eat your hearts out, midwesterners, because last night mike and i went to see garrison keillor's dress rehearsal for tonight's "a prairie home companion" taping. (can you have a "dress" rehearsal for a radio show?) mike got some really good seats, so the man himself was only 15 feet away from us. neither one of us had heard of the guests - one was a poet and one a musician - but they were both very good. the musician played an instrument called a dobro (has anyone ever heard of it?) that looks like a guitar and is strapped around the shoulders like a guitar, but is played flat. it has a distinctive sound that you would probably recognize from folk music. at one point, the dobro, the guitar, the fiddle, and the bass were all playing together and i thought "man, i could listen to this forever."

we also had a brush with celebrity when the producer of the show (not garrison keillor, the other one) came down the aisle before the performance started, walked up to me and said "are you hillary apple?" most unfortunately, i was not. although later on we saw him run in to the real hillary and he just shook her hand and moved on, so i don't think i passed up a chance to go backstage or anything.

mike's group's christmas party was this week. we had some really good mexican type food (carne asada with apple coleslaw...?) and exchanged white elephant gifts. some of you might be interested in the fact that mike and i found one of those stuffed nicaraguan toads amongst our things and we gave that away (in our defense, we also gave a card game, but that is not nearly as interesting). poor shelly had opened the bag, picked up the toad and examined it when it suddenly occurred to her that it might be real. she dropped it very quickly. we are not really supposed to say who bought what, so mike and i kept quiet until the heated discussion about whether the toad was real (there were some votes for plastic and some for foam). at that point, i got to say "oh, they're real, baby" and that was worth all the fuss. the newly christened fred is poised to become the group mascot.

only a few more days till we fly home. our schedule in GR is almost wide open! book your time now!