New lab glassware.
Packages of funny looking bottles and jars and tubs of various powders, liquids, metals and colorful crystals, solvents to make use of same.
(someone I miss, terribly, my ex fiancee, when we were together, it was like..as if things were meant to be, absolute perfection, a warm fuzzy blanket for the soul, she was. I'd give anything to be back by her side again. We were to have been married as soon as I'd not have gotten arrested for being with her if it were known. Had the ring ready and waiting too. Now..ever since. I ache inside. And I know I always will do, away from my soulmate)
New electronics and the like for the lab, like vacuum pumps, my rotavap.
Books. Lots and lots of books. Especially OLD books, I like antique scientific and medical books especially, the pride of my collection being 'the household physician' in two volumes, from the 1700s, big heavy leatherbound books they are, a matched set, complete with ink-marbled edges to the paper you can only see when the books are closed, and also the first page is marbled on the paper.
A pair of old medical treatises, from the 1700s, from back when they were still freely using mercury, lead, arsenic, cyanide, phosphorus, antimony, silver compounds and all manner of other nasty heavy metal based medical practices etc., even on babies. Really interesting reading they are.
They hadn't much in those days. No antibiotics, although they had chloroform and ether and various preparations of opium, and they could enact some surgery, although extremely risky. Just at the very beginning of discovery of germ theory, in the days of Lister, Pasteur, Koch. Beginning to understand about the malaria parasite, and transmission of sickness from person to person, the theory of contagion was taking shape. Beginning, to understand that bleeding people was not the answer to everything.
A really fascinating snapshot into the dawn of modern medicine during its very birth pangs. And they come complete with, tucked in between the pages, in an old, flowing cursive script, thats hard to read, and in a rather old fashioned way of speech, recipes of a former owner for various compounded medicines. I bet that the full set as I have them, with those extras, is pretty valuable. Although I've no valuation managed to get done on them.
What else...seeing a lab project take shape, and watching it grow, stage by stage, refinement by refinement, taking down my notes as it does, and making various tweaks, once a project step becomes something I've got down and working, experimenting with tuning the reaction conditions like a car fanatic with their prize car's motor, transmission etc. until its not just working well, but tweaking and poking around and modifying steps to perfect it, and squeeze every last percent of yield out of it.
Or, if I am with a partner, although I haven't been for a long, long time, going out of my way to make them happy, do the little things for them, to bring a big smile of pure delight and joy to her face. Knowing that it was something I can do, to bring wonder into a loved one's world, and looking forward to doing it again.
