Happy 4th of July

Well, it was an uneventful day but it was nice to have some solitude. Is solitude the word I'm looking for here? It doesn't seem to fit, but anyway, I did 4 tubs of laundry, went running, read my book about Korea, bbq some brats and drank 2 beers. Yes, 2 wheat beers. One from Sam Adams and the other, my personal favorite Oberon.

Right now I'm listening to the fire crackers that the locals are shooting into the sky. This is the only time they can fire them off because we're in a lull between thunderstorms.

Oh, this is something random. On my way home from Michigan, I purchased some Reese pieces candy. Well, I found two extra in my cup holder so I tossed them out of my window. When I finished my run today, I noticed a trail of ants to one of the candy pieces. It's pretty amazing to watch ants. I was curious how much of the peanut butter they had gotten out so I flipped it over and saw they had carried off 90% of the soft peanut butter. The hard shell was all that remained. So, I found this pen on the ground and broke the shell into tiny pieces so the ants could carry them back to their lair.

I also located the second Reese pieces candy and put it near the ant opening. I was mesmerized with the ants. There was this one ant that was carrying a large piece of shell back, but it was going the wrong way. It seriously, went 10 inches in the wrong direction before heading back in the right direction. There was also another ant that had taken it upon itself to take a very large piece back. This ant was larger than the other ants. There are the little worker ants and then there are the Arnold Schwarzenegger types. They really can move material. Anyway, this ant started moving this piece of candy that was 10 times the size of its body; the candy wasn't just the shell, but it also had peanut butter. I'm guessing it was over 10 times its body weight. Well, Arny here started moving it, but he kept moving around the candy so he really didn't go anywhere. Well, lucky for Arny, another beefcake ant came over and helped him out. It was quite fascinating.

Now, what the neighbors thought about the guy who lays down after running and talks to the ground I can only imagine. Maybe I should have been an entomologist (studies insects). I just Googled "study ants" and maybe I should have studied myrmecology.