I'm doing fucking fantastic. Almost pain free, and its been a LONG long time since I've been both pain free and awake to know about it.
Grabbed myself a good hearty breakfast too, 4 plain double cheeseburgers with extra bacon plus a large banana milkshake and a large chocolate shake from macdonalds. Dumb gits served me non-plain ones full of that repulsive mustard and pickles and all that chopped up, dog-vomit-looking stinking shite, took one bite after I'd walked out of the door and spat it out in disgust. Took them straight back in and got some new ones made up. Which they did get right.
Walked off to the nearby Boots store to get a box of paramol (paracetamol/dihydrocodeine tablets), for a special project of mine (I can separate the two ingredients with ease), after taking my first dose of methadone in the morning, waiting for it to kick in, and then finding myself with a case of the ravenous munchies. Got two more plain bacon double cheeseburgers in the fridge too, just waiting for me to get the munchies again. Which is somewhat beginning to happen. I bet after I've had my cherry wine, after a glass or two, I'm going to be craving something based on cheese, fat and dead cow. I don't drink much, often, but when I do, especially if I get at all drunk, I ALWAYS end up with my stomach begging to be stuffed full of meaty, beef-a-licious, cheese-slathered salty greasy-spoon chow.
*takes a hearty sip of his cherry wine, and feels it sliding down his throat, warming me up as it passes my oesophagus, and contemplates an evening top-up of methadone*
Today....today is a good day. Today is a day that I feel like diving into the lab and making with the experimenting. Not decided all of what I'll be doing yet, but I've a good idea about some of it. Can't say about the organic side, but on the inorganic side of things I wouldn't mind going back to my work refining silica to elemental silicon 'metal'.
(Already had some success, by using finely powdered magnesium dust, and after treating some concentrated potassium silicate solution with strong sulfuric acid, which precipitates silica as an extremely fine particulate form, which when dried, is the finest of smoke-like dusts (gas mask needed to handle, as it'd be horrendous for the lungs, and it takes to the air very easily being so light and finely divided) and after washing out the potassium salts, drying the powder, then weighing and mixing it with the correct proportions of magnesium metal powder, packing it down into a crucible and popping in a little strip of magnesium ribbon as a fuse, then igniting the tip, waiting, with welding goggles on until it burns down to below the top of the carbon crucible its held in, then quickly popping on a piece of metal and a brick over the top to stop the silicon vaporizing and evaporating away)
The reaction is fast, almost violent, although not explosive, and it goes up, if the crucible isn't sealed, with a big blinding white glaring flash, hence the welding goggles, but when sealed and weighted closed there is a mixture of magnesium oxide slag, which can be dissolved away with dilute acid, and here and there, little round, bumpy pitted lumps of very light-weight, silvery, brittle 'metal'.
Elemental silicon, ala Lestat Rett, with a side serving of blazing flames and sparks. Tasty
I've been toying with switching to an aluminothermic process, rather than magnesium, since I can rule out any aluminium content in the metal nuggets by bathing it in strong caustic soda solution, which would dissolve aluminium, fizzing with the evolution of hydrogen gas. I've tested it, and the result is indeed, immune to attack by caustic.
Just a couple of pics of the first elemental silicon 'metal' nuggets produced via the aluminium based silica thermite (I say 'metal', in quotes, as it isn't, strictly speaking a metal, its a metalloid, or semi-metal, akin to things like germanium, one of the allotropes of arsenic, selenium (one of the allotropes) and tellurium, not quite metallic, not non-metallic either, semimetals usually have a metal-like appearance, but a brittle consistency, and are often semiconductors.
Made these myself, in the back garden, these were the very first nuggets of elemental silicon I managed to prepare, the slag dissolved away with acid, and then treated with a solution of sodium hydroxide [caustic soda] to remove any traces of aluminium that might have melted onto the surface. Only the merest hint of bubbling, even after a long immersion in strong caustic.
Not the best photography I've ever done, but the individual nuggets are difficult for the camera to get a photo of, and its impossible to do it with a flash, as it seems really reflective and always comes out as nothing more than something resembling a miniature, rounded lightening bolt, color-wise.
