of glassware being hooked up to vacuum lines and water pumps and tanks of inert gas.....'
Quite a nice pair, both of them, a young lass and her other half. The girl makes my sped-dar tingle a bit. Not heavily, the dial isn't spinning round like a drunken compass needle in the middle of an epileptic seizure, but she registers there all the same. A real cutie too, which is another pointer towards her being on the spectrum. Since she's definitely not mentally retarded, and if a girl isn't either aspie/autie/Rett's, MR, or both, then I am VERY unlikely to find them attractive. I just don't go there when it comes to NT girls. It's not QUITE so unappealing, but not far off how appealing I'd find fucking a guy, or the thought of doing so (I never have, and never will, although I have porked NT females, never not regretted it though and never will again unless forced to do so under duress. If she doesn't flap and rock and spin and clap and make those cute stimmy noises then I'm gonna need a tourniquet on my dick
)
But both she and her BF, they have become accustomed to seeing me at work doing outside-only kinds of chemistry, fiddling around with blowtorches in the back garden, setting up a portable workbench on the lawn and bringing an extension to wire up the vacuum pump, that kind of thing, and by now, they've just got used to it, to the point where if I'm finished up and at the point where whatever I'm upto has been done for the time being, I can happily spend time whiling away with her over the hedge chatting, even whilst looking like some kind of paramilitary stormtrooper
Kinda funny really, but 'hey, been a while, how are you' heard through a respirator and sounding somewhat darth vader-ish isn't even surprising, let alone alarming. Just at most, curiosity at what the experiment or synthesis was.
I must admit, it's nice to have neighbors where I don't have to hide everything from their sight, and who aren't even bothered by a localized searing, luminescent firestorm, if it doesn't affect them (and thats one thing I do believe strongly in, that nobody else gets harmed by anything I do, save someone who would willingly and knowingly chose of their free will and desire, accompany me in my efforts if ever I find a lab partner (or better yet, a gorgeous young Kanner's autie girl who's got a similar bent for science as she had for me, and doesn't mind that there is a second love in my life, ideally, one shared, of course, though, of the inanimate, or at least non-living nature). If that were the case, then obviously thats different, someone knowingly choosing to assist in a project knowing any risks, and assenting to share in them to accomplish a goal shared also. But not to inflict anything on innocent bystanders.
(although I have absolutely NO compunction about deploying chemical deterrents, of varying degrees of severity against someone who intends to harm me first, or those I love, they'll cop a face full of teargas, if they are very very lucky. And potentially far worse things than tear-gases. Has saved me, as a kid, from getting mugged and the shit kicked out of me by a pair of chavscum in a dark alley with nowhere to run. But before they could so much as get close enough to throw a punch, both of them were on the floor clutching their faces and trying their hardest to scream in agonizing pain, which they would have been doing, had their airways not closed up tight and cut off their breathing. THEY had it coming though, and had they acted so as to leave me unmolested they'd not have been hit in the face with a torrent of a noxious chemical that the army had long ago rejected for being too toxic)
But hey, they shouldn't have cornered me in a dark alley whilst I was minding my own business going home, intent on robbing me and kicking the fuck out of someone for amusement. If they hadn't, they'd never have had to learn why one ought never to fuck with an autie with far more smarts their entire ancestral line and current family could ever hope to begin to comprehend, and who was packing chemical weapons
. Fuck with an autie, and you are going to get 'naughty' rather than 'nice'
