Acme’s doing a re-imagining of its corporate vision and culture, and this morning we sat through our first session of “Quest for Excellence 2” training. They’d sent us the videos, and at the end of each segment we’d stop the tape and go to the phone for the discussion.

We made it bearable by staying in bed, watching the videos on the TV in our room, and having a phone each. It seems that we had a better AV experience than the rest of the team back in Chicago, who were watching the video streamed off a computer hard disk, and apparently suffered severe audio synching problems.

The phone conferencing system got back at us for this unfair advantage by making it impossible to hear the discussion segments reliably.

In the afternoon, Josh and Anna packed up their stuff, and we drove off to the Aladdin to meet Anna’s folks who were in town for a day or so.

The plan is that Josh and Anna will spend a night at the Aladdin with Anna’s folks, then (I think) Anna will be returning to San Diego with them while Josh flies to San Francisco for a few days to catch up with Derek and Teresa and friends.

(It gets more complicated later on in the month: Josh then joins up with Anna in San Diego, then later in the month, Derek and Teresa fly in to Vegas for a week, during which we all drive down to San Deigo for a few days with Derek and Teresa in tow. By the end of the month everyone should be back where they belong – that’s the East coast for the kids.)

Josh isn’t wearing a cast anymore after his tendon surgery, but he has limited mobility, hopping around while loaded up with painkillers (OK, it wasn’t that bad!). So I dropped L, Anna, and Josh off at the entrance to the Desert Passage shops, then went to look for a carpark. Before I knew what was happening, I’d driven down the exit ramp and out into the street, by accident. I was *trying* to find the Up ramp…

No worries, though. Round the block and in the other entrance, passing the hotel registration entrance (the right place to drop off passengers that are hotel guests, must remember that for next time) and back into the car park building. No-one need know that I did a bit of extra driving!

We met up with Marshall and Judy at Josh and Anna’s room, and decided what to do in the time we have before our dinner reservation at Tremezzo’s. Possibly some shopping happened, but I wasn’t there to see it because I decided to walk across the road and down the block to the Virgin Megastore at the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace to check out the comics situation.

I forgot the the Forum Shops are at the far end of the block, which made it a longer walk than I would have liked, but issue 3 of Miller’s DK2 was available so that made up for it. I also found a DVD of some Horowitz piano performances on sale which I snagged because I thought L might like it.

A brisk walk back in the hot sun got me feeling rather moist by the time I entered the air conditioned goodness of the Aladdin.

For very special occasions I am pleased to report that Tremezzo’s is a great place to sit and watch the Bellagio fountains and eat delicious Italian food.

We said our farewells to Josh and Anna, leaving them in the capable hands of Judy and Marshall, and waddled back to the car for our drive back up the valley.