Fluorite, Spar Mountain mine, Cave-in-Rock, Illinois

Fluorite is normally a colorless, clear mineral, but impurities can give it rather dazzling color. This Spar Mountain mine specimen from Cave-in-Rock, Illinois is a great example. I especially love how all of the cubic crystals are melted together in some sort of hyper-dimensional mess that looks like it just fell out of a Star Trek transporter. Cave-in-Rock is located in that corner of Illinois, where the Indiana state line meets the Ohio River. It is now on my list of places to visit this year.

On this rainy Saturday, where Anne is feeling under the weather, I busied myself doing chores. We hung most of the artwork, but we still have more than a few items left to go. All of it is now framed though. Anne has not been thinking all that clearly today. I think that all of her neural pathways are clogged with snot. We both blame those runny nosed gutter snipes from kindergarten, this last week. I hope that when her cold passes and her head clears that she still likes the way that the paintings we hung look.

For the second time this week, I am usurping some poor sick women’s show ticket. Earlier this week, I got to hear Michio Kaku speak, because one of Joanie’s friends had come down with a cold. Tonight, I am taking Anne’s dance concert ticket and going out on the town with Joanie again and people are starting to talk. We plan on doing Mexican in Ferguson, followed by a concert at the Touhill on UMSL’s campus. Tonight’s performance is by Compagnie Käfig, a French hip-hop theater company of mostly Algerian descent. Anne was accusing me of plotting world domination and that this usurping of theater tickets was only the first step, then she sort of lost her train of thought. All I can say is it’s snot true.