I soldered to the base of the pins so that I can just cut away part of the top piece of the ZIF socket and run the wires out through the hole. As so:
Yes my concern with dumping CPU into water was the fact I was applying and measuring 100 uA and then a 10uA current through the diode pins rapidly. I could see that the measurements where water had gotten into the baggie were "off" so I think it is a necessary step. If I cared much about the long term viability of the CPU I wouldn't be soldering wires onto its pins!
Re: heat flux
Nevin from arcticsilver brought up an interesting point. If the AMD diode isn't near the hottest bits of the CPU then there will be a significant difference in the peak core temp and the measured core temp. He was concerned about this re thermal paste testing I guess, but it would also mean I will tend to overestimate the importance of secondary heat losses because my measured diode temp is less than the real core temp. More stuff to sort out always. Nonetheless this is a pretty good start.