Jason Zerbe’s logbook

This weekend was most excellent. It involved good food, good people, and productivity.

Friday, after school got out, I got home and sat in front of the tv for a couple hours. It feels more amazing on a Friday afternoon after a woefully too long four day week. (We had Monday off because of Memorial day.) I then went outside and puttered around the yard for awhile, and decided to run (quite literally) over to Sean Poluha’s house through various backyards. After ringing his doorbell, and exchanging a few remarks, he joined me out in the lovely 75ish degree weather. We shot some hoops and threw some disc, a frisbee disc. I can now say that I have mastered the side-arm throw. I’ll have to stick up a howto later this week. I came back home around 6:30pmish and supped with the family. I did some cleanup duty after supper, then retreated to my basement lab. I stayed up until 10:40pm writing some backend java code for Pipeline2X and the corresponding webservice php.

Saturday morning I spent doing pre-calculus homework, english shiz and my various household chores. At 1:30pmish, my colleague and buddy Scott VanderVeer came over and we discussed various code pieces. The memorable part for me was playing frisbee with him and sitting on my house’s front step talking about life. At 4:10pm my friend Tim Voight picked me and we went over to his house. He had called me earlier Saturday morning about paying for some game subscription via my PayPal account, since he didn’t want to go through the trouble of getting one. After that business was taken care of, we went outside and I got him to throw some disc with me. I can’t believe that he actually made an attempt, because he normally finds any kind of sport distasteful. It was pretty good, considering he hadn’t thrown in many moons. We went back to my house and picked up Sean on the way. Once at my house, I set up my various computers and we got down to a serious pc Halo LAN party. ;-) Three people isn’t exactly a party, but it was fun nonetheless. At 7pm I got picked up by my friend Ben Feldkamp, and we headed over to Mi Familia for some seriously good Mexican food. We also had some seriously good conversation, everything from the highschool clique dilemma to a world-wide Christ conversion. Ben still needs to get me some crazy photos of him eating a jalapeño pepper.

Friends, Software Halo, mi familia, Pipeline2X

At about 6:45pm this evening (Saturday) I got picked up by my friend Ben Feldkamp and we drove over to this restaurant called “Mi Familia”, which literally means My Family in Spanish. Surprisingly I had never heard of this place before, even though I had been to the shopping mall that it is located in many times before.

A few shots of the restaurant. Chris Kim thought the lights were pretty fashionable. The staff was rather personable and we were helped right away. The establishment is owned and cooked for by a Mexican family, bestowing upon itself authentic. It sure did taste authentic, just like the stuff I remember eating while I was living in Los Angeles.

James Buchen, Chris, Ben, and myself shared three platters of food among the four of us which was quite enough. We ordered:

1. Mi Familia Nachos - You can opt for beef or chicken and if I remember correctly, pork. All of the serving platters are nine inches in diameter. We had a pile of nachos at least four inches tall with cheese, lettuce, beef, sour cream, and a home brew salsa and guacamole. I have never tasted such amazing guacamole for the life of me. The combination of flavors changes each time as you get a different amount of each component with every bite of chip. The taste I will always remember.
   
2. Flautas - Three of them with a interesting cheese, lettuce, and salsa topping. Comes with beans and rice. The cook nailed the taste and texture right on and the topping only adds refreshment to the taste. The rice was prepared with green onions and other spices.
   
3. El pollo de mole (at least that’s what I think it’s called) - As Ben said, “if you’ve never had mole don’t be expecting anything otherwise it ruins the taste.” I had never had mole before so I can’t compare it to any other preparation. To do it a disjustice and try to describe what mole is. It is liquid chocolate with Mexican-like spices mixed in that leaves a semi-spicy aftertaste. The dish was ultra-tender chicken covered in mole sauce served with beans, rice and a lettuce mix.
   

Hopefully you can tell by now that I totally recommend this place to anyone with taste buds. For directions and more you can check out The Rake.

Cultural, Friends mi familia, mole sauce