tostones de plátano

The tales to tell have been more or less yanked from my guts, after a nearly two hour meeting during which I had to present the user interface for the project at hand. Preparation had been laborious, since the project manager is dim but well-meaning and so keeps meticulous over-organized tabs on everything. I've had more meetings leading up to this meeting than for all of my other projects combined.

Last night I ran up Terwilliger to the Chart House, the highest point of that route. Sometimes as the path wove away from the road and through stands of trees, I couldn't see the blacktop path at all. There's something invigorating about running at top speed (granted, for me that's about the same as regular speed and rather slow at that) downhill when you can't see where your feet are. And then the handful of utterly different pine scents in the clear night air. Before I moved to Portland, I don't even think I knew there were so many different variations of the smell of pine.

Erik and I met Julie and Brian at Oba, afterwards. We had some food arrival issues, but they didn't charge Erik for either of his dishes, nor our three total glasses of wine. That makes up for it. I liked the warm atmosphere, and some of the bartenders were playful behind the bar. It's nice when you can tell that coworkers get along. Did I mention they had plantains? Tostones, not my favorite sweet preparation of them, but hey-- the sauce was non-dairy and delicious.