A newbie's Hello world!

Hi there,
I'm Robert, I'm a newbie to the world of chemistry and to this newsgroup. I recently decided to start a new hobby in chemistry. I always liked chemistry at school and almost became a chemist once, only if I did not fail my science courses. I wasn't very good a school in science.

I just got myself a new job and I will have extra money to spend on this expensive hobby. I already read the Organic Chem Lab Survival Manual, and I'm planning on buying other books.

But as you may understand, reading books isn't what changes the newbie from being a newbie. I will certainly have questions and I was wondering what would be the best place to ask for security concerns as well as to discuss my experiment's plans.

I always thought chemistry couldn't not be a hobby, that a hobby chemist would be flagged right away as a drug manufacturer, but I just realized it's not the case. I live in Canada, QC and I'm interested to know if there are any laws or regulations regarding the practice of hobby chemistry in my area.

Ok, now I'm sure you all want to know if the newbie will make the mistake of blowing himself up on the first experiment! Well... I don't think so, I usually take a lot of precaution, and try to get to know perfectly all the substances I will be dealing with. One thing that I will not be able to have (unless you guys have a trick) is a flow hood, and that is very sad since I won't be able to do anything with most solvents. I'll stick with ethanol and other not too dangerous ones.

Again, my main concern is to have fun and to discover, to gain experience and I will be primarily focused on security.

Before I begin anything (I don't have any equipment yet) I was thinking on buying more books on the general procedures of chemistry. My main interest now is to be able to extract a compound from a natural source (like caffeine from cafe), isolate and purify it, then to be able to verify its purity or to prove I have isolated the right compound (would chromatography help here or is there any other techniques that work better?)

As a last note, I will be ready to spend thousands on this hobby, so I will probably get a hand on a column chromatograph or maybe some other special equipment.

Thanks in advance,
  Robert
.

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