I did a GoogleMaps map today of my upcoming trip. I really only need the directions for about the last 5 miles of the trip, because there just aren't that many roads in Montana. I just have to get to I-90 in Missoula and head east.

You may have to zoom out to get a good perspective of just how much of Montana I will be covering. On the east coast, one could drive for 8 hours and go through half a dozen states (or more).

It's supposed to start snowing here tonight and snow (heavily) for the next 48 hours. The temperature when I leave Thursday morning may not even be above 0 degrees, and it's not going to be much warmer in Billings. Oh well. I will just have to make sure I have all the emergency travel supplies in the truck with me along with my teaching supplies. And I won't be in any remote parts of Montana on this trip (relatively speaking).

Spring can't get here soon enough.

I've got to figure out what to take for my trip knitting. The top-down cotton sweater may not be the best choice and may have to be left at home. I am thinking either a) socks or b) a baby blanket of some sort. I need something that will allow me to socialize and interact with knitters over the weekend.

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A portion of my office has been devoted to DD#2's science fair project:

Amazingly enough, neither of my girls inherited my love of all things scientific. They did/do well in their science classes (DD#1 doesn't have to take any more now that she's in college), but they don't enjoy them the way I did. When DD#1 was in 5th through 8th grade, their science projects were built into our school's curriculum. Just before DD#2 got to 5th grade, however, our school began requiring the kids to participate in a more formally-run science fair. I do not think this is an onerous requirement (far from it), but DD#2 has agonized over it every year for the past three years. One year she won our school's fair and had to compete at the county level, and that was particularly difficult for her.

This year we looked over all the possible projects and I convinced her that she should do a microbiology project. I figured that I would have to direct the proceedings, so it might as well be something with which I have more than a passing familiarity. She chose a project in which she collected local pond and creek water (no small feat in Montana in February), then placed samples under a UV lamp to see if they could be sterilized with sunlight (sunlight is rather difficult to come by in Montana in February, hence the lamp).

We collected water from a local pond, a creek up the road, and a spring-fed pond at our minister's house which his ducks frequent (I was convinced we would get some fecal coliform bacteria out of that sample). I ordered all the supplies from a scientific supply house, and this weekend we ran the tests. We had three samples: creek, pond, and spring-fed pond. Each of those samples was broken down into three different samples of water: untreated, boiled, or sterilized under the UV lamp. She did all the prep work and I showed her how to innoculate the plates. She has to examine the plates at regular intervals and count the number of bacterial colonies growing on them.

At 24 hours post-innoculation of the plates, there were no visible colonies. I don't have an incubator and our house is a balmy 65 degrees, so I expected it to take some time. This morning when I came down and looked at the plates, I was delighted to see a mess of bacterial colonies on some of the plates with the untreated water samples. Really, I think I am more excited about this science fair project than she is. I haven't done this kind of stuff for 20+ years.

She's already got all her background information put together, so it's just a matter of collecting and organizing the data. Fun.