The Bats

Wow, I haven't posted for a week. It really didn't feel like that long. Although I had a good reason, I promise. I'll tell you later.

Last week was my last week with Sharonna before she went to a conference and then on vacation for a month. So this week I am working all by myself in the lab. I think I have a pretty good handle on how to work everything. The only dangerous thing I am working with is HCl gas which can lead to all kinds of nasties if not handled properly. These include the usual burns and blisters as well as permanent respiratory damage if inhaled and possible death, blindness, explosive diarrhea etc,. Despite my exaggeration it is very nasty stuff. Although the potential danger doesn't compare with the time I squirted the back of my hand with known-to-be-carcinogenic dichlormethane last semester. I am pretty sure all chemists get cancer at some point in their lives. It's almost a statistical certainty. Very few other people work as closely with potentially fatal chemicals as chemists. A while ago a guy in my lab sliced his hand open on broken glassware. We ought to lobby for hazard pay.

I also decided last week that synthetic research and baseball have a lot in common. And no, it's not just because both are seen as exceedingly boring by the average Canadian. Both are exercises in learning to deal with failure. In baseball, if you fail only seven out of ten times the public adores you, you make multiple million dollars a season and Coca-Cola can't wait to plaster your face on a Sprite can. The only other place such failure is acceptable is synthetic research. I've discovered that if I get one in ten reactions to work correctly then I induce swooning from my adoring public and am the beneficiary of multi-million dollar lab coat endorsement deals.... Well, not exactly, but apparently one in ten is a decent success rate in this line of work. Honestly it's kind of depressing. Although I tell you, when you get that beautiful looking nmr spectrum (ie. you know you made what you wanted to) you practically skip back down the hallway! I wouldn't have any personal experience with this (the skipping), of course.

I think I finally have a synthetic route to my desired product, though. So progress is being made, however slowly. So very slowly.

I am late posting because I have been gone all weekend in Louisville, KY visiting some friends of my parents and "discovering my roots" as they took to calling it. It was a really neat experience. I saw where my parents lived when I was born, the fire hall where my dad worked, the hospital I was born in, the church where my parents met and were married. The church by the way is absolutely beautiful. I don't think I have seen many churches that pretty on this continent (this could be, of course, because I haven't exactly seen many churches, see below). I visited the Louisville Slugger wooden bat factory. I touched Derek Jeter's bat(s). It was amazing. I also went to Churchill Downs where the Kentucky Derby is run. Louisville is a really pretty city in places. It was not at all what I expected. A lot of the architecture is of a southern style red brick and gleaming white plaster. Many of the buildings resembled those in books about flaming crosses and goofballs covered in white bedsheets. Apparently Louisville is a "midwestern town that thinks it is in the South".

The bat factory also had the world's largest baseball bat sitting out front. I touched the world's largest bat. I touched a lot of bats. I got a free bat just for visiting. There was a huge pile of bats at the Louisville airport that people had confiscated at security. I laughed pretty hard. There were a lot of bats.

I have a piece about Detroit I will post later, I suppose. I know you're all hanging on the edges of your respective seats in anticipation.