The Deets

1. Lost their cell phone number
2. Lost your cell phone
3. Cell phone battery died
4. Cell phone is somewhere where you know where it is but it’s not with you
5. Didn’t really want to call them back anyway

4428 45th Ave S sits at the Southern end of the Longfellow community in the Hiawatha neighborhood. There is a lot to like about this location. It’s only blocks from Minnehaha Park where you can dine on fish tacos while drinking a Summit within feet of Minnehaha Falls at Sea Salt followed by a stop at Dairy Queen on your way home. Good living.

Being on 45th, it doesn’t have the higher traffic volume one sees on 46th or 42nd Aves. 46th is the first N-S thru-street from Lake to the Ford Bridge, so gets quite a bit of traffic. It’s also a bus route from 46th to 38th St. Being a block off of that has some advantages. It’s also a short walk to the 46th St LRT station.

The house is a 3 bed 1 bath 1300 sq ft bungalow with lots of updates. The kitchen appliances look great and the 2nd floor has been updated. The fenced in backyard appears to be dog ready. And it has central air, which is by no means standards in older Minneapolis homes.

Thanks to skadi for the tip. And thanks to others who have sent in tips. I’ll get those rolled out soon.

By the way, ryanol Tweeted earlier today looking for Minneapolis neighborhood recommendations for S or SW Minneapolis homes in the 180-240K range. Give him a shout or drop a comment here if you have advice you’d like to share. Personally, I think he needs to decide if he’s a river person or lake person first. That will narrow things down a bit.

I’m not sure why the monkey on Anti Monkey Butt Powder is giving a thumbs up. He looks like he could have used some Anti Monkey Butt Powder and has the grimace of someone who forgot to liberally apply Anti Monkey Butt Powder to his monkey butt.

This is available at the now-open East Lake St Frattallone’s Ace Hardware near the checkout. A perfect impulse buy.

It turns out that Anti Monkey Butt Powder has a website at AntiMonkeyButt.com

Aaron points out that Frattallone’s dropped off t-shirts at Longfellow homes that are good for 10% discounts when worn into our new Ace Hardware. Would wearing that shirt into True Value be considered a wardrobe malfunction or a hardware shopping fashion faux pas?

When Teucer announced plans for a bacon themed MNSpeak meet-up, I knew I’d have to hit that scene. We met at the Triple Rock and bacon was consumed.

Teucer, DouglasG, Bob from ALAMN, mnblrmkr, bubbles, taulpaul, and The Freets showed up.

Rather than holding one Baconalia, teucer organized both a mid-day and evening meet-up. I was only able to hit the first, but did manage to eat some bacon wrapped meatloaf at the Happy Gnome later in the day.

Good times. Although I think I’m going to need a bacon break for a while.

Update: alicat has a report and lots of photos from the Manny’s scene

Perhaps you heard this past week about a study done by the U of MN that measured the pee of hospitality workers pre and post-smoking ban? Here is a summary of the results from the ClearWay site. ClearWay, by the way, is a group set up to spend tobacco settlement money on anti-smoking efforts.

Conducted by the University of Minnesota Cancer Center and sponsored by ClearWay MinnesotaSM, the study analyzed urine samples taken from nonsmoking hospitality workers before and after the smoke-free workplace law took effect. Findings show that levels of NNAL, a byproduct of a lung cancer-causing toxin, decreased by 85 percent, and levels of cotinine, a measure of nicotine exposure, decreased by 83 percent.

It is kind of scary to think about non-smoking servers inhaling smoke, which then passes through their lungs, blood stream, kidneys and bladder before leaving their system. Night after night.

ClearWay is trying to get the word out about the findings, so is kicking off an ad campaign to further illustrate the point:

You can review the report here in PDF.

Oldest rule in the book: If you’re carrying crack, don’t act like a crackhead when you get pulled over:

29th/Fremont Av: Officers assisted stopped vehicle for careless driving, driver appeared nervous, made furtive movements inside vehicle; officers checked area where driver was reaching, recovered 124.5 grams powder cocaine; 4.7 grams crack cocaine: Arrested/NARCOTICS (suspect has 77 previous arrest records)
CID investigating

And don’t jay-walk with weed:

Franklin/Nicollet Avs S: Community Response Team (CRT) officers stopped man for crossing street against red light; when asked for ID he fled on foot, but was quickly taken into custody; recovered 57 grams marijuana individually wrapped in dime bags: Arrested/NARCOTICS
CID investigating

Darn copper thieves:

1100 blk Spring St NE: Officers dispatched to call of Burglary in progress; suspects were cutting copper pipes out of a vacant house; officers apprehended 1 suspect inside house, 2nd suspect attempting to drive away from scene: 2 Arrested/ BURGLARY
Precinct investigating

This reminds me of the Big Lebowski but with underage women:

Hiawatha/Lake St LRT: Victim forced into car, taken to address in S Mpls, interrogated concerning cell phone, taken to another address, robbed, assaulted by group of juvenile females
Investigating: ROBBERY of PERSON

I’m a bit traveled out for a bit, so I’ve turned my attention to travel blogs. Here are a few I like:

1. Killing Batteries - Lief Pettersen is a local travel writer. As in, he’s a local, and he writes about travel. Not that he writes about local travel to Hugo or Savage. He shares behind the scenes looks at life as a travel writer for Lonely Planet and travel magazines where he’s forced to review the women’s spas at resorts in Guam or why Anthony Bourdain’s Romanian adventure was hosed. He’s the same Leif Pettersen who writes the This is Why I Love Minneapolis (and Sometimes St Paul) blog.

2. Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations - I found this one through Leif’s blogroll and really like what Tim covers. For example, he reviews an amazing Mayan ruin outside of Cancun that’s virtually undiscovered by the typical tourist crowd that heads to Chichen Itza.

3. Go Green Travel Green - Kimberly and Elizabeth, the blog’s co-authors, love to travel, but also love to try to be as green as possible when doing so. They provide great tips on how to cut the environmental impact of your travel plans. For example, taking a non-stop flight not only gets you to your destination faster, it’s also a greener choice for the environment. Now you have all the justification you need to avoid flying through Chicago.

Do you know of any travel blogs worth checking out?

We’re not sure if our current chandelier ties our dining room together.

I’m going to throw this out as a suggestion:

This is sold by Tabby, Inc, a Texas style furniture and home furnishings company.

What I like about this is that it’s a kit and you can use your own bottles. So someone could conceivably make a Brew 52 chandelier. Tabby is willing to provide bottles for those who want a Texas feel, although I’d want to run their bottle selection past my Senior Texas Authenticity Expert, Mike N before accepting their selection.

We’re in the brainstorming phase right now so there are no wrong answers. Just throwing stuff up on the white board.

An argument can certainly be made that ducks don’t belong in hotels. That’s a subject for debate.

But just about anyone would agree that you shouldn’t go around ripping the heads off ducks. A Ramsey County judge agrees:

Man who killed hotel duck sentenced to 21 days in workhouse

Twenty-six-year-old Scott Clark plead guilty in January to felony animal cruelty. He said he was “extremely sorry” and had never hurt an animal before.

The incident happened at the Embassy Suites in downtown St. Paul last September.

St Paul’s Embassy Suite has a great happy hour and free popcorn. Great stuff. But be nice to the ducks.

How bad is the sub-prime mortgage mess in the United States?

According to the ticker at the bottom of the Onion News Network’s Monday news coverage, bad enough to warrant sacrificing agents.

The full message reads:

CONGRESS ANNOUNCES PLAN TO EASE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE CRISIS BY SACRIFICING A DOZEN CENTURY 21 AGENTS TO REAL-ESTATE . . .

This ran during their report titled, “China Celebrates Its Status As World’s Number One Air Polluter“

To the Century 21 agents I know, I hope you survive this round of sacrifices.