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We welcomed some new animals to the aquarium last week, but they’re not otters (I’ll get to that). We now have two juvenile wolf eels, which will grow to be big, ugly and scary-looking. Here’s one resting at the bottom of his tank:

Throughout my shift, the two little wolf eels were facing their own reflections in the side of the tank, swimming toward them, getting freaked out, sharply wincing back, and promptly forgetting why so they could do it all over again. It was so cute I took video of it with my new iphone, which I didn’t realize I was holding the wrong way (derp).

I also volunteered at Seattle Tilth with the Junior League. Since it was a chilly day, I offered to be a multch shoveller/transporter. I got a nice little workout and managed to take a few pictures as well:

View all the pictures of Seattle Tilth!

The auto show was in town, so I checked out the newest Cadillacs (among other cars). The photo below shows me in the latest CTS. I was disappointed to find there were no Ciels for me to drool on.

View all the pictures of the Seattle Auto Show!

And it’s always fun to play a tourist in your own town. After taking this picture, I went into the store and bought some Seattle-themed tchotchkes.

Cool insurance, bro.

“Going off the grid” used to be the understood lingo to signify you were going to disappear without a trace. Without. A Trace. This meant you were leaving home, giving up almost all of your possessions, telling no one where you going or if you’d be back, and heading to some remote location where no one will ever find you.

With the advent of cool gadgets that can do everything but wipe our asses for us, this phrase has taken on a new meaning. It means you deleted facebook. It means you’re not on the internet as often. It means you moved to a new apartment across town because you’re too big of a pussy to break up with your significant other.

For me, it meant going more than a week without a phone while I wait for work to get me a new one. Yes, I’m lucky to have an employer who will replace my scuffed, dilapidated Blackberry which may or may not have found its way into the bottom of a toilet because it fell out of my sleeve, which is not as secure as I thought. I’m also lucky to have dropped it around the time Blackberry was having problems with text messaging anyway AND Apple is releasing a new iPhone, thus bringing down the price of previous generations. That luck ran out today, though. I reached the office a little after 8, and “Good morning” was replaced with “No Internet.”

So now I’m stuck in Everett, an hour away from home, with no contact with the outside world. I have no Internet and no phone, save for the one at my desk which has a cord attached. I have used it exactly once: to place an order for a new phone. I have a flying lesson and a gig after work, and I’m using a desk phone like it’s fucking 1982. Why don’t I just send a goddamn fax while I’m at it… Were fax machines even around back then? I’d look up the information myself but there’s NO INTERNET.

Still, I’m not off the grid. Far from it. I showed up to work and went to a meeting. The set of people most likely to call the police and file a missing persons report in my prolonged absence know exactly where I am. And yet, everyone but my boss went to lunch, so I can’t help but feel like the captain’s first mate, voluntarily joining him on this sinking ship.

But the captain has a cell phone! I don’t!

Scratch that. The admin just walked in with my new iPhone 4. Of course, I can’t just turn it on and let it find a cell tower. That would enable me only to use it for its intended purpose: calling people. Nope, this is a state-of-the-art, all-in-one computing device commonly considered a “smart” phone. It needs a wireless network to set up iTunes, so I can do all my bullshit through there. It doesn’t realize our network is down and automatically search for the next best thing.

SMARTPHONE: Y U NO SMART ENOUGH TO LOOK FOR A CELL TOWER?

****

It’s several hours later and we’re back. As a coworker put it, the Internet is still “slower than pig snot.” My iTunes download is going to take 6 hours. At least I got the info I need to carry on with my day. It’s amazing how reliant we become on technology that barely existed 10 years ago. My greater worry is not my own personal desire to be in touch, but others’ expectations that I have the necessary technology available to return correspondence in a timely manner. I can go without either a phone OR the internet for quite awhile, but missing both presents a problem for school, work, and customers. I guess we’ll see how things go this evening. At the very least, I should get some uninterrupted time to get gas and wash the hearse!

Yesterday was a complete shitshow for just about everyone. Steve Jobs felt the cold hand of death. 25 people were arrested for exercising their right to assemble during the “Occupy Seattle” protest. An accident on 405 caused a giant pile-up and wedged a car under a semi. My coworker’s dad chopped his hand off. Just about everyone is in a funk.

No need to trivialize my silly problems, world. I read you loud and clear.

Thankfully, I got to hide out at the aquarium for a few hours. Despite my very brief appearance at the volunteer appreciation party last week, I won these little guys:

Speaking of having a bad day, things weren’t going well for these two:

But I guess the keyhole limpet snacking on the one on the left was happy. Here’s the smug cephalopod responsible, appropriately named Mayhem:

I decided to try my luck at traveling by commercial aircraft and spend a short weekend in San Francisco. Sea-Tac reorganized the security line for the N/S gates, so it’s no longer “choose your adventure”. This freaked me the fuck out, but I didn’t get selected for a scan. After the Great O’Hare Grope hot on the heels of Grandma’s funeral, I was ready to simply not fly at all. I’m still not too crazy about the idea.

My first stop in the Bay Area involved a Cal-Train ride to Palo Alto. The amount of transit happening that day was bizarre. I took a train to Sea-Tac, a plane to SF, the BART to the Cal-Train, and John’s car to Advantage Aviation where we flew over San Jose and Santa Cruz. That’s where Zoey and I would take weekend roadtrips and eat fried oreos on the boardwalk. Mega-nostalgia in effect.

Then John and I headed to the Fark party. It was yet another reminder than internet people in real life are still internet people. Although I’m no stranger to internet meetups, I like that Fark parties don’t happen as often and tend to be more special affairs. We always douse a lot of that “getting to know you” crap in alcohol so it’s not as painful.

I stayed at the weeeeird Hotel Vertigo and took a foggy walk to Zeitgeist to reunite with the group. After some kielbasa and a breakfast beer, we did a little tourin’. Most notably, we attended the Folsom Street Fair, which made Seattle’s Capitol Hill look conservative and uptight. Most of the pictures in that link are not safe for work, and some of the undocumented stuff I witnessed was not safe for just about anyone. But people were having fun, and that’s what matters.

Although I didn’t participate in ass-slapping, name-calling, mask-wearing hoopla, I let Kink.com leave their (removable) mark on me. Since I haven’t messed with fake tattoos since I was a kid, I didn’t know I’d need to scrub it off my body to get rid of it, so I walked around like this for about about a week.

For awhile I forgot I was even wearing it, but for those who recognize the site, it probably looked more like an advertizement for the wearer rather than the company. I probably looked as obnoxious as those people who walk around with their underwear sticking out in attempt to look sexy. I was mostly in dark rooms covering Decibel Festival anyway, so I doubt people noticed.

View All the Pictures

When I do it:

When you do it:

And yet, I still vote more often than I play the slots.

I think they meant to put this sign by the white wine (my liquid courage of choice).

Electronic music, The Wizard of Oz, and things that take less than 5 minutes.

As posted on Yelp: Strap a toothbrush to the hoof of a mountain goat and let it kick you in the face repeatedly. You will get about the same experience and quality of care as you will at Willamette Dental, and it will be cheaper.

This is one of the worst health care experiences I’ve had in the Seattle area. I started going to the office on Dexter because it was one of the few providers covered by my insurance that I could get to on foot. When I changed jobs, I decided to start using their Northgate office, mistakenly thinking it would be a smooth transition.

Not so. I might as well have just gone with an entirely new provider since they started from scratch as if I were a new patient (which means extra fees for exams I didn’t need yet). In Willa World, having multiple locations does not mean added convenience.

This location in particular is awful. It is situated near I-5, which you’d think would be convenient. However, you have to make a left and then a U-turn on two perpetually congested streets just to reach the building. And when you do, their narrow, small, second-floor parking lot is almost always full. Because it’s so small, cars often park over the line, occupying every other space, so you have to park at the other building’s parking garage, which is across and down the street. And heaven help you if you’re late because of this–the receptionist will remind you!

The last time I was there, a transient had taken up residence in one of the seating areas in the lobby. He smelled horrendous and laid across a row of seats as if he were wasted.

Even if you dismiss the labyrinth-like hellpit for your average car-trip in Seattle, the care is atrocious. I went to have a tooth filled, and after the dentist had put the anesthetic in my mouth, he started asking me questions about what composite he was supposed to use and what color. I had gotten a letter of predetermination from my insurance company for this procedure because I didn’t want there to be any surprises. I had been improperly billed before and I wanted to make sure everyone knew what we were doing and what it would cost beforehand. Apparently, this pre-emptive legwork was for nothing.

Then I went back because I had cracked a filling. I chose a different dentist, hoping he would be more on top of things than the last one. Although he was able to perform the repairs needed, he gave me too many shots of anesthetic, which left a GIANT BRUISE on my face for weeks. When I called their office to tell them what happened, they didn’t care at all. I offered to send them a picture (it was a big bruise!) but they wouldn’t look at it. They wanted me to waste another afternoon driving to their roiling cesspool so the dentist could look at it and tell me to wait a few weeks for it to go away.

What’s worse, they don’t know how to file an insurance claim, so I’m paying through the nose for this terrible treatment. I tried to discuss it with their office manager to no avail, and she said she didn’t have the authority to do anything (or even talk to anyone about it) and that I had to call her superiors myself. Not wanting to leak her incompetence, it was a non-working number. I’ve gotten better customer service from call centers in India.

Unless you are a glutton for punishment, do not use this provider. Stick with the mountain goat and thank your stars when you narrowly miss being mauled to death.

I wanted to share this, but I don’t know where to put it.

PlatKat does not want to be your facebook friend. Barbie, however…