Hotels and Ant Farms and Hydrogen - Oh My!

I'm in Spokane, Washington until Sunday.  Jen's grandpa fell, broke his hip and had an aneurysm and we've got enough grandparents out of commission that Jen felt like she needed to come up here.  SO!  We're up here!


The drive through the Columbia River Gorge was nice!  We had some horrendous tail-winds on the way up here  though at times.  The river had white-caps on it and I saw a giant burst of spray get blown through the gorge and it was traveling as fast as we were (70mph).

I also was running on hydrogen through the trip.  I found we got 27mpg with the hydrogen on the highway - though doubtless the tail-winds helped with that.  

The harvester ants I ordered came yesterday in the mail AS we were leaving.   So, I did freeze one vial - or chill it rather - in the freezer to slow the ants down but I put them in the ant farm.  One vial in the west wing, one in the east.  And....I had to leave!  Those little harvester ants are vicious little brutes though.  Not as high maintenance as the carpenter ants.  They were attacking parts of the ant farm.   However, in less than a minute, they had gone to work moving some of the sand the way they wanted it and were removing dead ant bodies and tidying up.  Bummer I won't be back for four days and won't get to see them until after they've done a ton of work already.

For now, I'm beat - hotel beds suck (I have a Sleep Number Bed at home) and I'm gonna snooze if I can while the kids watch cartoons.