On the road again: Portland, day 2

Client meetings are confidential, and they were my mission today, so I can't talk at all about work (as usual).

The oddest moment of the day came courtesy of the hotel. Have you ever wondered what the true price of intimacy was? Well, this hotel can help, because right in each room it sells the...

(As always, click on a photo for a larger image of it.)

Yes, the Intimacy Kit. Should you wonder just how the hotel defines intimacy, simply flip over the tin.


The lack of symmetry bothers me a bit--two condoms, two towelettes, but only one tube of lube--but I have to assume the intimacy makers know what they're doing and have made sure it was a capacious lube tube.

I'm also a little disturbed that a wine opener costs more than an intimacy kit, but perhaps that says more about the hotel's target demographics than about the true value of either wine or intimacy.

Tonight's dinner took us to Pok Pok, a Thai place whose chef, Andy Ricker, just won the James Beard award for Best Chef Northwest. Almost all of the dishes were new to me, so I stuck to mild spicing (one Thai chili per dish) and house specialities. I quite liked my boar collar and chicken dishes, but both were definitely spicy enough that I was thankful for the abundant supply of tasty stick rice. The food didn't knock my socks off the way the meal at Le Pigeon did last night, but it was very good, and I will go back at some point.