A rather uneventful day

For the most part today was rather uneventful but I did do a few things. Unfortunately they were very different and really do not lend themselves to the naming of an overarching theme for the day so I will call it uneventful. I visited my friend Scott (along with his wife Brooke and son Conner) today. He is a friend I knew from my last job, Fuji Hunt Photographic Chemicals in Rolling Meadows, IL. I have a couple of other friends from Fuji Hunt but Scott is my connection to them. He is the one that keeps in contact with me. He also lives much closer than the other two so when I want to give something to any of them, I go through Scott. I bought a box of Frango Mints for each of them for Christmas but have been unable to get them to him until today. Unfortunately, I hadn't looked in the bag that I had them in since I bought them. I bought three boxes of different flavors for each of them. I also bought a single Frango cookie for me. When I got home, I took my cookie out and put the bag away until I could get it to them. When I took the bag out today, I looked inside to make sure that I had taken the prices off and their were only two boxes. SOMEONE STOLE MY DAMN FRANGOS!! I realize that this sounds ridiculous but I was sure that when I removed my cookie there were three boxes. A search of my apartment and my car turned up nothing. The only logical thing that I can think is that the cashier failed to put it in my bag when I bought it, but again, I am sure that I saw three boxes when I took my cookie out. I was embarrassed, but I did give Scott two boxes to fight over between the three of them.

After I returned home, I did a little chemical research on the web. A friend of mine has a separations problem that he is trying to solve and he turned to me as a chemist to try to help him out. I was able to find a bunch of generic stuff that he will need to start things out. I will probably help him more eventually, but in order to help, I will need to now the what's and how much's of the operation. I am sure that this will be a multi-step operation but I don't know specifics. He has said that there will be some money involved, hopefully it will be more than enough to buy lunch.

In Iraq today, one more soldier lost their life. This brings the total for the month to 20 and the war to 1353. Except for a few days this month things have seemed relatively quiet as far as casualties are concerned. Having said that, the provisional government is going to attempt to hold elections on the end of the month in order to say that those that now have power are legitimate. My prediction is that after a very bloody election for Americans and Iraqis both, there will be no change in government. No change is what the American government wants. They have their puppets where they want them now.