Most of my life I have hounded rocks.  I romped around Arizona with my family as a teenager following countless trails in search of rumored troves of specimens.  And I plundered local rock shops whenever I was fortunate enough to find one in business.  But as I grew more excited with each glimmering specimen that I added to my collection, I also grew more frustrated.  The field of rock hounding stretched further than I had realized and I felt a need to specialize in something.

Then I started college.  To satisfy the science requirements of my Accounting major I enrolled in a Geology course and a Meteorology course.  Geology was what I expected but Meteorology caught me

off guard.  I loved it.  My Meteorology textbook was the only one worth the small fortune I had to pay for it.  I remember reading

it in my spare time at home - for pleasure.  And though the lectures fascinated me, I was often distracted by the picture at left, which hung next to my chair in the classroom.  Weather, especially lightning, quickly became more than just something I watched out the window.

Then a year later I saw an episode of NOVA that delved into the mysteries of

lightning.  It was on this program that I first heard about fulgurites.  Fulgurites!

Who would have known that lightning created such wonders?  It was the perfect combination of my two hobbies.  I was hooked.

I founded Not Just Rocks Inc. in 2005 as a way to network with others who share my fascination with fulgurites and also as an outlet for some of the hundreds of

specimens I have collected over the years from scores of people around the world.