La Paisa Grill

This week I’ve been attending a short SharePoint training class in West Valley.  It’s been pretty informative, even though I’ve missed half of the labs.  On Wednesday several of our facilities couldn’t connect to our Internet apps.  So between e-mails, phone calls, and texts, I missed quite a bit.  We didn’t actually figure out the root of the problem until this morning, when more clinics wouldn’t connect.  It turns out our anti-virus program did an update that blocked all secure Internet sites.  We made a few calls, did a bunch of uninstalls and everyone is up and running again.

Yesterday for lunch I drove down Redwood Road looking for someplace to eat when I saw the Latino Mall.  It was awesome!  It felt like I was somewhere in the middle of Mexico.  I bought some Mexican vanilla, dulce de leche, and dulce de membrillo from Ranchos Market.  Then I got a carnitas burrito from La Paisa Grill.  The meat was cooked just right, it had freshly prepared beans, and was wrapped in a fresh homemade tortilla.  ¡Qué rico!  ¡Muy auténtico!  It was so good that today I went there and had tacos and a cold glass of agua jamaica.  I can’t believe we sometimes settle for such low-quality, mass-produced food at places like Taco Bell.  This is place is definitely one of those “best kept secrets.”

Tomorrow is my last day of training.  Hopefully things will be quiet at work so I can concentrate a little better on SharePoint instead of putting out fires.  I think I might just have to make another visit my new favorite little taco shop, too.

Vacation at home (day two, part 2)

We got home from the aquarium later in the afternoon. Melinda and I had reservations for the Armstrong Mansion, so Connie came over to stay with the kids overnight. We got some Papa Murphy's pizza for them and they watched movies and played Lego Star Wars.

Melinda and I went out to eat at Christopher's Seafood and Steakhouse downtown at the Peery Hotel. Since it was the Friday night after Valentine's day, every restaurant was packed. But after a 35 minute wait, they seated us. The wait was definitely worth it; the food was absolutely fabulous! I had a pork chop stuffed with crab, spinach, parmesan, and wrapped in bacon; it was divine. Melinda had a tuna steak with wasabi cucumber sauce, it was quite tasty. It was kind of expensive, but we used Brian's Happenings card, so it wasn't too outrageous. Plus, it feels more like an occasion when it's at a really nice place.

Melinda was worried about leaving Saffron overnight, but she was just fine. Connie said when she woke up in the morning she growled at her (probably because she expected her mom) but then she went back to sleep anyway.

So it was nice to have a night out without the kids, though I suspect they thought it was even better to have a night without the parents.