Ma'am, I'm going to have to take those nail clippers

Most everyone around here knows that President Obama was in Minneapolis today stumping for healthcare reform. Andrea and I decided we'd head down there and see if we could get in. After dropping the boys off at my parents' place, we drove down to Minneapolis, parked at the public library (which looks pretty awesome, by the way), and walked outside. As luck would have it, the end of the line was right outside the library, so our walk to the Target Center was pretty easy to figure out.

When we got there, I realized I had my Gerber mini-tool in my pocket, and the airport-like security we'd be going through would probably take it away. I stashed it all secret ninja style (hoping no one would see me), and I'm glad I did: when we got into the building, the woman ahead of me had her nail clippers taken away.

We waited for probably an hour to an hour and a half before Obama actually got into the place. (There were a few speakers before him, like Kathleen Sebelius, head of H&HS.) The whole thing started out pretty tame; people were sitting around doing little, as was obvious from the blank stares into the jumbo-tron, which did get some good use later. The crowd did really get revved up after a bit, though, and even did the wave for a while. Andrea and I both thought it was an excellent speech, not only in content but also delivery.

Afterward, we wandered back to the car, headed to Maple grove, had some lunch at P.F. Chang's and did some small-time shopping around the area. We went back and got Jacob and Reed and headed home.

Oh, and I did recover my trusty Gerber.

Here are the pictures from the day.