Geode

People are really weird about crystals.  There’s the crystal cult goofs who I guess think they channel divine essence or something.  And was it crystals that gave Merlin his magic?  I dunno.  I’m not terribly inclined to research it further.

But anyway, I was at some outlet with Liz and noticed a bin of geodes.  I recalled geode-hunting once in New Mexico, an old memory from my Texas years, and while I found some fragments, no one in the group discovered an intact geode.  And here was a pile of them as if they had been simply scooped up somewhere.  Maybe they had.  I didn’t know how common they were.

Wikipedia revealed the obvious answer: they are (the biggest one being a cave in Ohio) and no doubt $10 was a large up-charge for the small rock.  Still it was cool and dredged up a childhood memory, so I bought it for the kid.

The cashier helpfully informed me that I should break it open gently, rather than wail upon it with a hammer, as they break easy and hitting it too hard would just crush it.  Apparently that was a common complaint.

I had planned to saw it evenly in half, though it turned out that I lacked the equipment to do so.  So I got a chisel and hammer.  I held the chisel while the kid tapped the hammer, and the geode fell apart into 3 nice chunks.

It was a cool enough experience that even the kid exclaimed in delight, distracting her away from her tablet for minutes.

Then she put it back together.

Weird.  OCD or something.  I dunno where she gets that from.

–Simon

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