Shoot the Breeze With the Cooler Crew - Peoplesforum Edition

just like playing pretty much any variant of sim city, isn't it?

be warned. i've been known to lose track of the time playing sim city when suddenly i've realised that the sun is coming up again.

Really cute, Ian. Where do you find all this stuff?

Spent the evening paying bills and sorting through mostly junk mail while watching the memorial rally. I wasn't sure what to expect, but as it progressed, I realized that one shouldn't have expected anything much different. That dynamo of a man would need to be surrounded by people of the same fire.

A friend and I had thought about going to the arena - but had decided not to and just watch from home. Sure glad we didn't go through all that to find ourselves out in the cold night air for hours.

Tomorrow will be more history in the making. Interesting week ahead.

Goodnight, SCDs and MCL!

I take it there were a lot of people there? Including Joe?

Boy has our little Timmers grown up. Wow.

Sniff. I'm so proud of him! It gives me hope that there are more kids like him coming up.

I thought about going too Ter, but I also decided to stay home and watch when I heard that people where already lining up at noon and how many where expected.

CM-like the pumpkin man.

Thanks ATH - I've been changing my avatar daily for a bit now before Halloween. I bought into a group of .gifs that are pretty cool for web sites.

P.S. - Your horse is even a hard ass 8+]

I am admiring your pumpkin too CM :)

martinson is still there, although I have never had a class with him, or is it a ms? I think there have been both...

as for the chemist: how many people americans have died today because of saddam huisain? how many americans are going to die if we go to war? that's not really my enitire reasoning for being anti-war but your argument makes no sense, and if you believe that invading Iraq will help us gain global popularity, you are very ignorant. I just want to know one thing from you, who is going to run Iraq, that truely likes American's, besides the American military? No one. So if we don't go to war we are going to spare American lives. As for the prospect of Saddam getting Nukes, not going to happen, in my opinion. I trust the U.N., at least more than I trust dubbya. Keep in mind that one of the very reasons that Saddam/Bin Laden/millions of nameless AMerica haters, hates America is because we throw out weight around to get our way, and 99% of the time there are selfish reasons...

If Saddam is killed yes there is the possibility of there being somone worse to take his place, but I am willing to take the chance maybe there might be someone better in line to take over.

I don't believe that by invading Iraq is going to gain popularity, I don't believe I ever said that.

Saddam has weapons of mass distruction, don't kid yourself. And the US isn't the only nation to believe this. And if someone like Bin Laden can pull off what he did what's to say Saddam can't unleash those weapons?

I may be wrong here but weren't we waiting for approval from the UN to invade Iraq?

Here's two questions for you: 1. Would you go and fight for America if we went to war? 2. Do you think that the initial war against Iraq was needed?

me2 - Have you ever seen a red pumpkin?

as he turns and blushes and says thanks sweetie

um, you do realise that's mygreen m&m you're sweet-talking to like that dontcha, cm? :)

That wasn't me, that was my alter ego. I've popped out from behind him now as you can see. It will never happen again. Unless of course, I become the devil. OOOoaaaaaah aaaah aaaah aaaaah aaaaaaaaaaaah!

uh-huh.

who is going to run Iraq, that truely likes American's, besides the American military? No one.

Whoever would run Iraq after Saddam does not have to like us -they just can't have leathal weapons with that much hate in them!

So you actually think 'no one' likes America?

So if we don't go to war we are going to spare American lives.

The US government doesnt want to 'run' Iraq-we are not going to war to take over Iraq but to protect Americans (YOU) and everyone else in the world from a truly evil, hate filled human being-hate is a strong feeling that Saddam & Bin Laden holds for more than just us!)

My 6 year old tonight saw Saddam on tv tonight and asked me why he hates us so much and is he gonna blow up where we live-how can you truly feel that he or anyone else won't do it? No matter who it is that feels this hate needs to be stopped - Now, what would you tell this 6 year old about hate and make her feel safe? By not talking about it and never exposing her to the media and the 'real' world? GET REAL! That is just what she needs to know -that she should love her family, friends & people and that there are others out there who just plain don't like her. Why? because she is free? because she is white? because she is better off then some? because she talks with a Minnesotan accent :)? I can't tell her the exact reason why but I can tell her that our country-the one we pay our taxes to and the one that tells us they care about us...is helping me protect her!

I think a lot of teenagers think about this war as this may turn into the way it was for Viet nam (a sincere thank youto all vets :))...parents talk once in a while about it or they heard about it through a John Lennon tune or high school history. This is nothing like that! I agree that we should not have been in that war (even though how hard it could have been to watch any human being suffer and not help if we didn't go).

Your naive to think we should not protect ourselves--If I got a letter requesting I leave my family and fight for my children and friends and family tomorrow so they shall have the chance to live another day -I would do it for them, I would do it for you! WWJD..he would send himself to fight to save you without being asked to.

A great thought...These men, Saddam & Bin Laden are threatening you and me and my children and my mom and my neighbor! Our 'dads' (our senate, our representatives, our President) are trying to protect us. Is he gonna say 'oh don't worry about the bully, he'll get tired of beating you up' or is he gonna stand up for you so he does not blow up the school someday'?

I don't see any volunteers that want to try and rehabilitate the men or sit in a Phyciatric room trying to get to the bottom of their troubles...that leaves the electric chair/gas chamber! If a man here in America treated us like the way Bin Laden & Saddam have he would be in prison on death row ...PERIOD! and who captures them here in America? Police men. and some of them get killed everyday in our country. (I personally feel the cop should have shot him in the street and saved us time, legalities & $$-so we need to go over there and take him out).

Note: I don't hate these men but if it's my family or his? hate or good graces? He's toast! Don't think if I didn't know where he is and had the money and means to get there-I could use that 25 million while protecting the world-Superwoman!!!

me2- The underlying hate and prejeduce in your last post is quite frankly sickening to me. I cannot believe that one person can be so ignorant on so many different levels. In fact I hope that it is ignorance because if you truely know what you are talking about, then it is truely the definition of hate. I am extremely saddened by this, that any human being would be so hateful.

I don't think this is anything like Vietnam, I know it is nothing like Vietnam, but thank you for including me in a broad generalization.

You even mentioning or thinking that Jesus would go to war not only shoocks me, but EXTREMELY offends me, as a Christian, I KNOW that Jesus would not go to war under any circumstances, so I hope you can understand that right up front. I consider myself to be very religious(I am going into ministry). I have learned that all people are created equal and to love my neighbor as I love myself. I also understand that people in different societies have different beliefs. This being said, if there were a sure fire way to protect "America", and it involved war, I would still oppose but not as strongly. One thing all war supporters must understand: KILLING SADAM WILL NOT MAKE AMERICA SAFE! Sadam has been rendered powerless for 5 years now, he may want to attack America, but he can't. No he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction, he let the UN in recently and they discovered nothing. Let's wait and see what the international community says, and not become world beaters(literally).

As for your child, God bless her soul. I hope that your and other peoples hatred does not affect her. You complain about the media when you portray that violence is indeed the answer. If I were to speak to your daughter I would explain that there are people that are truely different than us, that have a different religion, and they believe that violence is good. And I would there for her if she is afraid, you explain that as Christians we don't believe that violence will solve the problems, and explain that because these people don't have the same values as us does not make them bad.

LOVE OTHERS ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS HARD TO, DO NOT LET FEAR DISTORT YOUR VALUES AS A CHRISTIAN AND AS A HUMAN BEING. HATE BREEDS HATE. GOD BLESS THE WORLD, GOD BLESS BIN LADEN, GOD BLESS SADAM, GOD BLESS ALL OF THE CHILDREN, IN AMERICA AND IN IRAQ, GOD BLESS US ALL...

I am sorry for preaching, but that is who I am and I really felt insulted by the remark that Jesus would go to war.

If you don't believe in God or Jesus, then that is fine. Hopefully there will be someone that feels called to share there experiences with Jesus with you, and you will feel called, otherwise from my perspective it is sad. I am not one of the traditional theology that Jesus came to earth to "save us", and therefore if you don't believe you are screwed. God is all-forgiving, not vengeful. Again, I apologize for preaching, I just felt sick reading that post...

well if the question was rhetorical, you will burn in hell, duh.

first off, timmers, in the nine months or so that i've known her, me2 and i have become something of a very good treasure hunting team. in that same time we've also become very good friends, and i can tell you without a doubt that she is probably the least hateful and least prejudicial person i know.

please don't tell me that you actually believe that saddam doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. he does, and not only does he have them but he doesn't hesitate to use them against his own people. of course the un didn't find anything when they instpected the place. saddam knows how to play this game very very well. he's been doing it for better than a decade now. and really it is a very simple game. its called move the weapons to where they can't find them.

while i hold that saddam needs to be removed, i also think that its incredibly foolish to do it with just the support of the british. we need a much broader support base from the whole of the international community.

you say that saddam is powerless. that's only a partial truth. saddam is powerless directly. however he's the leader of a country with a vast supply of petroleum. which means he's got a vast supply of money, embargo or not. we've all seen the commercials from the ondcp about how when you buy drugs you might be supporting a terrorist. that statement is even more true when you replace drugs with gasoline. and when you shed that particular light on it, he's very powerful indirectly.

i agree with you that as christians we believe that violence won't solve the world's problems. but in that very same breath i'll also say that sitting on our butts about it, and being passive and peaceful won't do it either. not when you're talking about a psycho-madman running the show. negotiating with a madman yields nothing. its the same reason why israel and the plo have been at each other's throats for decades. it's not going to stop for them any time soon. sure, they want to put on a game face for the world to see where they want peace, but deep down there won't be peace between those two sides because neither side really wantspeace.

in the abc mini-series version of the book the winds of warby herman wouk about world war 2 and the events that lead up to ww2, one of the main characters is saying a prayer. i believe this was a few months before pearl harbor. and the prayer went something like this "lord, why must i build massive weapons with which to kill my fellow man? is it because he builds them himself to kill me?". case and point a few years after that incident, we dropped a pair of atomic bombs on japan, killing some 50000 people. civilians. was it the right thing to do? on its face value certainly not. take into account that the alternative was a quarter million troops spread out between both the americans and the japanese. and those were the minimum estimates they figured. those deaths were going to happen if the war didn't end. and given the choice between having 50000 people's deaths on my conscience or 250000 deaths on my conscience, i'd take the 50000 any day.

i don't know how much of the whole "woman of my dreams" incident you caught back in the pp forum. but basically, it boils down to me telling her that she had to make the choice that was in her best interests at the time, which was to move back home and live with her family, where the job market was more likely to get her a job out of college. the alternative was to stay here and flip burgers until something decent came along. i told her she had to worry about herself first, even though i was madly in love with her. i didn't tell her how i felt about her at the time, mostly because i was more concerned about with how telling her would affect her given the circumstances than with what not telling her would do to me. i failed to take my own advice there, and regretted it a lot for a good long time. believe me, that was an incredibly painful lesson to learn. what's the moral of the story? sometimes you've gotta worry about yourself before you worry about the other guy. sure it may not be the christian to do things. but the christian way of doing things sadly doesn't always work in a non-idealistic world. sometimes you haveto fight wars.

i really ought to stop now. i'm about as tired and sick now as me2 was when she wrote her post last nite. and i can tell i'm rambling on and on. but i will say that this is getting to be one of those discussions we really ought to take out of this thread. which means it'd be a nice thing to have a thread to discuss it in nudge, nudge wink wink, jt.

I understand your perspective Ares, and have many times pondered it myself. Maybe you are correct that logically we should kill to prevent death, and therefore "choosing" who dies. Dropping the A-Bomb was not a decission made because we knew we would kill more Japanese people if we fought the war, it was because we knew we could spare American lives at the expense of innocent Japanese ones. This is getting off of the point, because Sadam hasn't attacked us. My confidence is in the UN, they too know that Sadam isn't going to keep the weapons "under his bed". The weapons inspectors were trained professionals that are the best in the world at what they do. As far as I know, the UN has no reason to "look the other way". It's interesting that you bring up oil, we need and want oil, with Sadam gone maybe we can get their oil easier(duh). SO lets say hypothetically he does have weapons of mass destruction, and he is going to launch a nuke off tomarrow at New York, and we have to choose between the population of New York and the popualtion of all of Iraq(don't crunch the numbers), what do we do? It may be easy for you to answer and it may be difficult, the point is, humans need to stop playing God. No human has the right to decide whose life is more valuable no matter what the situation, now do we save our own asses? Probably, but that is a very tough decision to make. Point is, none of us here knows what Sadam has for sure, very few people know. My wager is that he has nothing, the international community would be behind us if there were a chance that he had weapons of mass destruction. Now if you are thinking, "Sadam aint gonna nuke Germany or France, so what do they care?", think of it the opposite way, "Germany and France have less to gain if the U.S. takes over, so their view is purely of peace, not oil". Just another thought...

Well, there's the WOT and the other WOT.....

But if you want a special place, I would be happy to oblige.
Just egram and let me know!

if you're thinking saddam ain't gonna nuke germany or france, let me just say that they'd be the more likely targets of weapons of mass destruction. it doesn't take nearly as massive of a delivery system to get a nuke from iraq to france or germany as it does to get one to the us. as for the oil, like i said embargo or not we're getting it anyway. it'd be naive to think that he's not selling it through his neighbors. as for your hypothetical, if we know there's gonna be a nuke coming tomorrow, the simple answer is that we take out every military target we possibly can there todayand tonite. and while we're doing that we do everything we can to evacuate new york. we do not just sit on our ass and wait for the nuke to arrive. we do everything we can to save it. and if that means we get the first strike in there, so be it.

now let me ask you this hypothetical. you're at home one nite and someone breaks into your place. after calling the cops, you grab your gun (ok so this hypothetical is a bit of a stretch given that you say you're going into the ministry, and thus probably wouldn't have said gun, but please play along just for the sake of argument). you're in the living room and confront the burglar, who for convenience's sake is pointing his gun at you. what has to happen before you pull the trigger?

ya know, i didn't even think about wot, t3. thanks for the reminder. timmers is pretty cool. he's one of us. you can let him in to the folder without worry.

The original WOT (CNN Exiles) goes real fast and is hard to keep up with sometimes, and you need to ask CA for access if you don't already have it.

The other WOT (overdoing it?) is open to all and not very busy usually.

If neither of those places suit you guys, we can make another one!

No problem babe!

careful when you're talking like that. that green m&m of mine might get jealous ;)

"....GOD BLESS BIN LADEN, GOD BLESS SADAM...."

Whew! I'm glad that's over. It was getting deep in here. You definitely have a much different outlook on forgiveness than I ever will. More power to you I guess, since that must be a prerequisite for where you're headed in life. I just couldn't do it is all.

Anyone who would like access to the War on Terror board can send an IM to any of the people listed below:

L. Lionne, DLLock, Rich T, Sue-Dragonlady or CA Hobbs

The board is moderated, but any topic is allowed. We try to keep personal attacks, racism and bigotry off of the board. There are many good people who post there - including T3. New opinons would be welcome!

You definitely have a much different outlook

I had similar outlooks at Tims age (before I had children, before I learned more and grew as a human being, grew as a born again penticostal Christian). as for Jesus fighting for us-he sure would-he sure did!Wow, how could I explain this to you? Probly can/will get complicated online. If you are learning for ministry-(which is awesome by the way and I hope your attending NCBC)-then you believe there is spiritual warfare happening NOW... This could get so deep Tim. You think it is just Israel and Palestine that are in a spiritual warfare? You and I both are apart of this. It is America and Iraq (MiddleEast) too. I will listen to anything you or anyone else have to say about it-I am always up for discussion and learning more.

This link goes to an interesting web-site that contains the following quotes, facts and thoughts below...

http://thegoldenreport.com/news-report/zech14.shtml

Friday November 1, 2002

ZECHARIAH/Zekharya 14:2

“For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle;”

For years I have preached and everyone I know has preached that when all the nations come against Israel we will see Zech. 14. go into effect and the end will be very close in deed. It has occurred to me that we may be witnessing that very act of prophecy right now. It may be that we are and have been looking in the wrong direction. To begin with when we read the word “united” in the Word in Hebrew we read the world “yachard” which means in Modern Hebrew together or gather. So the term in this scripture “For I will gather”, could be what we may need to consider. For it says I will GATHER all NATIONS against Jerusalem to battle. Or UNITED NATIONS, because in Biblical Hebrew Gather and United are the same word. So possibly what is being said is the United Nations will come against Jerusalem in Battle.

What started me to thinking along these lines was the discovery of a Video that the United Nations has had all this time on the kidnapping of three of our IDF soldiers on the Lebanon border. With this information Israel could have possibly retrieved those three Israeli Soldiers. But the UN did not see fit to share that information with us.

Then there is a new draft of a declaration for adoption at the UN conference on racism next month that includes reference to Israel treatment of Palestinians as a “crime against humanity” and to revive the classification of Zionism to racism. This same draft goes on to accuse Israel of all sorts of crimes against the Palestinians.

Then there is the War Crimes Court in Belgium that is an arm of the UN, as you most likely know, in Brussels you will find the giant super computer for the UN called the Beast. They are considering a case against Ariel Sharon for war crimes for the 82 massacre in the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian camps. When in fact, it was a case of Arabs killing Arabs as they often do. The Phalangist (Lebanese Christians killing Palestinians. I should also add, that the Foreign Minister of Belgian Louis Michel told Sharon yesterday that his country was embarrassed over this whole thing. But what he didn’t and can’t say is the UN is pushing this insane charge to please the Moslem World.

It would seem that the main purpose to the establishment of the United Nations is to condemn Israel. I could fill pages of UN resolutions that have been passed to destroy or injure Israel.

In today’s Israeli Newspapers we find that the so-called Sinai peacekeepers are no longer allowed to come to Israel for R & R, by orders from the UN.

But what we are hearing now is much more eye opening when it comes to Prophecy, the United Nation wants to put its armed troops on the ground inside of Israel, these troops are made up of the armies of the world. (bringing more Scriptures to mind)

So what we are seeing is a change in policy of the United Nations, they have been in the past limited to condemning Israel. But now they are coming against Israel or Jerusalem. And they are coming armed and ready for battle.

"Jesus and the people in Heaven will return to the earth at the end of the 7 year judgments for the battle of Armageddon, where Jesus will fight the massive army of the Antichrist by himself, and this is the timing of the True Second Coming of Christ.

The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2000. Zechariah 14

Jerusalem and the Nations

1 Behold, the day the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.

2 For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.

3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations,as when he fought in the day of battle.

::waiting to get a more philisophical view from AW::

If I have anymore I will take it to the other board-just had to get my response in. :)

Hey all interested. I have posted from time to time and they are a great group over on the WOT. They aren't clickish and welcome new people. The debate does move fast, about 4 times the speed of here but it's always lively. They're a good group of folks :)

a factor of 4, rob?????? i keep up with roughly 10 or so member folders around here. wot is one that i simply can't keep up with.

me2- I read nothing in your post that indicated that you have learned anything. You found on obscure view by a man that I believe follows a different faith(you aren't Jewish, are you?). I need not tell you there are millions of views on what the Bible could mean, but this one sure is off the wall. Through what seems to be a stretch of traslation and interpretation, this man believes that the troubles of the middle east today were prophisised in 480 B.C.? Again, anyone can twist the Bible to say anything through translation and mis(I believe)-interpretation. I once came across a website that used Biblical refrences to prove that Jesus was a pedophile, sick but it proves a point.

Jesus was and is the prince of peace, and he showed this in all that he does in the New Testament. This to me shows that Zechariah is harshly mistaken in his writing of the 14th chapter of his book in the old testament.

My question would be why you would want to look at this weak connection and not just read the New Testament? Learn about how peaceful Jesus is, and learn about the Peace that God stands for.

If your beliefs are truely as apocalyptic as Zechariah and you believe, and/or welcome the end of the world and therefore support War, then I cannot help you, I can only feel pity for you and try and share stories of hope in the Bible with you. But I sense this is not the case, because I feel that your post's of your beliefs are based on fear; a very real human emotion. Fear occationaly gets in the way of my ability to see things based on my faith in Jesus, but my roots are based on the fact that I do believe God has a plan for everyone of us, and all I can do is live as closely to the guidelines that he has set for us, because he made those guidelines because he loves us. One of those guidelines; love thy neighbor as thy love thyself, is very very clear and as hard as it may be, I do love all thy neighbors. I don't know how much more deep it can get than the emotion of fear and the emotion of vengence, but I can say that I understand and empathise with you, even though I do not agree with you.

I do have to say that I appologize for any and all personal attacks that I have made. I have said it before and I will say it again, my life is based entirely on Christianity, and the Jesus I believe in is a very peaceful and loving Jesus, as God his father too is loving. Therefore you can see how it hurt me to see someone I consider an acquaintance declare that Jesus would go to war. I literally was sick that night and it still turns my stomach to read it.

Sup yall? Im back... didja miss me? THOUGHT SO! hahaha..

yeah... so anyhow... damn Ian... I just read your post.. (I think it was 5619, or somewhere around there) about what went down at Crosby... and as Dolemite said... "GAWD DAYAM!!"

That just straight up ruins a cool ass park. Its like what went down at Keller with that teacher dude from Johnson. Straight up freaky. (or maybe not so straight).

AH yeah.... the sand art shit... thats bad ass yo. Thanks for the link.

I'm afraid I have to side with Tim. Jesus certainly had every chance to go to war with the Romans to defend his people. In fact, there were many who expected him to lead them in doing so. But he did not. Instead he preached "love they neighbor" and "give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's". He let the Romans take him and crucify him, telling Peter along the way to "put away your sword". I can't see war falling under the category of "What would Jesus do?" Personally I think he would advocate trying to understand why they hate us and working towards a peace where we all can live in harmony.

I also agree with Tim that taking out Saddam, however evil he may be, isn't the solution to the problem. Saddam is the product of anti-American sentiment coupled with the corruption of power. If we take him out, but do nothing to change the anti-American sentiment of the people, then the new leader will rise to the top because they also have an anti-American stance and it's only a matter of time before power corrupts them as well.

Though it may appear that way, this is not about religion. If it were, then all Moslems would hate all Christians and that is not the case. I know many Moslems who get along with Christians just fine. The anger comes from somewhere else and religion just serves as the justification to do something about it. The anger comes from things the US has done, a rather long list that I'll spare you for now.

If the U.S. were to improve it's international image and lessen the reasons for people hating it, people like Saddam and bin Laden would start to lose power as people over there would go back to worrying about their own lives and happiness instead of wasting their time worrying about what we're doing. Saddam obviously doesn't have a sparkling domestic policy. The reason people follow him is because he appears strong in the face of what they see as a common enemy. If we take away their reasons for seeing us as an enemy, then they'll start looking inward instead and not only would Saddam's reign not last long, but the person who replaces him won't become his clone in time either.

Jesus does say to love our enemies, even if we don't love what they do. We are all God's creatures and we're all human. Ought not a Christian to hope for the salvation of all souls rather than hoping for vengeance against those who have acted against us? I don't know that I'd specifically ask for bin Laden or Saddam to be blessed, but I would hope someday they will come to realize what they've done and repent of it and do all they can to make the world a better place instead.

Couldn't have said it better myself(and I didn't). Nice to see that Allison posts here, and hopefully will be in here for the hunt...

I'm sure wild horses couldn't keep him away Tim. One day and counting.....

terry, do you have any more info on that crossroads? I cant seem to find it anywhere in the phone book. I think I need to go check them out.

damn... all this talkin bout jesus and god, made me think of that stupid ass song that was out a long time ago where that chick sings "what if god was one of us..... just a stranger on the bus"

Now lets take a look at that... what if he was one of "us" can you imagine his holyness walkin around diggin for a medallion, in 5 feet of snow??? Damn strange.....

Does he celebrate Halloween?? If so, what if he was out takin his great, great, great, great grandkids out for trick or treating, and ran into me and Shaggs, and we were weilding axes, and shouting things like "SUUUUUUP BIIITCH!!!?!?!!?" Would he rain down some lighting on our asses and kill us both right there on the spot, or just go "Phht... whatever... stupid clowns" and walk away like most people do.

Just some things to think about.

LL - I saw your post and started digging. Crossroads was/is connected to the Youth Service Bureau. I see Youth Service Bureau agency listed for Stillwater, Forest Lake, Cottage Grove and Woodbury...but not for St. Paul or Ramsey County. I'm thinking if you call one of them, they'll have knowledge of one here.

The other thing to try is to call First Call for Help. That's a 3 digit phone number now - 211. They might have other resources available that weren't available when we were going through our issues here.

Another source for help can be through an employer sponsored Employee Assistance Program - usually a hotline number where someone on the other end can help you through the thought process of where to go and what to do next.

Sure wish I could take that pain away from you. I know all too well the struggle you're going through. Let me know if you need to talk. I can at least listen.

yeah the youth service bureau in woodbury just opened last week I believe... I have known some people that have used the services of the youth service bureau here in Cottage Grove, from what I have heard they are good people.

You're in Cottage Grove Tim? So am I now. But I'll still be hunting.

Thats cool Allison, I have been in Cottage Grove for all of the hunts and it normally isn't too bad. But 61 is under construction now... but I normally will be driving at weird hours of the night and early morning so traffic won't be a problem. We should consider carpooling to some of the events, possibly.

i dunno how it is normally, tim, but i drove 61 through newport last friday evening during rush hour. and despite the construction it seemed rather free-flowing. at least compared to what my general impression of what traffic along there's supposed to be like. but as you say, when you're driving into saint paul at 7 at night and driving out at maybe 4 or 5 in the morning, traffic isn't a problem at all :)

I agree with Ares. The parts of 61 that crawl along aren't the parts that are under construction. It's those dang Newport stoplights. (Would anyone stop in Newport otherwise?) It seems to me they've done a pretty good job of keeping traffic flowing during the construction process, almost always having two lanes open (except in the off hours of the day).

And carpooling could be a possibility.