My theme song today is an old one from Robert DeLong. He was my musical hero for a short time. I like this one because it's called Happy. The music certainly is; but I'm not so sure about the lyrics.

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This is my last day alone at the beach. It's been raining and cold for three days now - it actually sleeted yesterday(!) - and it's supposed to rain for five more days (maybe even snow on Thursday). But I can't complain. The rain kept off this morning long enough for me to take a quiet walk on the beach, and it looks like I may be able to go back after lunch.

I call the photo below "The Calm Before the Storm". Right after I took it, a big flock of gulls landed around me, talked for a minute, and then flew off in unison, all while I stood silent. It was beautiful. 

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In the week that I've been here, I also watched two excellent movies that spoke to my heart. The first was Dark Waters, about the Dupont company's knowing PFOA contamination of the water, soil and people (they even gave workers PFOA cigarettes to smoke!) in West Virginia. (Dark Waters stars Mark Ruffalo, whose name I can't read or hear without thinking about The Gruffalo.) The second film that I watched was Beneath a Sea of Lights, a surprisingly engaging psychological thriller that is filmed in Dubai and stars Somali-American actor Barkhad Abdi; this movie left me feeling grateful for my circumstances in this crazy, often depressing materialistic world.

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I purchased locally caught shrimp for $5.99/lb(!) at the nearby Blackburn Brothers Seafood Market and mistook them for prawns. "Americans call them shrimp; British call them prawns," a British friend later texted me, prompting me to search the Internet to find out whether there's a differencebetween the two. Turns out, among other things, that prawns have branching gills and claws on three pairs of their legs, while shrimp have lamellar (or plate-like) gills and claws on two pairs of their legs. What I bought tasted better than most the shrimp I've eaten in my life, and that's all that really matters.

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While learning about shrimp and prawns, I also came across the following quote:

"When no one is to blame, everyone is to blame." ~Pope Francis

... which has given me something to think about for the remainder of my last gray afternoon at Carolina Beach.

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Thanks for checking in; don't forget to share (seriously, it means a lot to me when I see people have read my posts); and, if you missed my last blog post, you can find it here: http://www.melissarooneywriting.com/blog/2021/01/sunflower-addiction-and-skating-on-thin-ice/.