From Twitter 10-21-2010

( Cut to spare the uninterested )

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

Prairie Home Companion

Last week we got a postcard from that awesome little nonprofit, Project Success, and this time the free tickets they were offering were a real treat: up to four free tickets for A Prairie Home Companion. For those of you not familiar with it, A Prairie Home Companion has been a staple of Minnesota Public Radio for over thirty years. Hosted by the storyteller Garrison Keillor, this show mingles a wide range of musical acts, comedy and Garrison's storytelling. I've been listening to this on Saturdays for decades, but the tickets are pricey ($30 - $60 each), and we've never taken the girls.

Oddly enough, the show they were offering was at an unusual time, a Thursday night, perhaps because it was one of the ones they were broadcasting in HD to 500 other theaters across the country. I immediately went to the phone and called for tickets.

Rob told me a few days later we'd gotten on the waiting list, but they were trying to get more tickets and they would call us back.

When I got home last night, I learned that my mom had picked Delia up to go to stay with her and my dad overnight. Rob was out for his habitual Thurday night out for dinner with his best friend Mark. I went up to check my email before making dinner so that Fiona and I could head out for karate.

I saw my usual email from Minnesota Public Radio. That's right, the show's tonight, I thought, and I felt a stab of grief for that lost opportunity. I suppose they called Rob back and-- I frowned. Wait a minute.

I know my husband.

I went downstairs. "Did Daddy say anything about hearing from Project Success about those Prairie Home Companion tickets?" I asked Fiona. "I guess they couldn't get any for us?"

"Oh, we got the tickets," she informed me blithely.

I blanched. "We got the tickets? But the show is tonight!"

Irate, I grabbed the cell phone and called Rob. "How could you not tell me we got the tickets for Prairie Home Companion?!"

"What are you talking about? The show's Saturday, isn't it?"

"No! It's tonight!" I glanced at the clock. "Oh, my god. We're supposed to be there twenty minutes before the show starts. It starts in half an hour! They'll give them away to somebody else!"

"I'm coming home. I'll be there quick as I can."

So he raced home. It was too late to get Delia, and I devoutly hoped she would forgive us. I bounced around the house, fuming fire, while Fiona looked at me like a wounded doe. Finally, after about five minutes, I pulled myself together and took a deep breath. "All right. We'll head out to St. Paul. If we don't get the show tickets, at least we'll eat dinner there." Oh yeah. Fiona and I hadn't even eaten dinner yet. I grabbed a Cliff bar and scarfed it down. It would have to do.

Rob got home, and we headed out to the car (me still tight-lipped with rage). We drove there and found the Project Success line snaking out of the Fitzgerald theater. Owing to some foul up in the front office, they had miscalculated the number of tickets and it was taking awhile to sort out. But it meant that the handover of tickets was delayed, and so we hadn't lost them yet. We were the very last people in line. We got in fifteen minutes late, and we were split up, but we got to see the show.

And it was wonderful.

(If Delia's really disappointed, I can take her to one of the re-broadcasts on October 25.)

Deathly Hallows TV spot

(This is your chance to see Dan Radcliffe in a bra. No, I'm not kidding.)

(See the rest of the TV spots and trailers here. There are a couple dozen of them.)