I had a very moving experience today… My very good friend Scott is working his way through pancreatic cancer. It’s been a very tough road. Scott and I have been friends for about 30 years. We’re tied by a common love of science. He’s taught me more than any other human about how to make things to help other folks share our love of science. One of those passions is chemistry. Both of us have significant collections of chemicals… Most of the “somewhat safe” as I used to label the three bins of chemicals I had when the boys were young. (“Safe”, “somewhat safe”, and “ask Dad”).
Scott has decided to move the chemicals out of his house… So he doesn’t have to think about them. Especially the ones that are in the “ask Dad” category. It’s surprisingly difficult to get rid of “Ask Dad” chemicals. Anyway through the help of several organizations I’ve managed to find homes for most of the stuff. A good portion of the chemicals are going to help encourage university students and their love of chemistry. Some of them have to be placed a bit more carefully. I spent two hours working with Scott today which was really wonderful. I had previously categorized everything there and then worked with some of the recipients to categorize them into different groups… acids, Flammable, oxidizer, toxic, alkaline, somewhat safe. Today we sorted all of the chemicals into protective buckets lined with absorb the material and I move them to their new homes. It was really cathartic. It was fun working together on this and it was fun actually remembering all the cool fun that we’ve had with some of them. I also learned some new stuff in the process.

Scott’s always been an inspiration to me and this was an honor to help him with this

nite all, nite sam
-me