Just had a rather nice surprise.
First-found a five pound note, plus 22 pence in small change (20p and a 2p coin)
Second-was going to give myself an intramuscular dose of methadone hydrochloride, but, after blood flowed into the syringe, I realized I had entered a vein with the needle-tip. Thought bugger it, that suits me just fine and depressed the plunger anyway. Damn....that feels pretty fucking sweet. Lighting up a cigar and putting my feet up after that. Nice and smooth is how it feels, and nothing like a smoke after a dose of most any opioid.
Methadone usually has quite a long time to onset after being taken by mouth, a slow climb but a fairly strong peak effect, but this time, it was just straight to the max. Not a rush, as such, well, there was a mild one, but lovely relaxation, lots of warmth and mmmhh..the pain in my upper neck and the lower right side of the back of my skull has stopped thumping away as if I had a hangover and had a brass bloody marching band practicing inside my head, for the first time picking up an instrument...ever. Oh, and with its members being about 8 years old, and trying to sing at the same time.
In one of those african khoisan group languages with the fucking weirdass click-consonants. With their balls stuck in a nest of stinging red ants (or with a cervix stuffed full of same, for the female members of said intracranial talentless brass band of 8-year-old brats during a monstrous hangover).
Thats now faded into the background.
Also found in my backpack, a half of a large bottle of dextromethorphan cough syrup. Useful for lowering and lessening the development of tolerance to opioid pain medication, and in high doses with a pleasant dissociative effect. Already bought a bottle of the stuff just today, but then found two in my pack. I have no idea where that came from. Opened, so I've obviously bought it in the past, drank a half bottle, and put it in my pack. I thought 'what the fuck..why is a large size bottle of robitussin-brand cough mixture in my backpack, when I bought a bottle of benylin'.....I KNOW I saw what was bought from the pharmacy whilst I cashed in the script from the hospital, because the bottle was handed to me, in a large blue box with the label in big bloody lettering displaying the brand. Then the other full one, the benylin one fell out into my lap after upending and shaking it like crazy, until the pack stopped making any noises, to be sure I'd shaken all the gubbins loose from out of there.
Lets see..I know there was another nice surprise somewhere, can't remember what it is now. Bugger.
Oh, yeah thats it. A bottle of that newish mango diet coke came dropping out too. Although fucked if I'm opening THAT for a while after the shaking given to the bag
Can't say I'm wild about the new mango stuff. Would give it another try if they do one that isn't sugar free bollocks (really...diet coke....coke isn't MEANT to be fucking health food, a liquid version of lettuce, wheatgrass juice and rabbit-pellets......) Not mad about it, but its drinkable. Saw it on sale and bought 4-5 bottles or so, its alright, but nothing special, prefer the original honestly, the kind WITH the sugar in it.
Say, anyone tried the new cherry coke ? theres some sort of new version come out. Not the original, well known cherry coke, but this came out as a pair with the mango stuff. If anyone's tried it, is it any good?
And also, I think the pharmacist forgot to charge me for a bottle of acetone I bought...or at least...that wasn't in my backpack when I WENT to hospital but was in there when I just emptied it, after asking for 'tone in the pharmacy. I certainly only got billed for the OTC version of dihydrocodeine, the weak stuff that needs extraction and vac filtration etc, and the dex syrup and citric acid I bought.
I don't get it....the only other person who uses that backpack is my father. And I really cannot see why he would be buying bottles of acetone and/or leaving them in that pack, or any other backpack for that matter. Not like its any use for fishing, which is probably the only time he'd take a backpack out anywhere.
Thats even weirder than the dex syrup. Thats just fucked type weird. It just appeared. Oh well. I can always use the acetone, I go through a fair bit of the stuff as a common lab solvent, both for reactions, recrystallizations and washing products. Of course I recycle as much as possible via distillation and re-distillation and redrying, I do that with all my solvents though, of course. Its better for the environment AND it saves the wallet from suffering and me from thinking 'fuckfuckfuck I need more money for this set of glassware or/and reagents'.
At least anything thats practical to recycle, obviously if I'm using something like a cryogenic liquid gas as a solvent, through a pipe with valves attached, stuffed with whatever is to be extracted, then that doesn't get recycled, stuff like dimethyl ether, butane, propane etc. Because I'm sure as fuck not about to buy some dry ice or liquid nitrogen just to condense a can of fucking lighter fuel, or some MeOMe.
The only other one is ammonia, and that I can recycle, at least the only one I personally often use as a solvent, anhydrous NH3, and that can be recycled, sort of at any rate, by leading the offgassed ammonia vapor into a wash bottle full of acid. Trapping it as an ammonium salt. Ideally the formate or acetate, because whilst other ammonium salts can be used just for liberating ammonia gas by addition
of a base such as NaOH, KOH, anything a stronger alkali that isn't sensitive to water, makes it kick off a storm of NH3 gas. But ammonium formate has very useful properties for catalytic transfer hydrogenation and other reductive protocols, and ammonium acetate is a handy tool for when one needs a REALLY mild base, such as preparing buffer solutions, for some knoevanagel condensations (substrate dependent, some aldehydes prefer other bases than ammonium acetate during the condensation with the nitro compound, not sure why, just some substrates like other bases better than they do ammonium acetate. Just one of those things, yields are better or worse with different bases for different combinations of aldehyde and nitro compound, like...some like ammonium acetate, some give shit yields and better ones with butylamine, some don't like that and prefer cyclohexylamine.....I myself favour triethylenetetramine, at least its always served me nicely. Have wondered about hexamethylenetetramine (camping stove solid fuel, I've got some, picked up a big bag of bulk broken, crushed smashed up camp fuel tablets for next to nothing because they were all fucked to pieces. That said, I only wanted them for formaldehyde production, and I'd have smashed them to bits to begin with and dissolved them in acid, free shipping and a price that was near nonexistent
) and check out how that to see how they perform in terms of yield with different substrates and using different nitro-compounds, testing various positioning of electron-withdrawing functional groups, electropositive groups and neutral ones on the phenyl ring of the aldehyde I'd use for the test one, as I'm interested in the Knoevanagel for aryl or heteroaryl-based substrates (benzaldehyde would be a classic example of such an arylic aldehyde and theres plenty of literate about knoevanagel condensations with it, both published in journals and via the underground lit too. A LOT of fine tuning for certain specific synths
in the underground literature. Possibly better than in the published white-hat lit.
Because there have been decades of research into two specific general patterns, with various aldehydes, testing various bases, rxn conditions. And for all establishment scientists might look down on 'amateurs' there are lot of us who are 'amateur' ONLY in the sense that have not got a formal contract, wage and pension scheme or fixed employer, and as a matter of talent, they are at times, exceedingly capable.
And 50+ years of research most likely as to which aldehydes like which bases depending on the electronegativity or electropositivity of substituents on the phenyl ring of benzaldehyde (an amphetamine synth with nitroethane and benzaldehyde, nitromethane can be used for phenethylamine or substituted phenethylamines, and many psychedelic amphetamines are done ofttimes with the Knoevanagel).
So its kinda...well its been explored out the wazoo, over a LONG time, and people are still refining and tweaking. I rather like one of the cutting edge routes myself, which rather than the typical heating the mixture of aldehyde, nitro-compound with an acidic hydrogen and base of choice (NOT hydroxide, explosive, shock-sensitive nitronates can be formed between caustic hydroxide alkalis and nitroalkanes, especially the low weight, short-chain nitroalkanes like nitromethane, nitroethane, nitropropane etc, so organic bases are typically used)
For about 6 hours to 6 and a half hours, on the steam bath. During which the liquid turns dark red. Which is a sign saying 'I've been overdone a bit Mr.Chemist, you've given me the post-rxn-liquor version of sunburn', yields suffer if thats permitted to happen. But when I do it. I do it in the microwave.
Really fast, 20 minutes total irradiation time at 900 watts, pulsed irradiation as otherwise it'll boil in a minute or less, and it doesn't want to be refluxed, just heated. MW heating is a fucking wonderful tool for it (and other chemistry procedures) but especially here, it shines, it really gives the most excellent yields, I've often had flasks, after the freeze-crystallization, just end up as a solid mass of crystals which requires dissolving out with alcohol! or if cooling, after cooling to room temperature
but not freezing, just damn cold, below zero, flicking a tiny seed-crystal into the liquor, and watching it flash-crystallize into one big solid block right in front of my eyes, spreading as quick as water if poured over the floor.
Very pretty to watch I have to confess, although on the other hand, it does make a nuisance of itself in that the stuff needs to have methanol added, warmed, dissolved, then poured out into a tray and evaporated, since any flask to redistill and reclaim the meths, would end up with a solid bright yellow block in it, that looks like a gigantic urinal-cake, only molded to take the shape of the inside of the flask.
The color is great though, doing a microwave knoevanagel (aka Henry) condensation, darkening to reddish means overdoing it to a degree, the stuff should be as yellow as possible, and if overcooked, so to speak, then the intermediate nitroalkene comes out pumpkin orange and needs more recrystallization steps to purify it. Which inevitably means more sodding about for AGES taking melting points in my thiele tube, means filling a microcapillary tube with a few milligrams of sample, and immersing it in the tube, clamped steady, just above the lowest gas flame on the oven stove top burners that can persist on their own, watching the mercury thread ever so slowly crawl forwards up the thermometer, fraction of a degree by fraction of a degree.
And watching not just for melting, but for when the sample first begins to 'sweat' and look moistened, glistening, as if it had passed through fog or dew, then through the range it partially melts, and finally, the moment it actually melts entirely.
Takes quite a long time, as the interior is basically an oil bath with some adaptation to ensure even and accurate convection and conduction of heat, 3/4 hour sometimes, longer if the MP is pretty high.
And one doesn't just do it ONCE...oh no, the chemist doesn't get away that easily once he's in the clutches of a thiele tube, he's got that to do with EVERY recrystallization, every wash, every finished reaction. In triplicate.
Taking melting points via thiele tube is a pain in the asshole, and one of those things about chemistry I just don't want to be doing. Its tedious, tiresome and involves me getting into damn uncomfortable positions for my knee and hip joints (both hips) watching a tiny wee thin trail of Hg crawl up the bore of the thermometer for fucking hell only knows how long it'll take to reach its MP with a tiny flame like that, no bigger than an alcohol lamp with a wick, its been a couple of hours before (for ONE sample, and that means the other two in the triplicate for that particular sample testing need to be done)
Although I do usually take that as my cue for a fag break, a long draught of cold, frosty, damn near cryogenic beer. Preferably several bottles
and something to eat, after I've stripped my gloves off and washed my hands.
Ugh thats another thing that irks me big time. Wearing impermeable gloves for hours or days on end. Makes the surface of the skin go all...like someone went to sleep in the bath and woke up the next day, and absolutely covered in blackish grey dead skin cells and mucky crap 'stuff' that turns into horrid little annoying roll-shaped things if you rub your hands to try get rid of some. I usually scrape down the palms of my hands and front side of my fingers, as well as the sides using my penknife. Not enough to come even close to cutting me, but sufficient to scrape a growing tide-esque wall of inside-glove-and-dead-flesh-mixed-with-dirt-and-sweaty-as-hell onto the blade. Its just nasty.
I really would like some very thin cotton gloves, or gor-tex ones to serve as undergloves, not to provide protection, but just to stop my hands sweating like a politician playing truth or dare. When the politicians include tony bliar (spelling intentional) and vladimir putin, maybe whatever tosser in israel hasn't been assassinated in a timely manner or otherwise fucked off and the palestinian...whatever they have left there....and some hardline jihadist types too
It just makes the most abominable mess. And I don't like having to scrape off BITS OF ME with a knife. Not one bit. Takes off a right big pile of black gunge too. ICK!
Its as if I'm bloody growing (or shedding, rather, being quite so disgusting) a colony of mcdanglypencildick under my gloves. Like some sort of pestilential orangery.
