What would a server setup day be without some other exotic seafood. Today I tried these white clams with black stripes. I think they were cultured because they were in fact the cleanest clams I have ever seen, they were also maybe the tastiest.



Then (e:terry) made bacon wrapped asparagus. I would suggest it to anyone.



And then I ate a pomegranite. I think this is the first one I ate so much of. Usually, they just end up drying out.



Are neighbors had the funk truck come by today. Since when is Funk, organic fertilizer. I thought it was spray chemical. Have they changed their business model?

I have been busy programming and refactoring old site code from the last four years before the new server arrives. Seriously, I have programmed until 3am for the last three days. Thank god I have my own home office or I would go crazy with everything else going on.

One sneak peak of the new comment box. You no longer have to leave the page, it just pops the comment in to the page, similar to how the chat works.



Let's see, what else. I ate some king crab legs. The box of legs is in the wegmans fish dept freezer and costs $10 for enough for 2 people. I figured for me and (e:matthew) that was the same price as us each getting wendy's. And as my brother always says, we have to eat them before they are gone. They were so good I ate them without butter. Just some lemon juice.



I just thought it meant big crab legs but hen I looked it up on wikipedia (WIKIPEDIA - King_crab) and it is a special species of horned crab that can grow up to six feet across and weigh over 20 lbs. My guess is that doesn't happen much anymore with commercial fishing. Is anyone looking for a job



The golden King Crab


The Red King Crab


Both of those pics are from a site about King Cra fishing where you can order the crab directly from Alaska. I still haven't tried ordering seafood online, although I think that is where all the good deals are.

Somehow searching for it brought me to this site called Alibaba

Does anyone know anything about this site. It looks like you can bargain with wholesalers over email? in order to buy large quantities of stuff from global markets. There is sure to be a lot of money in that. (e:twisted) and I had a good time looking around on it.

I was getting the vaio set to sell when I noticed the powercord was severed somehow ;( I bought a new one from sony, don't worry anyone who was buying it, the new powercord is on the way. I wonder how it broke.


And for the scary part, at work this week I get a confidential envelope and I opened it from the back side. Inside was a pink slip and I was like jesus, couldn't they just tell me in person. But it turned out that it was just a confirmation that (e:matthew) does now have health insurance as my domestic partner. That includes dental and visual coverage too. I hoep he actually uses it.



Ironically, the same day I got a job prospect call for a HIPPA related job in BUffalo that paid a lot more tha my current job. I am so tempted... but the company is rather new.

Well, yesterday I ate a bagel and some mushrooms and that was it for the day. Today I made up for it a bit with steak and eggs for breakfast, tortellini and Italian sausage for lunch and crab legs, artichokes for dinner, followed by home made apple crisp. For once everything was cooked at home accept breakfast. I wish I took pictures of anything else but I didn't charge my camera after breakfast and I haven't used my phone since Tuesday.

I had never eaten breakfast at Off The Wall. It was quite yummy. The potatoes were excellent.





Afterwards, we took (e:southernyankee) for a ride downtown to see the new waterfront developments and noticed this smoke stack right above the Hyatt was going crazy. At first, I thought there was a fire but then we saw it was coming out the stack.


There are still so many flowers and leaves at our house. I hope that it doesn't turn into another october surprise.

I still can't get over how much fun I had dancing last night (e:jim,41532)
I thought my body would be broken today but honestly it felt good, much better than if I had gone on a programming marathon sitting on the couch.

We spent Sunday "preparing" for the wedding reception at 6PM. We started the morning out with a lobster omlette.

Nothing goes better with lobster claw than cleavage. period. I really don't think any man can argue that. I think lemon, butter cleavage might be the only thing to top that. (e:lilho) your sister has raised the bar, how are you going to up this one?!


It was so yummy looking, I was dying watching it cook.





Of course it needed a dollop of caviar. It was almost like the New York City on a million dollars a day meal, minus the Russian Belluga.



After that we spent the day running around in the sprinkler. This rocket sprinkler really rocks. It is fun the play in and entertaining to watch.






I no longer have a happy trail. It is more like a happy 4 lane highway. I guess, what do I expect I am Sicilian after all.

I picked (e:hodown) up from the airport and we headed on over to downtown Kenmore where she was going to get some jewelry repaired at Hoefferts jewelers.



Then we headed to premiere to buy some caviar and cheeses. The most expensive caviar they had was from an American Paddlefish (WIKIPEDIA - American_paddlefish) . It was $56.00/jar but when we brought it home it was covered in mold inside ;(



So we had to drive back, the woman we returned it to commented that the jar was warm. I was wondering if she was insinuating that we made it mold in the 15 minutes we had it in the car? Luckily, they switched it out for another bottle and their was no spitting required.

I learned a lot about caviar here I am curious why the Iranian Caviar is so freakin expensive

Caviar is good with creme cheese. (e:hodown) taught me to eat it like this.


(e:terry) likes to play on the scaffolds, will we ever return them.


Then we had champagne, which reminded me a lot of the housewarming months.




Even (e:cindy) drank a bit too much.


It was fun lounging around.


Then we hung out on the porch with the ants and the water rocket.




Ants love yogurt


(e:matthew) cleaned it up


For a little we had 2/3 of the ho clan on the porch. You guys probably don't see the he-ho Josh that much.

So like, no journals all week and then three this morning.

(e:terry) and my mother canned 50 jars of tomatoes on Wednesday. That is a heck of a lot of tomatoes but it means we can have fresh pasta sauce again for the next year. It is amazing how much yummier it is. It looks like lots of work. I missed the actual process though because I was at work.

Here they are looking really happy with their work.








Last night (e:terry) and I went out with (e:libertad), (e:mike), (e:jim), and (e:james). It was a pretty fun evening of eating at Mode (formerly Le Metro) on elmwood and then drinking. We ended it flying a kite down elmwood, I wish I had any pictures but I forgot my camera. One of the hilights was walking down elmwood and having a car full of girls cat call to us, lol.

The Wendy's on Main street is usually the worst quality food you can get. Not Wendy's in general, just that location is borderline sick sometimes, although it has been a little better recently.

ANyways, they must make so much money off the hospital lunch corwd. It is always so freakin' packed at lunch with everyone from Roswell. Check out how many cars are in line for the drive-though.



Here we have (e:enknot) as wendy herself.

I still can't believe that there is Elmwood Village Water. It sounds disgusting. I realize the water doesn't actually come from the Elmwood Village (at least I hope so.) I can't ebeliev anyone woudl choose that over any other water.



On a totally unrelated note, this is how I dealt with my cubicle issue from the other day (e:paul,41100)

The Winner - Ambrosia's Calamari on Elmwood
The winner is definately, the Calamari at Ambrosia. It is my favorite in the city and I have eaten just about every ethnic style and variety of calamari.



The Loser - Zhang's Chinese Buffet on Union
One of my co-workers suggested we all go to Zhang's Chinese Buffet on Union in Cheektowaga. I would give the place a 10 out of 10 for presentation and selection and about a 0.6/10 for food quality. To me it tasted so disgusting, which is weird because it looked so good. (e:enknot) would not even touch his food. (e:jim,40968) got a pic of the wall decoration of a cat, made of cat hair - in a chinese restaurant - a little creepy.

They have this fancy floor to ceiling fountain wall, chandelier, and tons of food choices, every one of which I tried was bad.



This dumpling looked delicious but the red bean paste inside was really sub par.


I tried some vegtables, which I might add, they had very few of compared to their extreme meat selection.


Here is another plate, (e:enknot)'s maybe? THe bacon wrapped fake crab looked lik it would be good but I can tell you it wasn't and that is as a seafood and bacon affectionado. It actually made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.


Kuni's - The runner up
(e:mrdeadlier) loved Zhang's for some reason - I think it was because you could eat an endless amount of sushi. I really did not like the Sushi. The next day, even wanted to go back but instead I convinved him that we should get he bento box at Kunis, which was as usual - extremely delicious.



What are these things, are they waterchesnuts or lotus roots?

For (e:mike) 's birthday dinner last night we went to The Viking Lobster Company which he refers to here (e:mike,40877)

This is what it looks like from the outside


And here is their menu


It was really hard to decide what to eat. Last night The Viking Lobster Company had a lobster bake special which was corn on the cob, clams, mussels and a 1 1/4 lb lobster for $29. My mom, (e:matthew) and I got that. (e:terry) got fish fry, my brother got steak and shrimp and my dad got baked fish.

The food was delicious, including the clam chowder and The Viking Lobster Company clam infused house salad dressing I had on the house salad.

Here is a pic of the special with flash and without. I couldn't decide which one to post because the flash one had richer colors but the lobster was hidden. So you get to see both.



My only complaint was that it was not as piping hot as I would have liked. My fries were kind of cold. Other than that it was totally awesome.

Afterwards, we went to my mothers for dessert and to open gifts.



My mother is obsessed with her lamination machine. Every cake has custom laminations these days.


(e:matthew) even got a gluten free treat


Here is (e:mike) vigorously cutting the cake.