My first love was rocks. When I was 8 years old I had 2 wonderful Christmas presents. One was a geology kit with rock hammer, picture information cards, some sample rocks and rock testing kit. I loved picking up rocks and trying to work out whether they were metamorphic, igneous, conglomerate, etc. Going ga ga when I found one with a bit of garnet in it. Breaking bits of gneiss to find the mica inside. Proudly showing off my geology vocab to sibs and kids in the neighbourhood.

The second (really a gift for the whole family) was a rock tumbler that only got one use because the noise nearly drove my parents mad, even though it lived in the boiler room in the basement with a cardboard box and army blankets over it. I liked polished stones because they showed me what was inside. I was fascinated by the varying rates of erosion per type of stone. The biggest stones seemed to melt like magic and smaller ones changed little in size.

Whoa... thanks for the walk down memory lane.