08:16 – Barbara’s dad’s IV antibiotic course finishes tomorrow. She has to take him to a follow-up visit to his doctor Tuesday, so she’s going to pick him up from the rehab facility and take him back to his apartment after he visits the doctor. She says he’s up and about, which is all that’s necessary to make his own apartment the best place for him. The last thing Barbara and Frances want to do is split up their mom and dad, so they intend to keep him at the Creekside retirement village as long as possible. If/when there’s another crisis, they’ll get him to the hospital and wait until he’s well enough to come straight back home. They don’t want him in a nursing home until/if it’s completely unavoidable.
The heat sealer I ordered from Amazon arrived yesterday, and I immediately put it to the test by sealing a couple of bottles of iodine solution in a quart ziplock bag. The bags are 2-mil (0.05+ mm) polyethylene, and it takes only a couple seconds for the sealer to melt a seal into the bag. I intentionally left plenty of air in the bags so that I could check them for airtightness. They are in fact airtight, but unfortunately that doesn’t stop the iodine vapor from penetrating the bag. There’s a very, very slight iodine odor, but that’s good enough to keep the iodine vapor from staining other parts in the kits. We’re going to start including a separate iodine bottle label that people can affix to the bottle once they open the bag. I’ll probably also use the heat sealer to seal the other chemical bags in the kits.
11:36 – Barbara and I just got back from Lowe’s. We needed some 4-foot fluorescent tubes for the basement fixtures, so we picked up a 10-pack for $22. I think I’ll date the things with a Sharpie before I install them. I think some of the current tubes are original from when we installed the fixtures back in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
While we out there, I decided to pick up some chemicals for the kits. Most of the chemicals we use are reagent-grade, lab-grade, or USP, purchased from lab chemical vendors. But three of them we get from Lowe’s or Home Depot, because we use them in relatively large amounts and they’re much cheaper at a DIY super-center than they are from lab vendors. The purity is adequate for our purposes. Those three are copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate (sold as Root Kill), sodium hydroxide (sold as Crystal Drain Opener), and hydrochloric acid (sold as muriatic acid).
Years ago, before I decided to use them, I did gravimetric analyses on the copper(II) sulfate and sodium hydroxide. The Root Kill ($13 for two pounds/907 grams) is labeled as 99% copper(II) sulfate. When I tested it gravimetrically, it assayed at, IIRC, 99.7±0.1%, which is essentially reagent-grade in terms of purity. The remaining 0.3% give or take is probably almost all insoluble copper(II) oxide, which is easy to filter out. The Crystal Drain Opener is labeled as 100.0% sodium hydroxide. Gravimetrically, I got about 99.5% sodium hydroxide, but I suspect it really is 100.0% in the bottle. The problem with sodium hydroxide is that it literally sucks water vapor out of the air. You can put some dry sodium hydroxide in a weigh boat and watch the weight increase as the dry crystals absorb water. The muriatic acid is probably about lab grade in terms of purity. The stuff is manufactured simply by bubbling hydrogen chloride gas into water, so most of the contaminants in the products were in the source water. Still, it’s more than good enough for our purposes.
I also picked up a gallon (3.8 liters) of acetone in the paint department for something like $4.50 a liter. It’s certainly not spectroscopic-grade nor even reagent-grade acetone, but again it’s more than pure enough for our purposes. Acetone is produced commercially mostly directly from propylene by the cumene process or by oxidizing isopropanol, so the process itself inherently produces pretty pure product. Other than water, the only contaminants are typically low concentrations of VOCs that have no effect on the acetone for solvent purposes. We use it 50/50 with USP-grade 70% IPA for making up Sudan III stain. I’ve tested that stain made up with reagent-grade solvents, and there’s no visible difference in results compared to stain made up with the USP and technical-grade solvents.
“Immigration bill to bring in at least 33 million people, says group”:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/26/anti-immigration-group-immigration-bill-to-bring-in-at-least-33-million-people/
“The pending Senate immigration bill would bring a minimum of 33 million people into the country during its first decade of operation, according to an analysis by NumbersUSA, a group that wants to slow the current immigration rate.”
What happened to the 12 million estimate that the Federal Senate was throwing around before? Answer, we are going to fast track 90% of the current illegals XXXX undocumented workers to citizenship. And then we will allow them to bring their families, grandmas, aunts, uncles, etc, etc, etc. And all of these people will be on welfare.
The USA will not be the same country in 10 years, much less 20 years. 80% of these new people will vote for Democrats. And this will hasten the Great Default.
The last thing Barbara and Frances want to do is split up their mom and dad, so they intend to keep him at the Creekside retirement village as long as possible. If/when there’s another crisis, they’ll get him to the hospital and wait until he’s well enough to come straight back home. They don’t want him in a nursing home until/if it’s completely unavoidable.
What does he want to do?
We needed some 4-foot fluorescent tubes for the basement fixtures,
So is your house a three story including the walk in basement?
Well, again, you can blame the Religious Right for this. Obama would not have been elected once, let alone twice, if the RR didn’t skew the RP to putting up candidates who are unelectable. And Bush II, who should have been unelectable.
We need to start exporting the ones who are already here back over the border. Accepting more of them is simply nuts. We really don’t need any more poor, unskilled people living here, particularly if they don’t speak fluent English. What we need to do is put our own poor, unskilled people to work doing the work that Mexicans who are in the US but are not US citizens are currently doing. “If you want to eat, expect to work for it” needs to become the new norm.
Dutch wants to be at home, of course. He doesn’t want to be in the hospital, and he certainly doesn’t want to be in a nursing home. Frankly, if I were Barbara’s mom, the next time Dutch collapses and is unresponsive, I’d wait quite a while before I called 911. All that an emergency room trip means for him at this point is that he’s going to suffer more. He’s never going to get better.
Our house is a typical ranch, one main floor and a basement, over half of which is finished area and the remainder the garage, laundry area, etc.
“Well, again, you can blame the Religious Right for this.”
Well, not totally. I am fah from a defender of the RR but this is not all on their heads; the RINO country-club overlords bear most of the responsibility for the self-destruction of the Repub, i.e., Stupid Half of the War/Money Party, so wonderfully chronicled by the late Sam Francis in his “Beautiful Losers.” And others, including Patrick Buchanan. They’re done, as in “toast.” All over but the crying, whining and recriminations, as in days of yore, when it was “Who Lost China?”
Once again nicely illustrating that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two halves and those who keep exhorting the rest of us to vote ought to find a better use for their time and energies; the long charade is over and yes, as Lynn points out, this will be a different country and yes, the Great Default looms ever closer.
Habla Espanol? I was miffed, yet again up here, when I stopped by the Lowe’s down in Upper Megalopolis (Essex, VT, which is indistinguishable from Nova Caesarea or eastern Maffachufetts) and the signage out front was both “Entrance” and “Entrada.” Cut the shit. We’re several thousand miles from the Mexican border and a half-hour from Quebec. But someone must know something we don’t, i.e., the tired, poor, huddled Latino masses from the southern hemisphere are headed this way, baby.
I’ll learn Old Icelandic and re-learn Old English, Old Saxon, classical Greek and Biblical Hebrew WAY before I learn Spanish so as to communicate once in a blue moon with folks who I do not blame for wanting to come here but with whom I feel very little affinity and about whom I am somewhat resentful that the taxes that the State bleeds out of us will go to support them, as meanwhile I am being RIF’ed and I have one brother who’s been outta work for two years now after thirty as a UNIX engineer and another who is still doing temp contractor gigs.
Will a “man on horseback” come along and find it easy to recruit me and suit me up in a nice khaki uniform and armband and jackboots so I can go beat up Mexicans? No, but you can see how simple it would be for way too many folks in this country to rush to the colors.
There’s a bill in Nevada to give driver’s licenses to illegals. If that passes, our illegals can drive to your states and take jobs, commit crimes, etc. This is our followup to shipping our sickies to you. Enjoy!
Thanks! And I note that the trucking industry has already been opened up nationwide to south-of-the-border truckers, too! How special! Gee, what’s in their loads? Does anyone check? And if anyone from the State told us they checked, can we believe them?
Increasingly in this country we are more and more on our own while simultaneously being squeezed relentlessly from above and below. And still various pundits tell us we never had it so good! We got electricity, internet, refrigeration, inside plumbing, soft bum-wad, tee-vee, washing machines, dryers, microwaves, cell phones and the wonderful interstate highway, bridge, dam and railway systems; let’s not forget the ecstasies of air travel!
You really need to quit using the term illegal as it’s demeaning. The correct term is undocumented democrat.
Yes, I sit corrected; the documented Dem voters are under six feet of sod but still active, bless their mummified hahts.
Dutch wants to be at home, of course. He doesn’t want to be in the hospital, and he certainly doesn’t want to be in a nursing home. Frankly, if I were Barbara’s mom, the next time Dutch collapses and is unresponsive, I’d wait quite a while before I called 911. All that an emergency room trip means for him at this point is that he’s going to suffer more. He’s never going to get better.
My thoughts exactly after going through this with my grandmother. Except no ambulance rides or paramedics from the beginning.
If Dutch continues going to the ER, he will end up in a nursing home permanently. Does he have a DNR? If so, there needs to be many copies posted around him.
Our house is a typical ranch, one main floor and a basement, over half of which is finished area and the remainder the garage, laundry area, etc.
Ok, I do not remember that. You posted a picture quite a while back and my impression was two stories. I did not realize that that bottom story was the basement. That is a entirely different method of home design from Texas typical.
You really need to quit using the term illegal as it’s demeaning. The correct term is undocumented democrat.
Every time I see this, I laugh. Then I get depressed.
Prepping for the Europe trip. Acquiring a new iPad for me as the wife decided she likes my iPad and wants it for herself. Passports stowed, Passport cards in the wallet, copies of the passports with me and the wife. Camera bag packed with necessities for the long flight. Train tickets stashed in the camera bag. Extra battery pack for the iPad. German sim for the iPhone. Noise cancelling headphones along with a spare pair in case of problems. Charger and USB cables, check. Schedules loaded in the iPad and the iPhone along with contacts, check. Deutche Bahn app loaded in the iPhone. Pen for the forms on the plane (lesson learned). Chip on a card credit card, naturally. Credit card companies notified of pending out of country purchases, you bet. Electric plug converters packed along with a transformer. Memory cards and battery charger for the camera batteries are stowed. USB to Lightning cable so I can download pictures to the iPad. Movies loaded on the iPad along with 2,400 songs.
There is probably something I forgot and that is bugging me.
Excellent array of organizational travel tips, Ray; I cut-pasted and forwarded to Princess who is leaving for Berlin on May 15. She will ignore me, of course and blow it off. But I tried.