So it's my fault for leaving a can of chocolate covered macadamia nuts on the living room coffee table for days. How was I to know that Rocky could smell an unopened can of nuts. As you can see from the pic, he bit through some metal. But there's not a single scratch on him or blood on the ground.
Yes he did eat the whole can. And this is after he ate his dinner mind you. I couldn't even eat the whole can if I tried. Silly boy was on such a suger high that he was playing with his ball well past midnight. He's usually lights out around 10.
I felt like making dinner tonight so I made spicy red chicken curry with bamboo shoots and pineapple fried rice. For desert, I made haupia to cool the spicy hotness.
After Joe's engagement dinner at Zen garden, we decided to go back there to try their dim sum. Of course we bump in to Uncle Stanley and Joe. Oh well, nobody planned anything.
They don't have any carts that you typically see in dim sum joints. Since everything is ordered, it comes to you piping hot. It had all the standard stuff along with my favorites, curry squid and custard/salty egg yolk bun, that most places don't have.
We were actually seated near the window so the view was spectacular. There's even a see through floor for you to see the water down below. For all the effort they put into the landscape, there's no fish swimming in the water. Go figure.
We took Ivy's mom to Yama Sushi for her birthday. The atmosphere was very relaxing with good service. Food was better than expected. The wait staff was very accomidating and didn't push us into ordering drinks like a lot of other places we've been to. It annoys the hell out of me when they do that.
My sushi platter Ivy's sashimi platter. Nate, since you like taking pics so much of lighting, this one's for you. Mmmmm, that was damn good cake.
The village has basically spent the last 2 months fixing up Ivy's rental house. The last tenant basically didn't take care of the house at all leaving us a ton of work to do. This consisted of mowing the lawn, cutting back blackberry bushes, trimming the bushes and trees, fixing the deck, pressure washing the vinyl siding and deck, painting the entire inside of the house, refinishing the hardwood floors, fixing broken doors, repairing water damage in the bathroom, putting up new blinds, hauling away trash, painting the deck, mowing the lawn again.
So if you're ever in the market to buy an investment property, make sure you buy a new house so that you don't need to do anything for a long time.
This is just a fraction of all the trimmings we did. This does not include the 1st go around of trimming back the blackberry bushes. Alex digging up a tree stump
Aug. 28th was the day that Bank of America invited our company to the Mariners game in their suite. It was the 2nd year in a row that we've been invited. This year was more significant being how we were right in the thick of things. The game was important because it was against 1st place Angels. The game started off with a bang with 5 runs in the 1st inning. After that, force of habit kicked in and the Mariners lost the game along with the rest of the season. They went on to lose 18 of the last 20 games. At the slightest sniff of the playoffs, the Mariners were like a minor in a club for the first time. They had no idea what they were doing there or what to do next.
I guess they did much better than anyone gave them credit for. They have no ace pitcher. All of our big pitcher signings could'nt even win 10 games for us. Yet, we were still in contention after the all star game.
Thanks for an exciting 3/4 season. See you next year. Here's some pics from the game.
Mariners Moose makes a visit to the suite. Ichiro hanging out with Raul.
We thought it would be great to have a wedding during labor day weekend so that every anniversary would be a 3 day weekend. The past 2 years I promised Ivy I'd take her somewhere and every year we just stay at home. Well this year, I wanted to do something fun. Luckily for me, I had an email from Yelp on an idea for a getaway to the San Juan Islands to go whale watching since both summer and whale season was winding down. I thought what a great idea, so I called and was able to book a motel and whale watching cruise for the weekend. I called Ivy once I booked it and told her I had a suprise for her for our anniversary and she basically guessed exactly what we were going to do. So that took all the fun out of the suprise.
There are never any guarantees on a whale tour. But, luckily for us, we were able to see Dall porpoises, Orcas, bald eagles and sea lions. The guides were really wonderful and knowlegable about the whales. Turns out there are 3 resident pods that live here in Puget Sound, pods J,K and L. Fortunately, J pod was still in the area. Orcas as we were told, are very family oriented and everyone in the pod follows one leader, the eldest female or better known as grandma. In the J pod, the eldest female is 96 years old and still ticking. One of grandma's daugher gave birth recently and we were lucky enough to watch mom and child swim together.
These are Dall porpoises. They love swimming along boats as they go by. As I'm filming, the boat is still moving, so these guys are swimming pretty fast right along us.
This orca is named Micheal and part of the J pod. There's about 27 whales in that pod all following grandma and within 10 miles of each other.
Here are pics of mom and child taken by the tour guide. This is Micheal doing what's called a "breach". Apparently Orca's don't do this very often, but will come out of the water whenever something catches their attention.
Misc Pics Waiting at the terminal
Friday Harbor, San Juan Island
Resident mutt.
Resident mutt. I had to take a pic of this kid. He's probably the son of the owner with a permanent scowl on his face 'cause he's pissed he has to work there on a 3 day weekend when he could be playing xbox with his friends.
This is a pic of Speiken Island. It was originally purchased by Alaska Airlines for management retreats, but was eventually sold to current owner, creator of Oakley sunglasses.
