Harmonica, Friends, & the answer

I've mentioned before that My Sweetie gets weird random stuff as "perks" through his job. Well, the other day he came home with a harmonica. He's really into playing with it, and it's okay, because unlike a guitar or a piano, you can't really hit an off note with a harmonica. Well it made me want to find my harmonica. I've been looking for it for several years. When I was about 19, my Bestest Buddy Bill gave me his old harmonica. My Dad had married a piano player and she had all sorts of songbooks and I found a little book that had the theme from "Mash." I spent weeks working on it and finally learned how to play it. One weekend, my Step-mom's youngest daughters spent the night with us and I showed R my harmonica. R has Down's Syndrome and I thought she would like it and I was right. She fell in love with that harmonica. I was happy that I had made her happy and time passed and one day I was looking for my harmonica and couldn't find it. Then I remembered that the last time I had seen it was that night I had let R play with it. I remember asking my step-mom about it and asked her if she could call R (my step-mom's kids lived with their dad) and ask her where it was. Well, that was awfully silly of me, but I was only 19 or so and didn't really have a grasp of what Down's Syndrome was all about. Besides, R was only about 5 and kinda seemed like a 5-year-old to me.
~
My bedroom had a whole wall of sliding door closets. Two sets of two doors. And I was 19, so my closets were a mess. One day, about 4 months later, in the back of the right closet I found a large lady's purse and figured it was my step-mom's. I was wondering how it got in there and picked it up, looked inside and there was my harmonica! I was pretty good about keeping up with it after that and I've moved a million times. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I've move A LOT and if I haven't posted about that, I should. But anyway, tonight I was looking for my harmonica again and I was looking in this one place where I keep old stuff and I found this maybe 5" x 8" zippered wallety organizery thing that had all sorts of weird random stuff in it and I found this old picture of me and Lo and I think it's probably the best picture of the both of us that I've ever seen.

Once I saw the word "Ra" in the background, I knew we were sitting at the Nile Bar at the Luxor in Las Vegas. Judging by my thinness and haircut, I believe this was taken in 1999. That was our first trip. That's one of the good things about always changing my hairstyles - it makes it easier to guess dates in old pictures. In case anyone doesn't know the history of Lo and Me, we had met once for about 20 minutes at my Dad's house while he was napping in his recliner and then we smoked together by the bar at my Dad's retirement party (and she also drove us there). She was very helpful that next week, because my Dad died at his retirement party and I was staying at his house working on funeral arrangements and stuff with my brother. This was October 1998. In May or June of 1999, I was still suffering from post-traumatic stress from Dad's death and DREADING the anniversary of his death, so I called Lo and told her how I felt and asked if she'd like a trip to Vegas for that week. We didn't really know each other, but she had known Dad for years - she was a neighbor, and had been so helpful after his death, it just seemed like a good idea to me. We have a 14 year age difference, but I didn't even think about that. She flew into DFW and we flew together to Vegas and made a memory to last forever. It was just the beginning of many trips and a very long friendship. We e-mail every Monday thru Friday (she only has e-mail at work like Jazz) and talk on the phone a lot. I will get to see her in June at the N.C. beach cottage, and it's sort of our 10th anniversary.
~
I guess my trip to Vancouver in just 3 weeks has made me think about this a lot, because Josie and I will be meeting up and vacationing together as sort of unknowns like Lo and me were almost ten years ago. I feel like Josie and I will also have that great fun connection and I will have another lifelong friend. Many people have been rather skeptic about my Vancouver trip and say things like, "You're going to CANADA to stay with this blogger person that you've never met?!?" And all I can think about when they say this is "10 years ago I went to Vegas with an almost stranger and I have made a friend for life." I expect to have a GRAND time in Vancouver and I also expect to find my harmonica in the next few days. I think I know where it might be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's the answer to the picture puzzle. I think Naomi is better suited at this than I am, so I don't think I'll do this again and I'll just enjoy trying my luck with her: