Late post because rocks!

Yes, my favourite rock shop was having its annual fall sale so of course I had to stop on my way to Dad's place. I should explain for anyone new to the program that I like to wear rocks. I'm not a huge fanatic about them and I'm also not one of those who believes that they have powers, but they're fun. I don't wear them everywhere, though. Mostly to work, because the kids (and sometimes the big kids) find them interesting. It's a good way to lead into other facets (Ha! Facets! See what I did there?) of geology. Sneaky, huh.

This sale, by the way, is borderline huge. They take over most of a small mall, with tables all down the hallways. They also take over any unused retail space. There are lots of rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. And it's fairly hard not to spend lots and lots of money.

Before I get into this year's haul, a couple of notes. The picture's background is, as usual, my piano. The rubbed-off area on the right is where everyone keeps grabbing it as they come in the door. And the white flecks just tick me off. They were left by some ceiling painters who had no bloody idea how to cover furniture. They also managed to take some antique music off of a music stand, put it on the piano, and then glop a whole bunch of paint on it. The stuff would have been better off left on the stand. I wasn't thrilled.

Note number two is that while I was at the sale I remembered to check the name of the forgotten green and white rock from this post. It made me laugh when I saw it. Chrysotile. Otherwise known as asbestos, and I should have remembered that. Don't worry -- it's perfectly safe when it's in massive form. Kind of attractive, too. I just wouldn't want to be the one polishing it.

Ok, on to the new stuff. Above you'll see two pairs of earrings (lapis on the left, amethyst on the right), mostly because I can't remember the last time I bought earrings and these were cheap. Cheapness rates high for me, as my two fans know. At the bottom, a snake chain that I picked up way cheaper (yay) than I would have at the store where I got no service (for those who don't remember, try this post. For those who do remember... why?). In the centre, a little pinkie ring that I thought was kind of cute. It's a bird of some sort. It looks kind of like a swan, but knowing this store and its occasionally... shall we say overly spiritual... customers it's probably supposed to be a phoenix or something. I'm going with swan, personally.

Now for the rocks. Going clockwise, the white one is dendritic opal (actually more of an agate. And the dendritic part just means branching like a tree). Then we have (well, I have) a piece of jade, which, yes, I'll be wearing in a cage like the rocks in the first linked post above. If I didn't cage them they might fly away, you know. Next is chevron amethyst (sorry for the slight weirdness of the link. It can be hard to find mineral/crystal links that don't go all chakra on you. And chevron amethyst is technically quartz mixed with quartz, since amethyst is a form of quartz) with a little piece of garnet, and finally a small ammonite that's been left with some of the matrix surrounding it and then polished. I don't buy a lot of fossils since it kind of bothers me when they're used for jewellery instead of science, but ammonites are pretty common and undeniably interesting-looking.

That's more than I intended to buy, really, but it should keep the cravings down for quite a while.

Since I'm going to end on somewhat of a sad note, let's have some kittens.

Ok, they're really here because I had the camera out for the rocks and I didn't have any recent shots of the boys. There will likely be more in a day or two.

A quick update on the turkey brothers, then. Tom has put on a growth spurt and is starting to look like he might be the long, lanky type. Bob so far is looking more solid, but that can change as he gets bigger. They're both still cute as anything when they're tired, and little shits very busy and actively in trouble when they're not. I imagine that I'll have more to say about them as the weekend goes on, because of course the internet needs more cat stories.

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Ok, the last thing. I see that there's been another school shooting in the States today. Very sad, and very sad that it's so predictable. Part of the reason we in Canada are pretty freaked out about the Parliament Hill shootings (other than the big, giant, shocking fact that we could have had government members killed as easily as Cpl. Cirillo) is that we don't have the gun culture to expect that someone's likely to run up and shoot an unarmed honour guardsmen in the back. In the US they likely would have been upset about such a shooting, but I expect that they would move on pretty quickly to demanding that every single person in the area should be armed anyway.

Canada? Please let's not go there, ok? I don't ever want to have to live like that.



And I don't really want to end a post like that so... um... go back and look at the pretty rocks or something. See you later.