A Prairie Home Companion!

 On Saturday I got what was probably one of the best (and honestly only) Memorial Day presents of my life... I got to go to a live taping of A Prairie Home Companion!

I got to see Garrison Keillor, Guy's All Star Shoe Band, Sue Scott, Tim Russell, Mr. Fred Newman, and all the rest of the Prairie Home crew. It was kind of awesome. And it was all thanks to my friend Elspeth and her parents, who gave me their extra ticket to the Memorial Day show at Wolf Trap.

One of my favorite parts of the show happened before the show even started. About 15 minutes before the live taping began, Garrison and Sara Watkins, one of his guest singers, walked all through the lawn at Wolf Trap singing song after song and signing autographs and taking pictures with the audience. It was so cool that he did that. Even cooler, Garrison was somehow able to sing and sign autographs and take pictures at the same time... he barely even hesitated when someone shoved a book and pen into his face or wrapped their arm around him for a picture. It was nuts.

Also nuts was Sara Watkins' outfit. I so wish I could pull that off. (She's the one in the hat with hipster glasses and a microphone.) Elspeth and I both decided that she is quite possibly our new favorite singer.

Once the show started it was pretty much like listening to the radio, only instead of watching the road wiz by (cause we usually listen to it in the car) you actually got to watch them on stage. 

Guy's All Star Shoe Band

And while it was pretty uneventful on stage (the pictures below were taken during the Guy Noire story) it was very cool to be able to see Mr. Fred Newman doing the sound effects.

From left to right: Mr. Fred Newman, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Garrison

Elspeth and I also tried this "great" technique of taking pictures through binoculars in an attempt to get a better close up picture... it kind of worked, but it was hard to take a picture that wasn't blurry. It's hard to stabilize a camera and binoculars and take a picture all at the same time.

When they started the power milk biscuits song a sign lit up on the side of the stage, which was cool. There was also a sign that said "on air" that lit up when the show was live on air.

During the break we went up to the balcony area of Wolf Trap to see what it looked like from up there... it was cool to see the stage from a different perspective (aka way closer and from above).

After the show was over and it was time to leave, the parking lot was literally a parking lot, since the traffic flow at Wolf Trap isn't exactly spectacular. We saw lots of people hanging out in the parking lot (rather than hanging out in their cars, in the parking lot, while burning lots of gas... that's what we were doing. And blasting some Sara Watkins music). People were throwing frisbees and nerf thingys, drinking wine, and doing what I would generally think of as lite tailgating, since they didn't have cooking implements and stuff. However, the best was definitely these people, who actually went so far as to spread their blanket out on the pavement and have a full blown picnic.

If you feel like listening to the show, you can get to it here. Just choose the 5/26 show. 

Or, you can just listen to clips... my favorites had to be "You and Me" (one of Sara Watkins' songs) and Guy Noir

An Evening in the Battlefields

Last weekend my brother graduated (yes, that's right graduated!) from Gettysburg. The evening before, my cousin and I took a drive through the battlefields for a little sunset tour. It was beautiful.

Here are just a few of the sunset/battlefieldscapes I took... 

I realize that many of you can't handle as many semi-repetitive versions of a sunset as I can, so to spare you, I've put the rest of the pictures after the break...

p.s. if you click on the pictures, they get bigger and you can see the sunsets in all their beautiful glory.

Point Shoes

Check out this fascinating mini-documentary called "Point Shoes" that Galen Summer edited and directed for the New York City Ballet.

Then, when you're done, go to Galen's website and check out his other videos... my favorites were the one about making tutus and the one about a pas de deux from the dancer's perspective (obviously) but the others were pretty awesome too!

p.s. LOVE the guy from the "Whisky Stones" video and the scenery from that video is beautiful and has officially cemented my desire to move to Vermont.

Maybe King Louis XIII Had the Right Idea.

The Shower Window

Did you know that King Louis XIII only took five baths in his entire life and Louis XIV only took three?! Eww...

But I'm starting to think maybe they had the right idea, because I witnessed something super awkward yesterday.

I saw one of my neighbors in the shower.

Awkward.

Granted, I only saw the person's silhouette, but still, that was more than I wanted.

Let me explain. My apartment, and all the other apartments in my complex have a window in the bathroom—a window that looks right into the shower. The window is pretty nice, mostly because it lets lots of light into the bathroom and provides an awesome ledge to store stuff on. It's also kind of annoying because it leaks cold air in while you're showering and let me tell you, shaving your legs with goosebumps is not any fun.

Well yesterday's sighting confirmed another big downside to the window... the shower silhouette. It's something I've always kind of wondered about. The shower window is a privacy window, so it has that crazy pattern thing going so you can't see through it, but I've always kind of wondered if someone looking in my shower window would be able to see my silhouette—which while not as creepy as my actual birthday suit is still pretty awkward, no? To that end, I generally try to shower when it's bright outside (morning or afternoon) and not when it's dark (since that would require me to turn on the lights and internal lights + darkness outside = perfect window peeping conditions). But I'd never seen proof that my suspicions were correct. Until yesterday evening, when on my way into my building I looked to my left and saw the top half of my neighbor through the backlit shower window.

I think never taking a shower again (a la Louis XIII and his son) may be a little extreme (and smelly), but I also think I'll stick to my morning and afternoon showering schedule. Besides, then I won't have to worry about going to bed with wet hair and waking up with a crazy mess on my head.

And We Always Thought Staunton Was Lame...

I guess we were wrong!

Smithsonian Magazine and Travel+Leisure have both named my hometown on their respective best small town/main street lists.

That's right. Staunton was #10 on the Smithsonian's 20 Best Small Towns in America list and #5 on Travel+Leisure's America's Greatest Main Streets list!

Both magazines highlighted the Blackfriars (which is very cool, but the bane of many high schoolers' existences), Woodrow Wilson's Birthplace (an elementary school field trip staple), downtown's awesome brick facade, and of all things, the camera museum... I'm not sure I even knew we had one of those.

They just forgot to mention one thing though... Grandma's! Make sure you stop in the next time you visit... It's even on the way from the camera museum to the Blackfriars.

The Discovery Flyover!

One of the perks of working (ahh that's right, WORKING... more on that later) pretty close to the Dulles Airport presented itself yesterday. I got to see the Discovery Shuttle! 

In all honesty, I think that just about everyone else in DC/Northern VA saw it too, but it was pretty exciting moment in history nonetheless. We saw the Discovery (and its plane and fighter jet escort) when it flew over Dulles on its way to the DC/Alexandria flyover. The fighter jet is the teeny blip to the left of the plane that looks a tiny bit like a missile... not so weird here, but it did look kinda strange when I saw pictures of it over the monuments... but anyway. Here's another, unzoomed picture. 

Can't wait to see it up close at the Smithsonian sometime soon!

Happy Very Hungry Caterpillar Day!

Today is Very Hungry Caterpillar Day! Let's all celebrate by eating some lettuce... just don't eat too much or you'll get a tummy ache like the caterpillar did.

Oh, and also, happy first day of spring! Although it's not so momentous this year, since it's been feeling like spring since around November...