09:13 – We’re in reasonably good shape on finished science kit inventory, so I’ll spend some time today making up a bunch of different solutions for yet more kits, in gallon batches. One gallon (~ 3.8 L) is sufficient for 250 15 mL bottles or 125 30 mL bottles, which is a reasonable number to make up at a time. Unfortunately, I can’t make up all of the solutions in larger batches. Most are stable indefinitely, but a few are stable for only a few years. Those we make up and bottle on-the-fly as we’re building kits.
Barbara said last night that I didn’t really need to get my own Kindle Fire, and that she’d only been kidding about me using hers all the time. Maybe so, but I’m sure she gets tired every evening of me asking her every few minutes to pass over her Kindle so I can check something. This’ll take us to four Kindles, one each mono units for actually reading books and one each tablet units for checking email and websites during the evening when we’re watching TV or whatever. Both of the tablets are 7-inch units, which are much better for Internet stuff than tiny smartphone displays. Now if only websites would stop defaulting to their mobile versions when they’re accessed with a tablet.
10:30 – The nail polish remover fairy just made a clandestine visit to the little ziplock bag that Barbara keeps under her end table in the den. She had a 2-ounce (60 mL) bottle of nail polish remover that was almost empty. Nail polish remover is simply acetone. She now has a bottle filled with reagent-grade acetone, which is a whole lot purer than the acetone that was originally in the bottle.
When I started making up chemicals, I finally decided to pretty up the containers. They’re currently hand-labeled with a black Sharpie, so I printed up a bunch of 5152 sticky labels (14 per sheet) to use instead. I figured I could wipe off the existing hand-printed labels with isopropanol. That didn’t work, so I tried some naphtha (Zippo lighter fluid). Surprisingly, that didn’t work either. So I decided to try acetone, but I didn’t have any upstairs. Then I remembered Barbara’s nail polish remover, so I gave it a try. The Sharpie marks wiped right off. But Barbara’s nail polish remover was nearly empty before I used it, so I figured I’d better refill it. Barbara now has a full bottle, thanks to the nail polish remover fairy.