I wanted to slap my father in the chops earlier. Well almost just now. Telling me to fucking wake up and get out of 'his' chair. When he was sitting at the computer, using it. I'd been up late with little hope of sleeping, so I broke out the labware and started tinkering with one of my projects. Then eventually when all that was to be done was turn a bottle of solvent/H2O fraction containing my (I hope) project or, having obtained the first seed crystals of said project, try go for drying the solvent, evaporating much of it, then crashing the project in question out of solution with something like HCl gas in ice cold ether (thought acetone at first, then remembered what chloroacetone is like and something in the back of my head, a little voice telling me that I remember something about elemental chlorine gas itself not being required, and that HCl could be bubbled through acetone to prepare chloroacetone. Which is really not something enjoyable to work with even if it would have served my purpose. Couldn't be fucked, and did not want at all to start having to work on a fresh batch of diethyl ether using my last amount of lab ethanol, and dripping it slowly and then distilling it off from concentrated (98-99%) sulfuric acid at give or take a few degrees, somewhere around 115-120 'C, condensing the ether with an efficient double condenser setup, a dimroth first then something like an alihnn and ice-salt-acetone water mixture sent via a recirculating pump setup through the coils of the dimroth, and if my smaller secondary compressor would manage it, and I don't know, through the alihnn, but if not, then using an air compressor that originally was, I am told, part of some kind of hospital respirator, CPAP machine or something like that. Portable, compact, a bit less than a foot in diameter with a handle on top, switch and output hose barb on the front. A little noisy but not too bad and quite efficient. Someone handed it in at a pet store, as a candidate for an aquarium pump but it puts out too much vibration for fish and so, by complete chance and good fortune my going into that particular store when I had need of lots of different sizes and lengths of flexible plastic tubing for condensers, gas generators and the like, I was more or less given it as a christmas present by the owner of the pet store, for just the few pounds he'd given the person who turned it over to them, so he recouped his loss, since, as he saw me testing the ends of plastic tubing to see what would go on my Dimroth condenser, a liebig, and a distillation adapter, he realized the vibration was most unlikely to be a problem, and that chances were, it wouldn't ever SEE a fish in its operating lifetime that didn't come wrapped in paper, covered in batter and deep fried, with chips.
Fiver, still need to get either a few more modest sized powerful compact compressors, otherwise unlikely to turn up cheap from that store again, was a one off, or a manifold that I can attach multiple outlets to the primary output and run multiple recirculating coolant feeds.
Anyhow I'd ended up falling asleep with my project sitting there, solvent doing its solvating thing, in a sealed bottle, eventually, after taking a sleeping pill; after which I was so tired I fell asleep, after the heminevrin and noradrenaline release inhibitors did their work with my goggles still on and face shield still on my head, sat on the couch. Like fuck do I want the old fucking git yapping at my heels telling me to wake up. He can sit on the fucking sofa for fucks sake, or if he wanted to be asleep, not have got out of his fucking bed. It should have been obvious I was bloody well tired if I fall asleep still wearing goggles and a fold-down blast shield and my e-cig still in my damned hand. That and theres nothing to eat in the house and I'm hungry. I thought there was some food left and there isn't. All there is, is a half full pack of some kind of haribo gummy jelly banana flavoured bear things, which I'm eating for want of anything else, two unopened bags of liquorice hard gums, one old, now rock hard part of a chocolate cookie, some cinder toffee, bonfire toffee lollies in my candy bag and a cake bar I just found again in my candy bag and wolfed down in two hurried snaps. Plus a couple of trays left of the liquorice toffee I bought a couple of weeks ago online, and is so hard I just had to break a piece off by putting it in one of the vices and slamming it with the handle end of a hex wrench. Going to nibble on some of that, since it should keep me going for a while, while I make the one remaining pot noodle (chicken and mushroom if you must know, with the sweetcorn bits picked out while still dry and a splash of worcestershire sauce and dark soy sauce. But that won't keep me going for long. All I can hope is that old fucking git is as hungry as I am and goes shopping.
And oh, I just remembered, I THINK there is likely to be bread, that he gets often, and if I'm lucky either some marmite or peanut butter to put on it. I could just take a spoon to the jar of peanut butter right now and eat the entire lot.
And the NHS are hassling me, claiming I submitted a false claim for a prepayment script certificate. I didn't. At the date they claim I did, I COULDN'T have done so, because I had to send someone to collect my meds for me as I'd hurt my foot badly and couldn't walk. I hope my morning dose of morphine makes me feel less hungry. But it'll make me crave a rollup (no, just nicotine from an e-cig alone doesn't fill the hole) and if I had money enough for smokes I'd be buying something to eat with it.
**a 'whump-crackle' kind of noise emanates from the vicinity of the vice, and que toffee shards being hoovered up**
At least I could be optimistic about it being really good toffee, I like the hard, brittle kind that lasts ages, and rather than being bendable, shatters with a conchoidal fracture, like flint, or thick glass, quartz etc. do when hit with sufficient force to break them. Munching a piece of that whilst I go make that pot noodle.
