I heard someone complaining at a trade session one time about how much heavier silver strikes were than chips. Well, I can tell you I'm not looking forward to my first brick collector's convention. A half a dozen traders will break your back! 15 bricks? U-Haul!!! They'll be in the back yard waiting for you when you get here.

Oh yeah, brick grading. While picking through the lovely assortment they had down at the brick sale, I couldn't help but wonder how we might clasify and grade these bricks. Of course none were minty fresh, uncirculated, with sharp edges. You'd have to go to Home Depot for that. But some were relatively intact, while others were mere fragments of their former selves. I found myself eschewing those with big clinging hunks of mortar still attached. They don't stack well, and seemed quite unsightly. Yet on the way home, I couldn't help but wonder whether mortar is a detriment to brick quality, or an intimate part of the essence of brick, a reminder of the labor that goes into building with bricks, the glue that holds it all together and turns a pile of bricks into a building.

Is the brick the thing? Are mortar collectors a different breed altogether? Or is it just that I have a fever and ought to be in bed? Maybe I'm a brick shy of a full load. Which is heavier? The thoughts that I ponder, or the brick I dropped on my foot this afternoon? I say the brick is the thing. Ouch!