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Well it has been a week of ups and downs for me...and what better way to work through that than with a crossword puzzle...   On Saturday, my husband lost his wedding ring in the Russian River. We have acquired a metal detector and will be out searching for that this week - wish us luck! That was a down.   Then on Sunday, I attended Westwords - the Bay Area Crossword Tournament in its second year in Berkeley, CA.  Since I had not been training for it at all, my plan was to have a chill day with crosswords and friends by competing in the easier "Beach" division - and then I went and won. Congrats to the other winners, especially to Tyler Hinman for winning the "Mountain" division - may I hope to come close to that someday. This was definitely an up!  And then this morning I found out I was laid off from my job, part of a re-org of our business technology team. I know I wasn't the only one impacted, but it was still a shock...and I am still figuring out what w...

 As I've been watching the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition the last few weeks (which concluded a couple days ago with the awarding of the gold medal to Aristo Sham of Hong Kong), I once again have been dreaming about one day owning my own grand piano. I probably need a larger living room. But as I've been dreaming of that, I also started thinking about a lot of my favorite things that are black and white - and thus this puzzle was born. A little too late I also just read about Ed the runaway pet zebra who was finally captured in Tennessee. Just imagine what this ride must have been like: So Ed the Zebra did not make the actual puzzle, but I hope he enjoys his brief brush with fame. And I hope you enjoy the puzzle! Built by Katja Brinck using the online crossword puzzle generator from Amuse Labs