A: 

A bit of a hack, but it seems that if you change an unneeded css property of the select, it will force an update.

$('#mySelect').css({margin: '0'}).append('<option value="0">(none available)</option>');

(Truncated example from yours, but principle should be the same.)

I tested this with ie7 on XP only.

patrick dw
Wow! Very impressive. Never thought to try that approach. Yes that definitely fixes my problem. Thanks!!
Craig
Glad it worked for you. Might be worth submitting a bug report to jQuery (if there isn't one already) since it only affects ie.
patrick dw
I added a ticket to jquery. Not sure if it's a jquery bug or if it's just an IE issue. Thanks again.
Craig