Another weekend in the lab...

            A busy yet fairly disappointing week in the lab was finished yesterday night the way it normally is, with several pints of Guinness and a bag of cheese and onion McCoy’s in the union bar. I got in from this all too often Friday night excursion, made some food and fell asleep around 11:30.

            I had every intention of spending this morning in the city centre buying a few bits and pieces and running some errands before going to the lab to do a couple of things around 2pm. I eventually woke up at around 1pm feeling excellent but with no time to go into town. I knew I was tired, but when I sleep for nearly 14 hours straight at the weekend I think that proves I may need to sleep more during the week! 

            My standard Saturday bacon sandwich and a quick bike ride into work meant I arrived a bit after 2pm. There was dry THF in the still from the day before so I took my opportunity to make the Grignard I’ve been putting off all week. Getting any significant amount of dry solvent out of the two stills in our lab during the week when there are 15 people working in the lab with you is generally like getting blood out of a stone. As such, I tend to leave any large scale stuff that has to be really dry to the weekend when someone isn’t going to pilfer the solvent I’ve just collected when I leave the lab or turn my back for more than about 30 seconds. Anyway, PhMgBr was prepared without too many issues. The undergrads here don’t even do it under nitrogen when they make it in labs so I was quite pleased when mine initiated on its own without so much as a tickle from the heat-gun. A nice uneventful cannula transfer and all was good in the world with that reaction. Seeing as I was now on what some might call a roll, two more reactions were set up left stirring for a couple of days. I now have loads to do on Monday, but that’s all ok with me seeing as there’s nothing worse than having nothing to do whilst sitting around in the lab watching someone steal your dry solvents…