ann

I played at school recess, in the dirt, mostly with boys. Sometimes I just watched because I was frequently reluctant to play for keeps. Didn't want to lose any. I was only an average player. I guess I played until around fifth or sixth grade?

I keep staring at those 4 vanes. They seem "sturdy" and make a pretty clean X. If I forget about everything else -- above all, the blue -- the only thing that quickly comes to mind is MK, St. Mary's period. Those nice clean-vaned 4-color cats and the others of that time period. But that's not even a suggestion -- just the one thing that comes to mind. Sheer speculation. There are two of them? Lemme know when you get ready to let them go. I'd like to have one . . . now that I've once again begun actively looking for color-based cats. Dang that thread.

Me too.

Like fascinators . . .

I'm still entranced by their feet!

Oh right. I forgot.

No, I'm still lame. But it's beginning to bug me. I think I'm going to have to get out the 30,000 page instruction book on how to use my new digital camera and give it another go.

Me either. The new Botswana agate I couldn't resist.

Are they interesting?

I'm sure they are new, too. I just don't know how new. So far I'm inclined towards the 1950s, maybe the 60s or 70s. Could be later of course. But I can just hear some shifty guy saying to a small-time glassworker: "Hey, I need a bunch of colorful marbles for a circus / carnival target game, Can you make me a bunch?" Whatcha mean by a bunch? "Well, like a bucket full?" Or maybe it's just because my gentleman friend's maternal grandfather was a Gypsy animal trainer with a traveling circus during the 1950s, in Austria, so I'm partial to stories like that. Anyhow, they're bound for my Cabinet of Curiosities . . .

Well, I finally managed to get a couple of those crazy Bulgarian "circus target-shooting" marbles for a price I was willing to pay. Not Leighton, transitional, or ground-pontil prices. Will report when they come.

Wait. We get a hammer Galen day?? Who has the schedule??

New one on me, too. Is that kind of a flat spot in pics 3 and 5? Keeping it?

Incredible gutta percha! Boy am I glad it's way too big for me!

That's the spirit!

Yep. I need one.

Long ago and far away, in Florida, I was sitting in my living room at 4 a.m. watching an old movie on TV when I heard the cat flap door in the utility room just behind me. In my peripherial vision I saw my cat trot in and head for the kitchen EXCEPT IT HAD A LONG PINK NAKED TAIL AND GRAY FUR AND POINTY NOSE AND BEADY EYES AND EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and it went on in the kitchen and started crunching on the cat food. Then the cat came out from under the sofa and climbed up on the chair with me. We both sat there motionless until the crunching stopped. Then the possum trotted out of the kitchen and across the living room and by me and the scairdy-cat and out of the cat flap. I got up and put three cinderblocks in fromt of the cat flap. I decided I really couldn't wonder about how long the possum had been doing that. But I don't have anything against possums, really. I just find their tails a little creepy. And I'd rather not have wild ones in my house. Please. Yard OK.

What she ^^^ said.

I have no idea where it came from, but the word we used to describe boulders when I was a kid was "klogknocker." Not that I ever saw it written. Clogknocker? Who knows. But in addition to the predominantly English & German settlers there were a fair number of Dutch in the area (eastern North Carolina). Somehow I've made that association.

Was trying to work it into a marble thread but it's too late in the day. Past my Window of Functionality.

This thread needed to come back.

Just get a nice raptor to nest near your pond.

Speaking of Euros . . .

Um. And no one's asking why he was searching for "marbles and fish?" Nevermind. I found why. Still a little weird. In a good way, of course.

Keith Baker! That's right. And I forgot the signature -- mine are signed too. The Walds, then . . .