June 24

Well, the first half of the coupling reaction went well, so I started on the second half today.  I got a late start due to several factors that I could not control, but was started nonetheless.  I even managed to go about things quickly on the new reaction, which is not typical for me, because I like to think new reactions new completely before I do something (which is a good policy in general maybe?).  In any case, things got done, well and on time.  The only hitch in the plan came at the end, when I was warming a separating funnel, and the Teflon stopcock expanded and cracked the whole thing.  I then apparently did not heat the next one sufficiently, because my solution crystallized as I was doing the separation (BAD‼).  With the aid of a dryer, and some help from Sabrina, I was able to take care of that whole fiasco, and finish the reaction mostly well.  Dr. Heckmann came by toward the end of the day and we talked for a bit about education and what I will be doing next week.  I was waiting for the reaction to cool a bit so that I could seed it with crystals, and while we were talking it apparently was cool enough that the movement of the stirring caused it to recrystallize by itself.  That was not really a problem, but it would have been better if I could have seeded it before it had reached that phase.  Oh well, at least I have product.  We will see if it crashed out tomorrow.  I really hope the product is pure…I would prefer not to have to do this crazy reaction again (who knew that inert conditions required such patience?).

After work I had about an hour to eat and drink before Sportfest.  It was at the Blumengarten Stadion in Ingelheim, which is a cool sports complex.  There were all sorts of track and field events.  Thomas, Stefan and I did a Staffel-Lauf (relay) where we each took a 1km leg.  There are some crazy good athletes at Böhringer, that is for sure (also, some very active older people).  For our relay, Thomas took the first leg, I the second and Stefan finished it up.  Unfortunately, the first leg did not go so very well.  I managed to catch and pass two older runners in my leg, which I would have been embarrassed to lose to quite honestly, and we ended up finishing in 12^th place with a time of 11:05.  Nicht so gut, aber…it was ok.  We got some good exercise and had fun.  For some reason, at the end, the back of my throat was incredibly dry, so for the rest of the night I've been coughing like I have emphysema and no amount of water, mineral or otherwise can take care of it.  Maybe a night of sleep will help.  It had better.  It was another crazy day of football as well, with Italy of course being knocked out of the tourney.  Japan played well too; those penalty kicks were quite fantastic.  I really cannot believe the amount of soccer that I have been watching.  Tomorrow though, I plan to do some geocaching in the area, which will be fun.  There are a lot of them around here.