Huh. Interesting.

So a high-end Italian restaurant is probably not serving vegan pasta, but spaghetti almost anywhere else should be okay.

Except for Olive Garden. Someone I know went through their menu and concluded that there was not a single vegan item, or even much that could be made vegan (like, say, at some similar places, getting an individual pizza with a bunch of veggies and no cheese works.) They even wrote to the Olive Garden management, asking if there was anything vegan, and if not, if they could consider adding something vegan to the menu, since there are lots of families that have a vegan member and would like to go to a family restaurant like Olive Garden but can't because there's nothing for that one family member to eat, and got a response that was basically, "No. We know our customers, and we're not changing anything."

(Emailing restaurant chains like that can actually work. I know a bunch of people who've tried it at other chains and gotten responses like, "We've heard from several of our customers about this issue, and we are now working on adding new items to our menu." Or, at the very least, a good PR person can throw together a "Thank you for your suggestion" response. I can't remember the exact wording of the Olive Garden response, but, for something coming from a customer services person, it was really rude.)

You made a baby--you know a LOT about girls.

You know, wile he's a teenager I think I'd be discouraging him from this kind of 'knowledge'.

Tell him all about the ducks and the echidnas! Though you probably want to leave out the mallard snuff porn. And possibly the corkscrew penis.

Hee. So if he asks about girls, I should distract him? I like that.

Otherwise, I'd have to fall back on personal experience. I met his mother through online dating, maybe I should start there. "You know, son, you can find women on the internet."

Maybe not.

Yay for 5 year clean bill of health, Ginger. I just wish it didn't have to come with random pain.

all the people who promoted coffee enemas

I'm sorry, those folk have it all ass backwards.

Can't get to sleep. As usual.

Welcome Kalliope! (ok, silly question, is that pronounced Kal-e-ope, or ca-lie-a-pea?)

ca-lie-a-pea

This one. She's one of the muses.

ca-lie-a-pea

This is how it sounds in my head.

Waves hello at Kalliope, no matter how her family says it.

Ginger, clean five year mark is a fantastic thing.

Continued pain with no diagnosis is a gigantic PITA, and I wish you resolution and alleviation. SOMEbody has to have an answer. Somebody you don't have to pay buckets of insurance money you don't have.

Kalliope is a gorgeous name, for an inevitably gorgeous girl.

I just discovered "group accupuncture" which isn't nearly as creepy as it sounds and allows me to get regular needling, which helps lots with the chronic pain, without having to deal with insurance or high fees. I am loving it. All the acupuncturists are fully trained and liscensed, but the treatment (fully clothed) happens in a large room with lots of recliners.

Since with acupuncture you are paying as much for the time spent lying on a table full of pins as you are for the actual time spent putting them in and taking them out...it makes the process WAAAAAY cheaper. Like $10 to $30 per visit instead of $80 to $150. Dunno how common this is in other parts of the globe, but it's catching on quite nicely in Portland.

eta: one major con is sometimes other patients in the room fall asleep and snore, which is super annoying. Some ppl bring earplugs, allegedly.