Isla Vista is a single square mile immediately next to the college. It runs along one edge of campus and is bounded by the ocean and the airport on two other sides. It is the most densely-populated square mile west of the Mississippi (or at least it was when I went there in 1991). I lived in a 4-plex that was…

I haven't heard of it, but I'm sure it's possible. I taught before the chicken pox vaccine was common and whole classes will come down with that in a snap. And I've seen parents who are too workaholic to want to pick up a child that's vomiting or bleeding, so I can easily imagine parents sending a kid off to school…

RIGHT? I ended up having to block her because it was pissing me off majorly.

Having seen so many gifs from that show bouncing around here, I finally watched it. It. Is. AMAZING.

Oh preschool is the worst. They will get EVERYTHING. I taught preschool for 7 years and for the first two I was low-grade-sick pretty much constantly. For. two. years. And then a few years later I got hand-foot-mouth disease. I didn't even know people still GOT that. It sucks, btw. If you were wondering.

Hey now, I'm a Californian who even gave my kid the optional vaccines (Gardasil, and chicken pox was optional at the time).

Sorry, I missed your reply before I jumped on the bandwagon lecturing you. :)

Um, what? All kids are vaccinated for polio. It's required to put your kid in school unless you have a religious or medical exemption.

I've got a friend on my FB that's recently gone all anti-vax. It started with wallotext posts about the "evils" of the flu vaccine and it's spread from there. Coincidentally in the same time span, she's also had two "colds" that were so bad she went on antibiotics and some sort of stomach bug that's lingered for a…

And now I have stolen it from you. IT'S THE CIIIIIIRCLE OF LIIIIIIIIFEEE

I had a flashback to 8th grade woodshop, where I was the only girl in the class and the boys would make crude dildos on the belt sander and brandish them at me every day.

Hey, my grampa was also a Freemason! Secret related-to-a-Mason handshake!

Between Magnum P.I. and the Doberman Gang movie I watched as a kid, I wanted one of these guys so very much.

Cate looks like an accessory to Lupita in pinky-beige. I'm okay with it.

Wasn't there just an article about a school forbidding students from writing about Malcom X, because he was "violent"? I swear I just saw it on io9 or something yesterday.

Redbridge changed their formula a year or two ago. Before that it was decent. Now it's gross.

The skin problems are fun. Mr. Bells gets dermatitis herpetiformis which I linked in a gray comment and I'll spare you the pics. Nasty itchy pustules. The treatment options are GF diet, or drugs for leprosy. We picked the diet.

We moved to Washington from Los Angeles, and we were very pleasantly surprised at the GF options available here. You'd think LA and its super-trendy food scene would have good options. Nope. Every dang restaurant here lists GF items right on their regular menu. Even the lower-end burger joints like Red Robin have…

The irony is, if you actually have celiac you can gain weight on a GF diet, because suddenly your intestines are able to absorb nutrients again. Eating food you can actually digest!

Celiac is actually an autoimmune disorder, not an allergy per se.