Jun. 30th, 2023

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
It's been weeks since I've written about our quasi-New Year resolution to explore more restaurants in the area. My goal was to try one new restaurant, or a restaurant we haven't been to in so long it might as well be new, near home each month. We missed that in May... largely because we weren't home enough. (Though we did try numerous new restaurants in the places we traveled.) Update: we did try a new local restaurant in May. I even wrote about it! And while June is almost over (today's the 30th!) we did get in a visit to a new-old restaurant a few days ago.

Vive Sol is a Mexican restaurant in Mountain View. They've been around for I think about 22 years. I seem to recall seeing them open circa 2001. The store is part of a string of family owned Mexican restaurants in Mountain View, Palo Alto, and other nearby cities. One branch of the family owns this and two other restaurants. Other branches of the family own or have owned other restaurants. You can tell they're all part of the same extended family because they all have "Grandma's Special" on the menu (at some stores it's Great-Grandma's Special) and it's the same thing. The same delicious thing!

If the food's delicious, why has it been so many years since we've visited? Geography! Vive Sol isn't as close to our house as one of its cousin restaurants, La Fiesta. For years we were regulars at La Fiesta. We loved it. Coming out of Covid they made a small change that really miffed us, though. They stopped serving dishes of 3-4 unique salsas with their chips, cutting back to just one. And it's the weakest one. Grandma's Special is worth going for, but so were their salsas. Thus we're now exploring the other restaurants in the family again.

Enchiladas al Sol at Vive Sol in Mountain View (Jun 2023)

Vive Sol is in a completely anonymous-looking one storey building behind a vacuum cleaner repair shop. Years ago this was the kind of place you had to look for great ethnic restaurants. (Cousin La Fiesta is on a narrow street between two auto body shops.) Today this kind of location seems quaint, though it's a win for us locals because with those location somewhere along El Camino Real you wouldn't notice unless you know exactly where to go, it keeps it from becoming overcrowded with tourists, travelers, and shoppers.

For dinner I ordered enchiladas al sol, a combo of one Grandma's special enchilada and one mole enchilada. I like this combo because it showcases two of the best things on the restaurant's menu. Grandma's special is a sauce made with guajillo chiles in a heavy cream base. It's medium spicy, rich, and savory. It's got a deep orange color as you can see in the photo above. And the mole here is one of the best I've found. Vive Sol's version of it exceeded my expectations, being even better than its cousin restaurants. The mole was so rich with chocolate, cinnamon, and, I think, a dash of nutmeg.

The best way to enjoy these special sauces is to get the enchiladas stuffed with just cheese. Skip the chicken that's usually associated with mole dishes. With plain cheese you'll appreciate the richness of the sauces more.

Oh, and Vive Sol still serves 3 salsas with their complimentary chips. You can see them in the pic above. Do you see that, La Fiesta? Three. Still three. 🤣

I think we'll be making Vive Sol our new regular spot for upscale Mexican dining.

canyonwalker: Uh-oh, physics (Wile E. Coyote)
I've mentioned a few times recently that we've been in a not-hot wave here in the SF Bay Area the past few months. We've had March/April weather pretty much the whole way through May and June. Now here it is June 30th and it's finally starting to feel like summer. When I was outside at lunch today it was already at least 80°, and the forecast high today is 87 here in Sunnyvale. The warmest parts of the Bay Area will reach over 100. I've turned on the AC today. Summer is finally here! Update, 4pm: It reached 90° here today and 104° out in Livermore.

To be fair, the past few months haven't been cold 100% of the time. There have been two or three scattered days since March when it was seasonably warm. Coincidentally those days we were out of town. And now that it's warming up to be a summer-y weekend, guess what? We're headed out of town, again! 😂

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
This week I received the replacement parts I ordered for my 10 year old electric shaver. They're a pair of blades (there are two inside the shaver) and a cutting screen.

With these replacement blades and screen my 10-year-old electric shaver works better and even SOUNDS better (Jun 2023)

Removing the worn parts and snapping these in took less than a minute. I tried the shaver out after that and it cuts much closer now. One or two passes leaves the skin on my face smooth. Previously I had to shave over the same area 4-5 times.

The shaver even sounds sharper. 😅 The blades make a higher pitched sound as if they're moving faster... possibly because there's less friction with the screen.

I'm buying new parts for this 10 year old shaver (Jun 2023)

So far I'm glad I spent the ~$50 to refresh this shaver. $50 is a big fraction of the original $75 I paid to buy the shaver 10 years ago... though a smaller fraction of the $125-150 it would cost to replace today. It's a good case of repair vs. replace.

As parts for this older shaver become harder to find and more expensive I wondered if I should buy ahead with a second and even a third parts kit. I decided against that. I figure by the time my need for the next parts kit comes around in a few years, the shaver's battery might be kaput (unable to hold a charge very long) or some of the plastic switchgear might be broken. At that point I'd have to buy a new shaver anyway.

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
Oregon 2023 Travelog #1
38,000' over Redding. Fri, 30 Jun 2023, 9:30pm

I've gone just over a month without setting foot aboard an airplane or in an airport. I haven't been in either since returning from San Antonio on May 28. Here it is June 30 and I'm just now back up in the air. In years past going 4½ weeks without a flight would've felt like the world was turning without me.

Our flight tonight is to Portland, OR. We're going up there for the July 4 weekend, 4 days with taking an extra day off on Monday before the holiday Tuesday. We'll be home Tuesday evening, about 96 hours from now. While we're up there we're planning hiking in various places near Portland and Eugene. In Eugene we'll also visit the Cascade Raptor Center, to "pester the hawks" as we like to call it.

What about all those doom-and-gloom stories in the news the past several days about airline meltdowns ahead of the holiday weekend? Pretty much a non-factor for us. Delays were mostly due to severe weather on the East Coast and thus not having a huge impact on our little 90 minute flight up the West Coast. And the record crowds that were breathlessly forecast? Not here. The airport was relatively not-busy this evening compared to other times I've traveled for work or leisure in the past year.

That said, Southwest Airlines managed to take an on-time flight and make it depart late. They announced "boarding complete" 7 minutes before scheduled departure but then apparently ran outside to raffle off the few empty seats that were left to passersby. We left 5 minutes late. I knew they'd come through!

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