Weekend Projects

This weekend I continued unpacking the stuff in our garage/shop.  I paid special attention to the boxes of paints and adhesives.  All of the flammable paints, solvents, adhesives, oils, and waxes went into the steel locker that I am using for a flammables cabinet.  Stuff that had solidified or was in a rusty can got tossed into the trash.  

I was able to reduce the volume by 5 boxes!

Another project that I finished in the shop - I created a wall rack to hold my pipe clamps.  I made it out of 2x4's cut into 6-inch lengths with a 45° angle cut off and screwed and glued to a 1x6 back board that was then screwed into wall studs.  This gets the clamps up off of the floor nicely.

There is still a lot of stuff in the garage to get organized, throw away, or move to a different part of the house.  I would like to get the space under the stairs cleared out so that I can move big things in there like the portable generator, the planer, the router table, and the welder. I will probably put a set up shelves in that corner under the stairs.

I have the lumber to begin working on the new pantry shelves, so next weekend I will probably clear off the table saw and begin working on that project.  Getting that project finished will allow us to finish unpacking canned goods in the kitchen.  The shelves are going to be painted white enamel with a natural oak wood strip on the front.

We harvested 4 tomatoes this weekend.  We sliced them up and had them with dinner.  The taste is so sweet and full.  Grocery store tomatoes taste washed out compared to back yard tomatoes!

This week should be short.  We have Thursday, July 4, off for Independence Day, and I will probably go ahead and take Friday the 5th off too.  That will give me a four-day weekend.

Summer

Summer is here and we are having a string of very hot days.

Our plants are enjoying the hot and humid days and seem happy as long as we keep them well watered.  We have picked four tomatoes already and I trimmed the basil, dried it, and put it into a jar.

The building behind our house has been completed and all four families closed and moved in this week.  The last two families took possession today.  Now the construction noise and inconvenience will move down the alley from us!

Today we went to Chapel Hill to see Dr. Shen at UNC Cancer Oncology Center.  She showed us the images of Bob's recent bleed, but she does not recommend intervening on it yet.  This lesion is in his right parietal lobe and near an internal ventricle.

It rained this evening so I will not have to water the grass!  Hooray!

Tomorrow I need to take a couple of boxes of stuff to the charity donation center and then continue working on the new shelves for the kitchen pantry.  Hopefully I will have them finished and installed in the kitchen before the end of July. 

Also, I have sheer voile curtains for the French doors, but I need to order the telescoping curtain rods used to hang the curtains on the doors.  With neighbors behind us, we will want the additional privacy some sheers will provide.

This next week should be a short week - the July 4 holiday is on Thursday, and many people will take Friday off to have a long, four-day weekend.

Apex, NC

There goes another week and another weekend.  Stephanie worked with Rick on Complexa almost all week and I worked with Joe on Twelve Hundred Pharma Compound 3.  This batch of Compound 3 was shaping up to be the best batch yet.  Then we began drying it.

In the oven we are trying to dry out the water and acetonitrile, but in the presence of water and heat, the reaction that created Compound 3 is able to run in reverse!  We need a different anti-solvent for this step.

I cleaned the 15-liter reactor and moved it aside.  Then I re-installed the 50-liter reactor in the hood in 414 so that we are ready to go in the morning.

This weekend I took some stuff to the donation center.  Then I stopped at Lowe's and got some lumber to begin working on pantry shelving for the kitchen.  I also got the caulking in our shower fixed (fingers crossed).  Also, I put a 2x4 rail up on the wall behind my chop saw and jointer for hanging clamps from.

This morning I mounted the vise on my new work bench.  

I will continue putting stuff away in our garage shop, but it gets terribly hot in there this time of year.

Today completes one week that I have been on my diet.  I lost 4.5 pounds.  It's not much, but my stomach is flatter and my pants fit better.  I will keep going.


This week we have technology transfer training on Wednesday (with lunch provided).  I am leaving early on Friday so that I can take Bob to his appointment with Dr. Shen at UNC in the afternoon.

Apex, NC

Life at work continues to be very busy, but we are making some good progress...

Complexa is being run on the Biotage flash chromatography system now and it is much safer.  Plus we are getting very distinct cuts between the good, product bearing fractions and the bad fractions that have alcohols and side products in them.

Twelve Hundred Pharma, Compound 3, has a new all-in-one-pot method, and we made the best batch yet today.  100% of the starting materials converted, the color looks good, and we think the yield will be very high.

On Saturday I took the car over to Hendrick Toyota Service Department for its 35000-mile oil change.  We had the tires rotated too.  I am going to have to replace the drivers side tires before the safety inspection this fall.

This past weekend I had a little health scare... I had chest pressure with little stabbing pains for about 5 days.  On Sunday morning we went to the neighborhood emergency room where an EKG was run.  BP was 162 / 92.   Blood was taken for heart enzyme testing.  Two chest x-rays were taken.

The EKG was perfectly normal.  The x-rays were normal.  The heart enzymes showed no evidence of heart muscle damage.

The doctor believed it was heartburn and gave me a mixture of lidocaine and Maalox to swallow.  I was also given Pepsid intravenously.  My blood pressure eventually came down.  I still had the pressure in my chest while I was in the ER, but by the afternoon I was starting to feel some relief.

I now think the chest pressure was gastric reflux likely brought on by stress related to the recent health issues Bob has been experiencing.

I decided to start a diet and walking program to lose some weight.  I am taking my vitamins along with a baby aspirin and a generic Pepsid tablet each day.

On Sunday afternoon we had to take Bob to the UNC emergency room.  He had bad ringing in his ears and leg spasticity.  They took a CT of his head and assured him that his lesions were unchanged from Wednesday.  To help calm him down he was given Valium intravenously.  He began to relax in minutes.  He was given a prescription for 12 Valium tablets and we came home.  I think he has taken two of the tablets so far.  He is trying to control his pain and panic with deep breathing, relaxation, and focusing.

He has an appointment with Dr. Shen and Dr. Adams next Friday, June 28, to discuss what needs to be done to intervene with the lesion that is growing.

The work weeks are too long and the weekends are too short!

Apex, NC

Well this concludes another adventure-filled week.

At work we continued working on Vetoquinol and Twelve Hundred Pharma.  Both of those compounds were put into the vacuum ovens to dry.  With those batches done I had to clean the 50-liter reactor and then go over to Room 400 and clean the 15-liter reactor.  Rick started Complexa in the 100-liter reactor.

Bob was not feeling well on Tuesday night.  Since Friday his spasticity had been getting worse in his legs and feet.  He also had loud ringing in his ears.  When he woke up on Wednesday morning the spasms were very bad - his feet were jumping around by themselves and the muscle contractions hurt him!  So I decided that he needed to got the Emergency Room.

I drove him to the Emergency Department at UNC and he was triaged and taken in before I could get back from parking the car.  They took him to MRI and then came back to tell us that one of the lesions found in April had grown by several millimeters.  This probably accounts for the loud ringing and stiffness in his left arm and hand.  The spasticity likely arises from the fact that Bob has been reducing his daily dose of Baclofen.  We were in the ER for twelve hours! 

This new and growing lesion will probably require some kind of intervention.  Bob is leaning toward regular surgery since it is close to the brain surface and he had some sickness from the radiation the last time we treated with Cyberknife.

While I was gone, Stephanie went to the oven to get Compound 3 out for weighing and to take a sample.  When she opened the oven what she saw made her scream!  The material had melted and turned into a gray paint!  After analyzing the sample they found out that it contained 15% starting material.  Evidently the process is reversible in the presence of water.

Today at work Stephanie and Jose ran the second partition of Complexa and Joe gave me a special project to complete - he asked me to move the 15-liter reactor from Room 400 to Room 414 and connect it to the Huber 815 there so that we can run Compound 3 again.  This was more complicated than it first sounds.  It took me the rest of the day to do this, but it is done and the equipment is ready to run the process on Monday.

Today was also payday and I paid Lowe's, Bank Of America, Town of Apex, and First Bankcard this evening when I got home.

Tomorrow we are going to J C Penny's to look at sheer voile curtains for the French doors in our dining room, then to Toyota of Apex to have the oil changed in the car at 3:05 PM.

Garage Workshop

This week was a busy week at work.  Stephanie and I had three different processes going on - Twelve Hundred Pharma Compound 6, Twelve Hundred Pharma Compound 3, and Vetoquinol Compound 11 were all running at the same time.  By Friday afternoon Compound 6 and Vetoquinol were done and drying in vacuum ovens.

The first cabinet installed.

After a batch is finished we have to go back and clean the equipment.  We cleaned the 5-Liter reactor that the catalyst was prepared in for Compound 3 on Thursday, and we cleaned the 100-Liter reactor that was used for Compound 6 on Friday morning.  Now the 15-Liter reactor and the 50-Liter reactor are waiting to be cleaned.

We are starting Complexa tomorrow morning and this will be run in the 100-Liter reactor.

It was a hot week, but it began to rain on Friday and it has rained all weekend.  A few local roadways have washed out from the flash flooding.

After work I continued to work on my work bench project each evening.  I have added diagonal braces to the back to help strengthen the legs against racking as the bench is pushed and dragged around.  I sanded the ends down flat and straight, and then I began applying a satin polyurethane finish to the top.  Working with the garage door shut the fumes just accumulated inside the garage and I am sure I was as high as a kite.

Completed cabinet project.

Yesterday I screwed a 2x4 cleat to the wall and set one of the inexpensive wall cabinets up on the cleat bracing it in place with some of my pipe clamps until I could get some screws through the back of the cabinet and into a wall stud.

This morning I continued the cabinet installation by propping up the twin cabinet and driving a pair of screws into two different wall studs.  Then I clamped the two cabinets together and drilled four countersunk pilot holes through the face frames and screwed the two face frames together.  Finally I drove more screws through the back of the second cabinet into a wall stud.  With that done I backed out the screws, took down the wall cleat, and began putting tools into the new cabinets.

I am planning on moving the new work bench into the corner below these cabinets.  I will hang a work light from the bottom of the cabinet on the right and I will attach a 10-receptacle power strip to the wall below the cabinets and above the work bench.  With the work bench project coming to completion I will have to begin working on stiff plywood shelves for the kitchen pantry next.

Today was not very hot but it was very humid and muggy.  I would come into the house soaked with sweat because of the high humidity.  In the afternoon I went over to Food Lion and got our weekly groceries.  Bob did not feel like walking very far and he stayed home.