Dear readers,

All four of you, my posts may read like I am troubled and about to toss myself off the tallest building I come across. The problem. First figuring out what I may want to put across in my written word is not very clear even to me. I am pretty sure my thoughts get lost along the proper pathways to the end of my fingers. What seems like sharp three-dimensional thinking ends up as a two dimensional black and white mess on faux paper consisting of invisible ones and zeros. In real life, face-to-face, I, as far as I can tell, am not nearly as troubled sounding, as it seems in my written words. However I have always found that writing down my random thoughts brings some clarity to my thinking, at least for me.
   This bit of writing has used up almost two hours in the last two days.
   Bye
  Mike, 111001001000101, E.

Fake agates

What little I have was taken away with one stroke: my own writing used against me, becoming a permanent stain on what was and will be: thanks. Was the broadcast of the threat a penalty, discipline, punishment or just a bit of fun such as a twisted mind has when torturing their latest victim.

Enough of my paranoia.

The good news and that would be the revisiting of a marble that I have been trying to perfect. The marble in question is the agate. Agates were a passion in my youth when I used to hunt for them along the Buffalo creek North of Winthrop Iowa.

As a marble collector I used to look for the old hand ground agate marbles. Then as a marble maker: I tried my hand at a few imitations of agates in glass and my latest examples are the best yet. The shadow agate really looks good and if you are familiar with the shadow agate you know how cool they are.