Gas, beetle, acid, frogs, and flowers, oh my!

I read today that if you drive 75 MPH vs 65 MPH over an eight mile stretch, you will save yourself 59 seconds of time. That’s not very much. A while back I started driving 55 on the Interstate when there’s not much traffic (i.e., when people can easily pass me). My gas mileage went from 33 MPG to 36MPG. I did the math and found that the speed difference costs me 73 seconds on my drive home. I can live with that.

Dennis and I went to Subway for lunch today. Just as we arrived, another co-worker, Marco, arrived from the other direction. As we were waiting in line, the woman behind him pointed out that there was some sort of beetle on his collar. He was having difficulting finding it and she did not want to touch it. Ew! So I plucked it off his shirt.

Hmmm, what am I going to do with this? My plan was to release it outside, but I the Subway people were making my sandwich, and I needed to let them know what I wanted on it. So I dropped the beetle on the front of my shirt. He hung out there until we left the restaurant, and then I snatched him (or her? Let’s assume him!) off and carried him in my hand back to the office. I put him down on my guest chair and took a few pictures. This is the best one of the lot:

beetle

Last night as I was helping David with his science experiment we decided to soak a chunk of quartz in a muriatic acid bath to simulate chemical erosion. Outside. On the deck. I poured some acid in the beaker for him (the rock was already in place) and then got to thinking about the possibility of rain. I suggested that he cover the beaker with some aluminum foil to keep the rain out. Here’s what it looked like when I got home from work today: