This particular pointless photo is hot off the camera, boys and girls.
It rocks. Or, more accurately, it's rocks.
My father and I just got back from an hour and a half or so of looking at rocks. A local rock/jewellery store has an annual sale that takes over a small mall, more or less. They bring in (literally) tons of specimen rocks, polished rocks, carved rocks, fossils, beads... well, you name it. I'd never been and I seem to forget about it every year anyway, but for some reason it stuck in my head this time. When I mentioned it to Dad he was interested, so we headed down the highway to check things out.
It was kind of neat, actually. Just about everything you could imagine to see in the category of rocks except fancy faceted stuff. And it's obviously a draw for them. Plenty of people about, and plenty of those people walking around with pop flat boxes that the customer service people would happily give anyone who looked like they had their hands full with the rocks they'd already decided on. Of course they'd happily supply boxes; it meant you could pick up more rocks.
Some of the stuff wasn't of much interest to me -- I'll never be someone who goes in for the whole power of crystals and spheres angle -- but there was enough going on that I think just about anyone could find at least
something they liked.
For me, as my two fans know, there's
three things (four, sir) FOUR things (somewhat garbled Python reference between Holy Grail and the Spanish Inquisition, for anyone who thought that I was talking to myself there) I look for: the rock's interesting, the rock's real, the rock's wearable (no space for pretty specimens to just sit on a table at my place), and... the rock's cheap. Hey, as much as I like the look of the
ammolite they had down there, given the choice between a fifty dollar pendant and a ten dollar one, my budget hollers TAKE THE TEN.
I get to have more fun that way anyhow.
So, after an hour's browse, the end results can be seen above. All interesting, I think, and all wearable at work (with my t-shirt uniform at a nature centre, remember. Fancy things look stupid there). All, as well, posed on the bag that's holding my 3DS on my needs-cleaning piano. Hey, you use whatever background's available. From the left:
A
hematite bracelet, bought mostly because my latest attempt at finally healing the eczema I've been dealing with for months is to wear a bracelet over it, my theory being that encountering a bracelet when I start to mindlessly scratch will remind me of what I'm doing and get me to stop. It's working, more or less (I'm still scratching at night, unfortunately), but now there's the trick of finding something that doesn't annoy the bejeebers out of me by clacking and clattering on the desk and keyboard support all day. We'll see how this one goes.
An Ocean Agate (otherwise known as
orbicular jasper) pendant, because I liked the patterns. And it was 50% off.
A piece of
Baltic Amber, mostly because I've always wanted a piece of amber. And it was 50% off.
And finally, a bit of Dendritic Jasper (couldn't find a good clear link on that one. Let's just say that some sites will claim that the dark inclusions are fossils. Maybe some of the time, but not always), because I'm kind of into jaspers at the moment. They're interesting to look at. And it was 50% off.
50% off wasn't exactly my only criterion, by the way. There were loads of other things that were 50% off. I only bought a few of them...
Incidentally, you run into a lot of weeeird things when you start searching rocks on the web. I was going to provide a link or two, but the weirdness is easy enough to find so I'll let you search if you want to. All I can say is, is it all right with everyone if I just continue to like rocks because they're pretty rather than thinking that they're going to change my life?
Ok, thanks then.
