Upstate NY has liquor stores, which sell everything except beer and are open Monday - Saturday 9 -9. Grocery stores sell beer only, from 8 am - 2 am, and from noon - 2 am on Sunday. For some reason, Liqour stores don't sell anything excet liquor, wine and the occasional corkscrew, so you have to go to the grocery store for mixers.

I hadn't realized how different things were at other places.

In Georgia you can't buy at all on Sunday, and even in a restaurant you can't get liquor until noon (after church time, I guess). A line used to form at the twenty-four hour convenience store on my way home at about a quarter to twelve on Sunday nights, waiting for them to unlock the beer coolers.

even in a restaurant you can't get liquor until noon

Same in MA.

No liquor sales at all on Sunday in Utah County, though that rule primarily means no beer sales in the grocery stores and convenience stores. That rule has been challenged in a few outlying towns in the county, much to the store owners' profit and to the outrage of the "good, upright" citizens, most of whom are Mormon and don't drink anyway, so why the hell should they care? Something about profaning Sunday.

For those who don't know, Utah County believes Salt Lake City is sliding rapidly down the slippery slope to Sodom and Gomorra land, what with its beer available on Sunday and all the rest, like fairly thriving Goth, pagan, and gay communities. Being a persecuted minority does a lot for the vitality of a community.

In AZ, I don't think you can get alcohol before 12 on Sunday either...I don't have a lot of parties...it doesn't come up.

Sadly, the folks who don't drink at all care far too often about the liquor laws affecting the rest of us.

"Willow acted rashly, without thinking things through to her usual Willowy level, in part, because she wanted to exert the power necessary to raise the dead. In part. I know she had altruistic, and selfish (not in the power-sense, but 'selfish' in the sense of scared to death and in mourning) reasons to raise Buffy, too. But she didn't think it all out, because she didn't want to find out anything that might have stopped her. It's exactly why she didn't tell Giles, Spike and Dawn, and why she didn't let Tara and the others know that the spell required the blood of an innocent."

Cindy: I know I'm kind of behind the power curve here with a response, but I'm thinking here that Willow was acting in the benefit of the immediate short-term. The Scoobies traditionally operate in an environment unfriendly to long-term strategizing and consequence management. The demon biker dudes weren't going to wait for anybody to catch up and comprehend things. Somebody at CSIS (Cordesman, I think) wrote a paper about the Buffy dynamics of fighting international terrorism -- temporary alliances, so on and so forth. Willow did what the short-term imperatives called for. She did the same thing with the Slayer power-up. Besides the guilt of telling the gang that the spell required the blood of an innocent, Willow just didn't have the time to argue the ethics. She was willing to make a relatively minimal sacrifice to gain Buffy's return.

Interestingly, one could say that concept was perverted and twisted in Angel S4 when Possessed!Cordelia encouraged Connor to to protect her while she was pregnant.

Sadly, the folks who don't drink at all care far too often about the liquor laws affecting the rest of us

Pretty much seems to be the way smoking laws are going these days too.

I must admit, while in theory I'm against the way the smoking laws are going in MA, in practise I'm perfectly happy to go out to places and not be breathing cigarette smoke anymore. Looks like Cambrigdge and Somerville are due for the chop in Oct., which pretty much means this state is going the way of CA.

which pretty much means this state is going the way of CA.

You know what? It ain't bad. The first time you come home from a rock club and you don't stink like cigarettes it feels weird and wrong. By the third time, you realize "Hey, I can wear that jacket again tomorrow without dry cleaning it"

You know what? It ain't bad. The first time you come home from a rock club and you don't stink like cigarettes it feels weird and wrong. By the third time, you realize "Hey, I can wear that jacket again tomorrow without dry cleaning it"

Oh, I know - believe me. Bars I used to go to and come home from feeling like a frelling ash tray (Salem also went NS, before Boston) I now have no problems with. And I don't have a lot of sympathy for the friends my age who smoke, because as far as I'm concerned, they have no excuses except that they decided to smoke (which i did myself for a few years - managed to give it up with a minimum of pain, although I was a social smoker for more years than I care to recall). If I feel sorry for anyone, it's these older people who've been going to the same dive (or not so dive) bars for decades, and are thoroughly hooked, and the places they are going to aren't the kind of places that necessarily should be non-smoking, IMO.

Like I said, I think the way it's being done is sort of the tyranny of democracy method, but a part of me is (not-so-) seceretly happy it's going down this way.