Tonight I went to buy cold medicine and I got carded. I don’t even get carded when I go to bars half of the time. Does that mean it’s easier for me to buy booze than NyQuil now? Since I found this absurd, I decided to do some research and refresh my memory.

As you probably already knew, these restrictions are part of anti-meth legislation in Minnesota. I guess I can appreciate that. But how does restricting the sale of cold medicine to only those 18 and older contribute to the decline in meth labs in Minnesota? I can see restricting the amount of cold medicine sold, but the age? Were most of these meth lab scientists under 18 years of age? This makes no sense to me. This means a high school senior has to ask Mom or Dad to buy Sudafed for them. That’s pretty silly. Your thoughts?

Description: 

Rocked on about 3 times. My daughter is afraid of it.

Goes for $39.99 at Toys R US. Excellent condition.

The mouth moves as it sings songs that will stick in your head for the rest of your life.

For that I apologize.

 

Buy it here for $20 cash!

I took the boys to the Minneapolis Car Show this weekend and they really enjoyed it. Even at a mere ten months, Tommy was wide-eyed and in awe as we passed through the room full of vehicles. It was a fun time for the family and we’ll definitely go again next year. Unfortunately there were none of those really expensive luxury cars. You know, the ones women would have to pry their drooling husbands out of, like Ferrari, Maserati, Rolls Royce, Bentley… there must be a name for that class of car and a reason they weren’t there, but I don’t know anything about cars so someone will have to enlighten me.

My future ride

We are a half hour away from Earth Hour. Whether this means you are turning off all the lights, or turning them all on in protest, use this hour to think about your own feelings on the global climate. I will not push on side over the other, but the one thing that I hate is someone who is uninformed, or has not made up their mind.

So, at 8:30, flip a switch, and do some thinking.

(Use video as musical intro to this post. Come on. It will be fun.)

What’s more fun than watching your kid shake it? Watching a bunch of kids shake it. That’s right, there’s a dance party for tots at the Windom Community Center Gym on Saturday. There’s a live DJ, so parents can get in some dance action too if they really want. If you’ve got kids, you probably can’t go to a night club on Saturday night so this is pretty much the next best thing. If you don’t have kids, then just enjoy this classic tune from Earth Wind & Fire.

Got an e-mail last night from Delta/Northwest regarding the merger. They’ve posted a SkyMiles/WorldPerks Integration Timeline here.

As a frequent traveler and WorldPerks Elite member, I highly value my Northwest Worldperks miles, so I found this extremely useful. 

Key takeaways:

• The required Saturday night stay to redeem Worldperks miles is gone. This is awesome.
• As of March 1, 2009, WorldPerks Platinum Elites and SkyMiles Platinum Medallions receive two reissue and redeposit fee waivers and pay $50 for every other instance. This is great. I’ve bought tickets with miles and had to pay the $50 redeposit fee when plans changed three or four times.
• In December 09, all 2009 WorldPerks Elite Qualifying Miles, Elite Qualifying Segments, and mileage balances will be transferred from WorldPerks accounts to their linked SkyMiles accounts to ensure proper status for 2010. WorldPerks is essentially dead at this point. 

See the full timeline and details here.

Image from Sabes JCC website about Desaparecidos exhibit (Sylvia Horwitz).

An article about Argentina in the Star Tribune caught my eye yesterday. Latin American history (especially times of military dictatorship) is of strong interest to me. I lived in South America for six months, mainly to learn as much as I could about these events. So when something related hits Twin Cities, I’m all ears.

Times are tough in the US right now, but my hope is that everyone can stop & appreciate (for just a minute) the things we need not worry about; things like safely expressing our political beliefs, or knowing that our children are safe. Luckily we can take these things for granted. But there are people among us who haven’t always had that luxury, and they’re sharing their stories.

There is a photography exhibit depicting mothers of disappeared victims in Argentina at the Sabes Jewish Community Center until April 23 (there’s a podcast interview on the website with the photographer too, I haven’t checked it out yet but definitely planning on it). This Friday, Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel is going to speak at Metropolitan State. Adolfo is a human rights activist and torture victim from Argentina.

These were very dark, chaotic times in South America and these stories are much more than sad; they are sickening. It’s obviously not fun or exciting to hear these stories, but awareness is important and it helps us be thankful for living in a much different world. This is pretty sentimental for me, I’m surprising myself here! In any case, I hope some people have the chance to check these events out- I’m sure they will be very powerful.

March forecast

Really? Minnesotans need a wardrobe just for March. This is nuts. (Plus, a 42 degree snow shower does not sound fun…)

Twin Cities photographer Wing Young Huie specializes in sprawling portraits of neighborhoods and communities. He talks about his projects, how he approaches strangers to ask to take their photos, and how people he has photographed respond to seeing themselves in the unique way he showcases his photos — on the sides of buildings, buses, and billboards.

Minneapolis Collection, M3857.

In a previous post our captain of Minneapolis Metblogs was asking for more writers and in suggestions for a writing topic he suggested about ranting about how idiotic our public transportation is.

I have been taking the bus all winter after we decided it wasn’t worth the time or the money to keep two cars going all the time. If I ride the bus everyday for the month it costs about $80 per month. $4 per day mainly because I get on the bus in the morning before peak times and save .50 cents.

I haven’t had any problems and even if my car is running perfectly with insurance and gas the cost is about the same. Of course the car I have is paid off so there isn’t any monthly payment. One large repair though makes the bus seem a lot cheaper.

I think we can owe a big chunk of our transit problems to History – in the picture above you can see the infamous Fred Osanna accepting a check in front of a burning street car. Osanna went to jail for committing fraud because of taking money from companies installing bus lines.

There was a great documentary on this on TPT, I think it is in their lost Twin Cities series. I will try to track that down, or if anyone knows what it is – post it.

Otherwise – any ideas for helping our current system without breaking the bank and making sure it gets used?