Christmas Performances

So I finally decided to donate this morning to our local radio station that hosts NPR. They've been workin their telethon all week... offering all kinds of "freebies" donated from local businesses. I'd been considering it all week, but none of the freebies really caught my attention. Bad I know... not to want to donate out of the goodness of my heart. I mean, I really do like NPR... listen to it every day. But I donated once before and they never stopped hounding me... pretty much until I moved and they couldn't find me.

But they finally dangled some interesting bait on the very last day of their fund raising (today), so I signed myself up for who knows how many more years of hounding. And for $5/month for a year, I am now the proud owner of two tickets each for live performances of the Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol next month... part of the University's Concert Series.

Mom and I have gone to the Nutcracker almost every Christmas season since we moved to Misery (with the exception of the year we went to St. Louis for a Mannheim Steamroller Christmas concert a while back.) So I figure this way, I'm still getting something I normally would have purchased anyway (with an extra play thrown in) and helping out NPR to boot. Not a bad arrangement, I'm thinkin. Aside for that hounding business.

Amway, each year we decide we need to see more of the Concert Series... and we DID see David Copperfield last year. But for the most part, we get caught up in life in general, and we forget. But the concert series get all kinds of interesting acts... Bill Cosby and the Smothers Brothers make an appearance (separately) just about every year. Big names in music, too... though I can't think of anybody off the top of my head, aside from Cher and Sting. And these are in addition to plays and musical performances by local or travelling groups. All over at Jesse Hall venues with no smoking, so I can actually attend comfortably.

Of course, this sort of entertaiment is nothing out of the ordinary for any of the big cities, but not too bad for a modest college town.