♦ Watch for new "embroidered" wearables in the near future in the Minne-Mart!

♦ The Happy Sharks are in stock in the MinneMart!    Black, Silver, White, Blue and Red

♦ 10th Annual I Shot Six Holes In My Freezer Party in Madsion on Feb 21

♦ The 2004 MS Walk-A-Thon will be held on May 2

♦ The former Ramada Inn is scheduled to be reopened in July as the "Grand Rios Water Park Resort"

♦ Jimmy Buffett comes in at number 19 with gross sales of 29.3 million on Pollstar's 2003 list of Top Grossing Tours.

A1A in Sioux Falls:  Kick off the Children's Care weekend dancing away the winter blues this year at the El Raid Shrine Mosque on Friday, February 6, 2004.  Shake off the icicles and shake your grass skirt dancing to the great live music by A1A and taste the sensations of Caribbean, Mexican, and Hawaiian fare by Theo's!  The Beach Party starts at 7:30 p.m. and closes at 11:30 p.m.  Great live entertainment by A1A of Atlanta will have you dancing all night long to familiar Jimmy Buffett tunes and beach dance music.   Theo's will delight your pallet with a sun-burst of food including appetizers and food stations.  Try Jamaican Chicken Jerk on a skewer, glazed BBQ Pork Loin,  tropical fruits, and a surprising salad of crab, shrimp, fruit and lettuce.  Visit the yukon gold garlic smashed potato martini bar and dessert cabana.Bid on fabulous items at the huge silent auction.  This crowd-pleasing auction includes items for your home & office, family entertainment, art and jewelry, and much more!  Open seating $40.00 a ticket.  For more information please call (605) 782-2331.

Rick Blair has friends who can make you a sign like this.  He can be reached at: blairlmi@willmar.com

CHEESEBURGER IN PARADISE IN MADISON, WI
Buffett will open a Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant in Madison, WI on the weekend of January 14.  http://cheeseburgerinparadise.com/location_middleton.htm
Ticket information for the show on January 14th in Middleton WI: Tickets, ranging from $150 to $500 per pair, may be purchased through the local Habitat office and three Madison radio stations. From Monday through Jan. 11, Madison-based Entercom radio stations - WMMM-FM (105.5), WOLX-FM (94.9) and WBZU-FM (105.1) - will hold phone call-in contests to give listeners the chance to buy two Buffett tickets for $150 total. Each station will offer about 20 pairs and all proceeds will go to Habitat for Humanity, said Ray Quinn, vice president and market manager for Entercom.
Habitat, meanwhile, will sell 50 tickets for $500 per pair. Only a few pairs remains, said Brian Miller, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Dane County. For information, call the Madison Habitat office at 255-1549.
http://www.madison.com/wisconsinstatejournal/biz/64219.php   The Nace Brothers Band from Kansas City was hired to play for the opening week, Jan 12 to 17th or so. (They'll also be playing Margaritaville Key West in the first week of March). Besides the Nace Brothers, the hot Illinois Parrot Head band, Johnny Russler and The Beach Bum Band, will play with Buffett's performance from 4 to 7pm, and the Nace Brothers will play later that evening when it opens to the public.

Story from ol' Havana town...from Marilyn Listvan and Jon Gaasedelen

12/26
Hello all from Trinidad Cuba, walking along and stumbled into an internet bar on the main drag.
Thought we'd drop a line and say Hola!  We're OK.
Music is mui bonito.

Marilyn & Jon

p.s. (12/31) we are actually back now in the snow in MN   :(    it is amazing how few email addresses one can remember off the top of ones head in a few minute window....we were so amazed to find an Internet cafe in the middle of a snack shop in a historic, but rundown town in Cuba that we couldn't remember most people's eddresses.  In Havana the first night we got to hear & meet some of the original members of the "Buena Vista Social Club" band  & see them perform --- amazing --- even got autographs from them (from Pia V.)----if you have a chance to see the movie of the same title you will get a good flavor of what we saw/heard.  Everywhere we ate meals there was live music  (probably arranged for us tourists, but it was still great) --- The last night back in Havana we went to the big show at the Tropicana club --has been running since 1939--- was an outdoor venue with a "roof" of huge trees and an outstanding stage of layers so it seemed like there were 4 levels of dancers surrounding you. --- even "the
revolution" did not stop this show (apparently Castro likes music, so even tho casinos and most of those sorts of activities were opened to the masses, who have no money, so casinos we saw were all abandoned-looking ---but the Tropicana still continued....no we did not see a Desi Arnez lookalike, but one of the numbers was Babbaloo!!) anyway, we got to sleep on the plane on the way home....which was less eventful than the outbound 5 hour delay and luggage taken off the plane
& left in Miami after we saw it initially loaded ---only took it a day to catchup to us, so we each bought a nice souvenier shirt of
the "Havana Club" at the Havana hotel that we had not planned on purchasing...and yes, there truly are many old cars running around Havana in various states of renovation/restoration or just held together. oh, and I have a few (!) pictures of it all --- & thanks to Jon's birthday gift to me last summer of a digital camera, I could get by with some extra media chips, rather than an extra suitcase of film...it also let me immediately show someone the picture I just had taken of them---which delighted them immensely, especially people outside of Havana many who had not seen an instant digital image of themselves before. all in all - the Cuban people were very, very nice -- the music was amazingly wonderful and we had a great time.

THE GULP, p 1