Enjoying the lovely cordiality of people in Louisiana, you can't beat it, even when it's not carnival season. Had a great chantey sing with the Krewe.

However, was petrified not only of driving and parking near the Quarter, but of coming out unscathed. Took quite a while to find a long stretch of curb to park the motorhome on narrow one-way streets, then hiked over to the great music shop, stopped back to drop off CDs and go to the sing. In that time, someone had smashed out the window in the high-end jeep right across the street. Yikes. Glad I had the steering wheel lock to use, and hoping my window was just too high to fool with. It's a shame when you have to risk life and property to go to a sing.

Yes, I do realize rocks are heavy! That's why I collect micromounts, tiny mounted samples which let you see the crystal structure under the    microscope. There's another category "thumbnails" which are fine to see with the naked eye, slightly larger, have a few of those.

I think my favorites are the copper minerals, so many of them and so beautiful; dioptase, brochantite, etc. But, they're all good! Snagged a little gypsum from a roadcut near Roswell, but haven't 'scoped it out' yet. Usually if there are no vugs, there are no micros.