Got some food supplies I needed, plus treated himself to two different kinds of hot chocolate powder mix, plus some actual cocoa, 4x£1 bags of candy-some huge jellybeans, some bubblegum blue bonbons and a bag of cough drops. Plus since I finally found a store that had then, two tins of cafe creme small cigars, the original kind, since I'd found everywhere else hasn't had them in ages for sale, only the much less preferred mild variety.
So got two tins, and a 10x330ml can pack of coke, the original one not that nasty sickly diet one or the limp and hollow coke zero.
This because I'd basically from the looks of it, forgot a payment went into my bank, and a big one and considerable time, plus more payments, and two more today left me with alomst a grand in my account. NOW I can FINALLY afford the lithium aluminium hydride that I've been coveting for way too long, but price wise has been currently out of my reach (about $300 for, I forget either 100 or 250g. Not a cheap reagent and it'd be a very difficult and dangerous thing to try and produce, as its air sensitive (very) water sensitive (in the extreme, and violently so, erupting in a cloud of hydrogen gas the moment any be allowed to touch water, to the extent it must be stored under dried inert gas, and also used under helium, argon, nitrogen, since its a versatile, powerful but touchy to handle reducing
reagent, and even the glassware must be first oven-baked and allowed to cool, before finally flame-dried with a torch, drying traps full of dessicant packing, like quicklime attached to prevent entry of atmospheric moisture and adding the solvent, either diethyl ether or THF (tetrahydrofuran, a cyclic ether, and very useful, common solvent for LAH reduction processes. )
If LiAlH4 is not handled in such a way, and used in THF or ether that has been distilled directly into a cooled, freshly flame-dried baked out flask, after first refluxing the THF over sodium metal bits then the solvent is too wet and the traces of water carefully
and meticulously dried in there can easily have it start a fire. And a nasty one at that, a hyfride fire since they burn very hot according to what I've read of them (never had such a fire, don't want to either) and of course one cannot pour water on it, because that would make erupt all at once in a mostrous gout of hydrogen and flaming ether/THF as the hydrogen catches fire and goes 'WHIiiIKKK!' with its characteristic rapid shockwave and high pitched squealing noise before like any other flammable gas in air mixture, a very nasty incident is had when its ignited. Of course, it CAN be used safely, but great care and respect must be afforded that particular reagent,
its expensive, and very difficult to get for the average home-based, non-business&industrial end user but it can be had, in the right places
and it'll save me at least 4 steps, one of them quite demanding (using sodium metal in anhydrous ethanol, aka the Beauveault-Blanc reduction, for a specific project of mine.) and thats specifically excluding for each step, multiple distillations under vacuum, recrystallizations and solvent washes etc. using lot of solvents and making everything costly. This trades off not so much cost but much time and effort. For a somewhat greater cost the aim I seek, can be successfully sought and bagged and tagged so to speak, for much less effort. A 1-step process with one workup, after initial purification of my substrates.
Oh I can't wait! I've been waiting months for this.
. And I'll have enough leftover money I don't need for food or bills to overhaul and update the lab more and bigger and better and more capable of performing the tasks I wish it to perform; with more glassware, better glassware and a wider variety, buying myself things I don't currently have and buying more chemicals and solvents with which to ply my art:)
Its going to be a complete spazzfest. Happy as a wee kanner's kid at xmas when he gets a load of toys and books for sensory stimulation and related to his or her speshul interests:autism:
I so cannot fucking WAIT to go shopping. And I don't mean for things like the cans of coke, the cigars, the bags of jellybeans or the hazelnut-chocolate thick 'frijj' milkshakes. The Itch is building and building, begging to be scratched out by a long session in the lab and then shopping, shopping shopping:D
