Not a Carpenter

Today I realized that I'm blessed to be knowledgable about drugs, because my carpentry skills leave a lot to be desired. In all actuality, they're probably not that bad, but by my OCD standards they are horrible. Many of my graduation gifts were in the form of things that hang on the wall. A family friend provided me with the requisite diploma frame. My sister and her family purchased 2 awesome signs (side note - she purchased them in New Orleans pre-Katrina and feared they washed to sea with the rest of New Orleans after Katrina hit. By a stroke of luck, the store had a flagship store in Missouri which was able to send them.) The first is a history of pharmacy bejewelled with every stamp commemerating medicine since the early 1800s. My name is on a gold plate at the bottom. The second sign is just amazing. It's a solid wood sign with "Registered Druggist" painted on it and several products are depicted (example - cathartics and liquor cures). Below the sign hangs another wooden sign with my name. I also had to hang my awards from the hooding. Needless to say, I spent the entire afternoon with a level, drill, hammer, and several different sized screws. In three hours, not only did I manage to hang all of the gifts, I also managed to fall off the ladder (further injurying my knee), mismeasure the distance between two hangers (resulting in the need to drill 3 holes in the wall rather than 2), and place an unknown substance on my diploma frame. All problems were remedied.

As for other awesome gifts (which get a bonus for not requiring the use of a drill or a hammer), include a laudanum bottle from the mid-1800s and a book entitled Gray's Elements of Pharmacy 1889. Both very cool - and much easier to display. Those who know me well will understand the significance of the laudanum bottle - which is now the most prized bottle in my collection. It even has the cork stopper in it! My narcotic collection is growing nicely, for I am now the proud owner of Tincture of Opium, Glyco-Heroin, and Laudanum (all empty of course). Now I'm going to cook up some Acetum Opii (a recipe from Gray's) - 10 parts powdered opium, 3 parts powdered nutmeg, 20 parts sugar, and QS 100 dilute acetic acid.