Something I should have been worried about

So, after months of public worrying on this blog, I find myself on a 10-hour journey through three airports, several time zones, and an immigration checkpoint bringing my daughter, Cinderella, to Mexico to spend Xmas with my wife's family (she will join us later, after attending an ill-timed conference).

Here's what I worry about (in no particular order):

* The unlikely event of a water landing

* The airline losing my rolling suitcase that they forced me to gate-check

* The possibility that I am angering the one true g-d by celebrating a holiday outside my religion

Here's what actually happened:

* Cinderella got a stomach bug and puked all over me for 10 straight hours. Poor kid. She's a trooper though. Not sure how she's going to feel when I explain that she won't be allowed to eat all that candy in her stocking for another day...

FDA Says Mercury Is a Vegetable

Okay, maybe not a vegetable, but the FDA is reportedly considering rescinding a previous warning to pregnant and nursing women and children because of the danger of consuming mercury. Previously the FDA and EPA had warned baby-mamas and kids against eating more than 12 ounces of fish, and to avoid swordfish, shark, tilefish and king mackerel altogether.

Officials at the EPA are not happy, as are white-coated environmentalists. Richard Wiles, the executive director of the Environmental Working Group, said "It's a commentary on how low FDA has sunk as an agency. It was once a fierce protector of America's health, and now it's nothing more than a patsy for polluters."

Chuck E Cheese Melee

A recent report vindicates my avoidance of Chuck E Cheese. My main reasons have been that I worry about restaurants that trumpet their associations with rodents, and that they are brainwashing Sesame Street-watching munchkins with their ads on PBS. Plus, I also hear that the food sucks and the place is a rip-off.

As if all that weren't enough, the Wall Street Journal reports that the police are being called in to break up more fights at some Chuck E Cheese locations than at nearby biker bars. In some areas, the restaurants have been forced to stop serving alcohol and start staffing the place with armed guards after incidents like an 80-person melee in Flint Michigan earlier this year.

Now, the only way you were going to drag me into one of these places was with the promise of beer, so that's another strike against them. However, Rebeldad seems to disagree.

Among other incidents in the article:

In Brookfield, Wis., no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese's.

Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child's birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant's music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain's namesake mouse perform.

Toys will kill you

According to a new report by the Michigan-based Ecology Center, 1 out of every three toys they examined (out of 1,500) tested positive for "medium" to "high" levels of lead, cadmium, arsenic, PVC and other harmful chemicals.

The full report can be found here.