This has been such a bloggy week. By that I mean, everywhere I go, I see blog opportunities with my camera. I’m getting better at finding natural groups of threes. I’m very excited about them this week. Now, like many of you, I’m always on the lookout for doors and windows. I just found Nancy’s Photo a Week Challenge for signs, and who doesn’t love a great sign? I’m so thankful for Natalie’s Weekend Coffee Share for this opportunity to sit down and share my week with you.
Other Challenges Inspiring This Post
- #Thursday Doors
- #Thursday Trios
- #Monday Windows
- #Kammie’s Oddball Challenge
- CMMC
- #What’s On Your Bookshelf
Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix
Don’t you love it when company comes, and you have to find interesting places to show them? In this case, Monica came up with her own ideas of what to see while we stayed in Scottsdale. At the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM), we spent about three amazing hours wandering around exploring strange and wonderful instruments and sounds from all over the world and all through the centuries. There were lots of signs, but most of them are illegible in my photos. This was one of the most interesting of all museums I’ve visited. I soaked up lots of vibes, but I can’t tell you very much about any of the pictures. So…
Don’t ask any questions!



Strictly Trios
Some of these photos stretch the concept of trios but bear with me, they are all interesting. The ornate gong, for example, has three domes at the top. The organ has three windows of pipes.
Oddball Challenge
Kammie offers a weekly chance to show off our odd or unusual photos. These instruments were all unusual and unique or they wouldn’t have been included by the museum curators. To some, maybe they represented a taste of home. For us, this was the first time seeing anything like these instruments.






I’m definitely going back to the MIM. I also got the name of the curator to talk to him about my word of the year and get his take on Curating! I hope he will answer my email. 🙂
What’s On Your Bookshelf
Monica and I went to the Prescott Library. She started a book club 27 years ago and still attends. It’s the highlight of her month. This month they are reading The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate. The setting is Louisiana and two stories run simultaneously. The first story set in 1875 is about writers of the Book of Lost Friends which was actually written in the 1880s. It published letters from freed slaves trying to find family and lost loved ones anywhere. Photocopies of letters to the editor appeared at the beginning of each chapter in Wingate’s novel.
The second storyline was about a new teacher in the tight, closed community who struggled to get her high school English students to want to learn when they had almost no materials. In time she discovered all the letters and other documents found in the library of a neglected and fought-over inheritance – a house owned by a former judge in the community that was across the field from the small house she rented from one of the heirs. The date for that story was 1987.
The story depicts the tremendous trials and tribulations in terms of amount, dangers, and complexities encountered by the former slaves as they tried to find their way in the world. The freedom won for them was not easy or totally free. Some things had changed on the outside by 1987, but many obstacles induced by prejudice, ignorance, and tradition remained. I’ve spent little time in the South, we all know that tensions remain to this day as evidenced by all the violence this past year.

She also recommended one other book which I haven’t started yet because I can’t let go of the glow of Lost Friends.
CMMC – Pick a Topic from my Photo



I couldn’t find any green coffee to offer you all this morning. Maybe I should churn up some green whipping cream. Or not…

Have a great week next week.

Thanks for the link.
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Oh, I think I’d like the musical instrument museum. I used to play the flute and every now and then still wish I had one. However, I DO NOT want to try playing a nose flute…lol. I read the book of lost friends. So interesting. I think I had to return it to the library so I never finished it. I should check it out again and finish it.
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It is well worth the re-read, Kirstin. You would love the way it ends. 🙂
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I came for coffee. Haha. good stuffs though.
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LOL Hope you enjoyed it! 🙂 I’m drinking a special brew right now that is a rasberry coffee with Muscle Milk Protein drink added for extra chocolate taste and protein instead of sugar. It’s pretty yummy! Just not green!
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Such a busy & fun week you’ve had!
I would love to visit the Musical Instruments museum – just to see that Nose Flute!!!!
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It has been, Ju-Lyn. You would love the entire museum. It’s a lot of fun.
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Hi, Marsha – Thanks for linking up with What’s On Your Bookshelf.
I’ll politely pass on the Green Whipping Cream! 😀
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OK, you’re excused from the green whipped cream. We won’t even have a whipped cream fight this morning. Isn’t that a relief? Thanks for all the inspiration for WOYB. I do love reading all your posts. 🙂
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Wow when you’re away for three days and you can’t get to your blog you miss a lot. I’ve never seen such a huge thread of comments before. Thanks for your great collection of trios this week.
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I had a great time taking them!!!
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Fantastic collections this week, all of them. MIM is amazing. When my oldest grandson was just crawling I took him to a a weekly class there for exposure to different instruments and sounds for babies. It was amazing. I have never seen a nose flute..Entertaining for sure.
I love Lisa Wingate as an actor and always recommend her to people who ask.
Shadow puppets are interesting too. There is a puppet theater in Phoenix. The Great Arizona Puppet Theater. It is so well done. More for kids, but I enjoyed the energy and humor that comes from it. If I recall the gift shop is more of a museum, and fun to walk through as well. That should be free… Donna
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what a wonderful tour Marsh. I feel like I was right with you and Monica. what fun and your pictures are amazing! love the gong. you are doing all sorts of fun things and even got a couple of great hungry models to make it even more fun! 💖
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LOL Hungry models. I love it. 🙂
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😂😂😂🤣 laughing is good right now! 🤟
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So much to love here Marsha! That nose flute really got me as I’ve never heard let alone seen anything like that before! Thanks for joining up with our What’s on Your Bookshelf challenge, those books sound really interesting especially the Book of Lost Friends. Great to have you join us along with your other challenges- good work!
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Thanks, Debbie. I enjoy all the challenges. Yours has put the desire to get back into regular reading and visiting the library. In CA, the library was 20 miles away and it took real effort to make it there. Here it is only about 4 miles from home. There is so much to enjoy there. My first husband and I used to read and discuss the books we checked out, but that hasn’t been something Vince enjoys as a rule, so it’s nice to have friends who read and discuss. Monica is always reading very interesting books and even though I’m not in her group, I am always challenged by the selections.
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I love how you picked out all those threes on the gong. What a great eye you have. Fun post Marsha!
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Thanks, Alegria. Do you love music?
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Oh yes I do. I also play a couple of instruments. Music offers so much. Thanks Marsha!
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I used to play the piano and sing. I would be lost without the ability to at least sing a little. 🙂 What do you play?
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I agree. I too play the piano, though not profoundly well. And I play a happy little instrument, the ukulele, which I find a lot of joy in.
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I love the ukulele. I took some lessons on one while we were on vacation in Hawaii one year. It was a lot of fun. I played the guitar when I was a teen – just a bit, so it kind of came back to me. They make such fun music.
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Definitely. That’s great Marsha. You’re quite a musician. The ukulele is a pretty easy instrument to learn on your own too. I really do enjoy it.
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That museum sounds excellent! Isn’t it fun when a friend comes to visit and inspires you to explore parts of your own city that you might not normally go to?! It happens to me in London quite a lot 😀
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I loved being in London. There is so much to see and do there. Mom and I spent 3 weeks there. So much fun!
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I’ve never seen a nose flute before. That would be challenging to play. That Lincoln is sitting a bit close to the ground.
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I had never seen a nose flute either. It has been lowered and when they leave, they would have raised it with hydrolics. It could not be driven that low. It’s a great deterrant to theft. That plus there are no door handles.
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Interesting. What will ‘they’ think of next?
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We don’t have too many orfices for wind instruments, and I doubt that any of the others would EVER be acceptable.
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I was thinking about the car!! 🤣
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That would be better than what I thought you meant! LOL Sorry for the graphic response, Norah! Get my mind out of the gutter! 🙂
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As long as we have a laugh, Marsha, life’s good. 🙂
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🙂
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The Book of Lost Friends will definitely make it to my TBR list. Thanks for sharing and also for linking up with us again for our monthly What’s On Your Bookshelf Challenge!
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You will all love it, Sue. She has another book that I’m going to look for after I finish my other book.
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I really like how you section your blog posts with large titles and sections – so we can skim them if time is limited – and smiling at the idea of green coffee or green whipped cream – I would prefer “not”
Hahah
Hope you are having a nice weekend mArsha
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Thanks for the compliment, Yvette. It means a lot. My weekend has been lovely so far. I hope yours is as well. We had a spontaneous gathering at a neighbor’s house last night. Spontaneous is our new guiding word now. There are six of us, which is about as many people as we can entertain in our home at once. One of the couples had us all over for a fabulous five course sit down dinner. I told them I could never do that, my table holds four comfortably. So we started spontaneous more casual get togethers. It’s a fun way to get acquainted.
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That sounds like so much fun, Marsha
And we got rid of so much during some nice purging days a while back –
but then when we had guests for the funeral I realized that my Gutted linen closet might mean not enough blankets. Pillows were no problem. Anyhow, it was an easy fix – we just told some cousins to bring some of their own stuff (we also had hiking sleeping bags we could have whipped out) but it was the first time I wondered if I had enough for a huge full of folks.
and spontaneous is sometimes a beautiful mode and involves freely living
🙂
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Yes, and people don’t mind contributing. If nothing else it makes them more involved and committed to whatever the activity is. BTW, your story is attracting so much attention. The songs are definitely the dividing line between which readers really got it – the emotional effect at least. All of us have been stressed and fatigued at some point in time. Almost everyone loved the nature part of it. It’s really been a fun ride, hasn’t it? I can’t wait to do the summary, but people are still commenting regularly, so I don’t want to cut it short.
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Hi – thanks for “reading the situation” and letting story chat simmer a bit if needed) before the summary. That is such a good idea.
and it reminds me of a good yoga teacher who is able to read the class. Recently, one of my teacher’s named Wendy, was reading the class (we must have all been tired and not feeling it) and so she brought us down to the mat to do stretches while sitting or lying down. In contrast, I have had classes with her where she might do extra balancing poses – my point is that a good teacher reads the students and adapts for what they need or what she is sensing – and so for your to mention that about story chat shows the same kind of seasoned attention and letting it have its own flow.
Also, I now see why you do this monthly and not weekly. It allows for thins to not feel rushed and just seems ideal.
oh and I hope it didn’t sound rude to say I might not be able to read an entire post and the headings allow a skim — because later I thought that might have been a little rude – and sorry if it was.
Yet I also think we both know that followers/readers will have different modes and different times of when they can fully enjoy long posts or when they need to skim.
with that said, I also learned that some folks 0 like those who post a photo a day with maybe a few thoughts – they are the ones who tend to get overwhelmed with long posts.
Not to ramble, but you and I like to talk about blogging stuff, right?
hahah
and that is why I stopped doing “one word Sunday” with Debbie (travel with intent) – she always inited people to get creative and make long posts if they wanted to – but yet the group that contributed always kept it short and so some of my posts that got long seemed heavy to some (and their comments were not too rude, but sometimes like “wow – there is a lot to take in here” or “you really found a lot to say with the prompt this week” –
and so I learned more about the small group that do challenges – and just had to NOT do that one anymore because the majority interpreted the prompt as keeping their posts simple – often with just a photo and a few words. and with that said, I think that is what I find nice about Sunday stills and WQW- the host posts are long and there doesn’t seem to be this implied suggestion to respond with little. Does that make sense? If anything, the implied suggestion from you and terri are to “let it flow” and post away! hahahahah
__
Anyhow, when I do write a long post – which for me is still under 1,000 words, I always invite folks to skim and go because that is part of the different modes.
oh and getting back to story chat, thanks again for letting me feel the experience with this super fun activity.
I will do my best to join in on as many as I can in the future – because I know what t feels like.
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Marsha, You’ve got a good collection of photos in this post. The MIM looks so interesting and that Zephyr is wow! Thank you for linking up with #weekendcoffeeshare.
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Thanks again for hosting.
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I love when you read a book that has a glow that stays with you long after you finish it. You just want to sit in that for a bit before beginning something else. Great images and I nodded my head when you spoke about seeing new places through the visits of others. Thanks for linking up!
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Exactly. I did start the new book yesterday, but it will take a lot for it to come up the level of Lost Friends.
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What an interesting collection of topics. Challenging and inspiring! Thank you!
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Thanks for checking them out, Ludwig. 🙂 I love finding windows. 🙂
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Hi Marsha,
You always manage to find amazing stuff.
I’m not a car-guy and had never seen a Zephyr.
I bet that did attract attention and further bet the owner loves every moment of it.
All the best.
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I’m sure he or she did. Whoever owned it was probably sitting right by a window in the restaurant watching all of us drool. (Not that I would want that responsiblity of driving it around.)
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I want to go to that musical instrument museum!
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You would love it. It really takes longer than we had energy to walk through.
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sounds like it might be a two trip event…
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For me, yes. They do switch out the instruments, too. That means there were about 5,000 instruments on display, and Even taking hundreds of pictures, I did not come near seeing the total. 🙂
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wow – that is a lot of instruments. and it sounds like if you go back in a year, there will always be new ones to look at…
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Exactly!
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Wow!
That nose flute is certainly the best odd among all. One must have lungs of steel to play that 🙂
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I love that, “lungs of steel.” They’d better have a flexible nose of steel, too, Hammad! 🙂
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I liked your CMMC photos for this week. You’ve had a busy week, that is for sure 😀
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It was. The next day we both crashed. LOL I’m still a little crashed, but my house is clean. We had to take NB to the vet yesterday. We find out Monday why he has lost so much weight. He’s down to 8 pounds. He was 10 a couple of months ago.
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Keep me informed 😀 😀 Are we talking on Monday. 10:30 or 10:00 whichever works best for you. We are back to being the same time.
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Since we are on the same wavelength, now, let’s go with 10. By 10:30 or so V is getting hungry.
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If you didn’t get the chance, the next time you are at the MIM, be sure to attend a performance of that huge automated orchestra in the room with all of the player piano type gear.
They play it twice a day, according to the docent, since they had trouble with it, flew in some experts from Europe to check it out, and were told they need to play it regularly.
Don’t quote me on it, but I think it’s scheduled at noon and 3:30 or something like that.
I have photos, but the video I made never recorded. I thought I knew how to make my camera do video, but apparently I don’t. 🙂
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LOL, John, that happens to everyone. I think we just missed it or it wasn’t playing that day. I forget what happened. Someone did play the piano. They also let kids bang on it. That sort of surprised me. Did you see the group of homemade instruments made from garbage. Apparently that group has played there before. I want to go back.
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I did see those garbage band instruments. Interesting. I really like their audio tour system. Just walk up close to hear the instrument or narration.
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That made the museum extraordinary. The instruments by themselves would not have been as much fun. They are meant to be played, so it’s perfect to see them in action. We loved the exotic instruments especially from SE Asia, but it was even more fun to hear the historic American songs that we knew and that our parents knew.
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Love the trios.
Since when you are into photography?
Great clicks Marsha!
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Thanks so much. I’ve been doing challenges off and on for about ten years now. Before that I just took pictures for posterity, I guess. My dad was a photographer and he took me with him on photo shoots and let me help him in the darkroom.
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Thank you Marsha.
10 yrs of experience…wow! Now you are a professional.
Nice to know that your dad was a photographer and you were his disciple.
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He was a hobby photographer like I am but he did write some photography manuals and teach a few classes at the junior college level in his retirement. His career was engineering and mine was teaching.
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You are lucky to be child of this wonderful person.
And how is that you opted teaching profession?
A difficult profession in handling the students.
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My mother was a teacher and I started going with her to teach Sunday School and kids from head start when I was 7 or 8. It was just part of who I was. I had many different jobs in my 20s before I finally was able to settle down and get my college education in order to be able to teach, but teaching was always my goal. There are so many interests that you can share with kids above and beyond what they get in the curriculum. That was what I loved to do along with creating curriculum.
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Remarkable Marsha.
Thank you so much for letting me know your interest.
Without teachers we are all doomed.
I always admire the teaching profession.
I am happy that you belonged to that profession.
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
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Thanks! 🌸🌸
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Amazing that you developed interest in teaching at a tender age!
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I think we tend to follow in our parent’s footsteps, don’t you think? There are a lot more occupational choices for kids now because of technology, though. It took me a while to get started because I delayed finishing college because I needed to work.
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Agree Marsha.
Parents alway guide the children.
And some kids are born rebels to disappoint parents sadly.
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I’m sure they are. I never had children of my own, but it can be trying, I know! Wait until you read next month’s Story Chat. It’s about that mother/daughter relationship.
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Maybe no green coffee but how about some Irish coffee, Marsha? That’s what I’m serving at our dinner party tonight! Great shots and it does make a difference when there is a challenge on which to focus your lens. You start seeing them everywhere 😁 Have a great weekend and we’ll chat next week!
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Great idea! I have some Bailey’s in the refrigerator, too. What’s wrong with me??? I love Bailey’s.
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What an eclectic mix of wonderful photos, Marsha. Thanks for including Thursday Doors in your challenge collection. I think my favorite door might be the passenger door on that Zephyr. You just don’t see one of those every day.
I hope you have a great weekend.
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I don’t see too many Zephyrs, do you Dan? That’s the only one I’ve ever seen, and I go to a lot of car shows and car museums. I live with a car guy. That car drew lots of attention from everyone walking by.
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I think I’ve only seen one, at a vintage car show.
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It was amazing, I’ll tell you. I walked out of the restaurant, and my husband was no where in sight as I looked toward our car. Then he called me over and the rest is history.
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Great coffee post. I enjoyed all the pictures.
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Thanks, WS. That was an amazing museum.
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You don’t allow comments? Congratulations on your new novel. I had a book published because of blogging. It’s quite a wonderful experience, isn’t it?
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