By BILL WARD, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Three times a month, Laurie Efron makes the two-plus-hour drive from Golden Valley to Winnebago, Minn., to see her dad in a nursing home and mom in an adjoining assisted-living facility. For the better part of two decades, Efron has used almost all her vacation time to help her parents.

"Come on!" Guinevere Keith implored as her pet, Russell, reclined against a 4-inch-high hurdle and groomed herself. Finally, the thoroughly exasperated 9-year-old grabbed Russell and proclaimed, "Since you're not going to cooperate, it's the dreaded box with holes in it for you."

So ended the lesson, at least on this Sunday for this recalcitrant rabbit.

Too hot and muggy to venture to the cineplex? Then curl up in front of the TV with these 10 frosty gems -- all readily available on DVD or via download from iTunes, Amazon or Netflix:

Bab McLagan started seeing the man who would become her husband in the eighth grade. Now, after 36 years of marriage, she's waiting for a judge to sign divorce papers.

"I was in it for the long haul," said McLagan, 57, of Minneapolis. "Then I found out he was seeing someone else, and it was time to go our separate ways."

Jesse Vig is a different kind of control freak:

He wants the rest of us to have more power to make our own choices -- starting with movies.

Recent events have kept us riveted on Egypt. But it's our fascination with the Land of the Pharaohs' ancient past that runs as wide and deep as the Nile.

Everything from our architecture to our eyeliner, but most of all our pop culture, is wrapped up in ancient Egypt.

MINNEAPOLIS - Modern technology has come to the aid of anyone who ever has been intimidated by a restaurant wine list.

In other words, anyone who ever has looked at a restaurant wine list.

MINNEAPOLIS - If we had all checked our horoscopes, maybe we would have seen this coming.

Horoscope followers -- including casual ones -- faced a disturbing possibility Friday: Their astrological signs might actually be something other than they thought.

Explaining the sprawling, ever-spawning popularity of culinary "reality" shows is easier than pie. After all, the Iron/Top/Master Chef brigade combines a pair of American obsessions: competition and food. Both are near and dear to a region just beneath our hearts.

Traditionally most crime suspects have little reason to smile when posing for a mug shot after an arrest -- at least until now.

A new magazine, Busted, plasters hundreds of arrestees' mugs throughout its pages every week in 12 markets across the country.