Funny you should ask, as the suffragists were a very "dry" group who also helped put through the rather disastrous 18th Amendment.

I would recommend hiring someone directly, rather than through a service. That way the cleaner can make more than minimum wage for what is a physically intense job.

I went through hell getting one during an e.r. visit for bronchitis. I agree with three-fourths that it is similar to getting an i.v. started. It really depends on the skill of the person doing it. If they get it on the first try, it is easy. If they have to move the needle around for a bit to hit a vein, it is hell.

Cats learn a lot of their bathing habits as kittens, from their mothers.

Also try Woolly Mammoth and Five Doors Up on University Way. They will have cuter shoes. Frankie, at the corner of Pine and Bellevue on Capitol Hill has Campers, which are my favorite walking shoes.

Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

Gabriel García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

I've read that book a few times and that always gives me chills.

http://www.chernobylee.com/blog/pripyat/2008/04/
Pripyat is pretty amazing. You can find lots of photos of it online. Whatever else happens in this oil spill, it is unlikely to create a sphere where no one can live for tens of thousands of years. That said, the area around Chernobyl (and around Hanford, for that matter) have been reclaimed by wildlife.

Seattle International Film Festival.

Being outside, even in cloudy weather, will satisfy your vitamin d needs. Winter here is beautiful. There are all sorts of evergreen trees and plants that almost seem to glow when it rains. We have a great coffee culture, bookstores, small cinema outlets, bars, etc. For my friends, winter is dinner party season, which is quite nice. And I totally agree that it is smart to take up snow sports. Winter hiking is pretty nice, too, on the lower elevations and along the coast. And even the bleakest winter will be punctuated with spectacular, though short, sunny days.

I used to give my cat salmon oil in his food. He loved it and it helped quite a bit. Have the doctor check for megacolon and also for tumors. It turned out that my cat's constipation was caused by an undiagnosed tumor in his intestines.