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…
And to think I wanted work to buy me a Droid instead!
Had I received one, I wonder which 1.7 guys would be missing out on hot Kat-action. But seriously, I’m willing to bet women who are more subjectable to Apple’s slick marketing are the same women who are more subjectable to the Ed Hardy-wearin’, hair-gellin’, iPhone-totin’ bros in the club. (After all, they’re supposely getting laid more too.)
The seahorse exhibit has some distant cousins visiting for the summer: three alligator pipefish. (Yes, the link from the Shedd Aquarium was more informative and had better pictures than the Wikipedia article. Their amazingly full collection of sea life is one of Chicago’s few saving graces.) Not surprisingly, these fish look like a cross between a seahorse and legless alligator. They have prehensile tails and eat the same stuff seahorses do. Welcome, alligator pipefish!
Now that it’s summer, the aquarium is jam-packed with strollers, hyperactive kids, screaming, crying, etc. I went out to the pier to get some air and an elderly lady approached me.
She: “Can I ask you a question!”
Me: “Sure!”
She: “I was interested your volunteer program. There are so many nice volunteers here and it’s just wonderful!”
Me: “Thanks! It’s a great program. We have a pool of about 700 total, and that includes regular shift volunteers, life sciences, beach naturalists, program leaders, and teen volunteers.”
She: “So do you think you’ll pursue marine biology after this?”
Me: “Well, I’m 30, and I’ve been working in the technical field for the last 10 years, so I’m pretty sure I’ll stick with that.”
She: “I thought you were a teen volunteer!”
Some slightly uncomfortable laughter and many looks of shock on both our parts were exchanged. I thought the youngins are supposed to flatter the old ladies, not the other way around. Then, like the mature adult that I am, I went inside and had a teen volunteer paint a seahorse on me:
I am the toughest mermaid under the sea!!!
Before I mock its poor translation, I must openly admit that I love this site. I want to buy every single Lolita dress and have a half dozen in my shopping cart so far. When I was about to drop $400 for costume dresses that can’t be worn anywhere but those parties I’m often too tired to go to, the site when down for a few minutes and I was visibly upset. I must release my inner girlie girl and this site will be the key! I am going to be the cutest old woman on the block!
Now onto the mocking:
My small sex appeal thanks this site for its presence.
I’ve been on this kick lately where I’m trying to buy foods that contain only ingredients that I can pronounce and understand. This means I’ve been reading the label on everything, which is something I’ve had to train myself not to do upon exiting a meticulous calorie-counting family. It turns out calories don’t mean anything if the food doesn’t fill and nourish you. (Surprise-surprise, right?)
Today, I really wanted to make a Frito pie. If you live in Texas, you already know it is the tastiest slapped-together food innovation since peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So I bought Fritos, which, while not exactly healthy, contain corn, oil, and salt. Totally fine as long as I don’t overdo it.
I also needed chili. I have my regular brand, the brand an ex turned me onto, the brand I know I don’t like, and the chi-chi organic stuff. Chili comes in a wide variety of flavors, textures, and artery-hardening potentials. As it turns out, a lot of them contain mostly the same stuff. They all have a little soy, with the exception being the organic kinds, that have a ton of soy. I’m also finding that soy isn’t the fucking godsend vegetarians make it out to be. It’s okay in small amounts, but it can fuck with your thyroid if you use it as the sole replacement for meat. (I’ll still eat boka burgers and drink soy milk sometimes.)
Anyway, I’m was reading a can of turkey chili and the main ingredient is “mechanically separated turkey”. I immediately imagined some poor little turkey being tied by the feet and wings to some horrible machine that would slowly draw and quarter him while his wild, gobbly shrieks filled the dark, cold room.
And then I bought two cans.
It looks like Seattle is getting the once-over from yarn bombers, which I think is pretty cute and funny. On my morning walk with Zoey, I saw a collection of crocheted lamp posts and bench armrests on the north end of Cal Anderson Park. Apparently, this has already been done in several parks around the city, including Occidental.
I wouldn’t mind one bit if these new knitted knickknacks took the place of the traditional spray paint graffiti. Also during my walk, I saw a black leather couch with white illegible tags on it. And to think for so long it was taboo to remove tags from furniture…
Sold by Zana Muhsen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Holy shit.
Seriously, I have little to no words to describe this book. It’s not the most well-written piece in the world, but I’ll cut her some slack for being ripped from her native country of England at the young age of 16 and forced to speak another language for 8 years while she was beaten, raped, enslaved, and lied to, and as an added bonus, she got to watch her younger sister go through the same shit in the next town over.
See that run-on sentence? We can’t all write beautifully when we’re frazzled out of our minds. As of the writing of this book, Zana’s sister Nadia was still in Yemen. Part of Zana’s motivation for writing the book was to let people know what had happened to her and to raise enough awareness to get her sister out of there. Nadia has since returned to England with her children.
I don’t know what became of their father, the man responsible for selling them to two Yemeni families for 1300 pounds each. Toward the end of the book, when Zana is about to get a divorce from the man she was forced to marry, her father called, begging her not to leave Yemen. “I’ll be so ashamed, I’ll kill myself!” he said. The way their story was blowing up all over the world, I’m sure quite a few people would line up to help him out with that.
On a personal note, I read this a few months after a rather disconcerting conversation with my own father in which he repeatedly suggested that I require a husband and children to be happy, and I should change myself to accommodate this. Although he claimed his children are his greatest accomplishments, it was difficult for me to tell, since this was the first conversation we’d had since my grandmother (his mom) died. It sucks that he feels qualified to tell me what I should do when he has such an inactive role in my life. I’m happy already, and thankful every day for my comfortable home, stable job, unique side business, and fun activities. Yes, I’m sad my father can’t see that, but he never tricked me into going to Yemen so I could be abused by a miserable, impoverished family and forced into an arranged marriage.
So I got that goin’ for me… which is nice.
I’m not usually a college humor fan, but this was spot-on.