It turned out that our room had two double beds rather than one Queen. That would have been fine – I don’t mind snuggling – but the mattress was defective and seemed to really only want one person on it at a time.

As a result, it wasn’t that comfortable. We both slept rather badly but whether this was the bed’s fault, or just because we were stressed out from our news yesterday, we didn’t know. Both probably.

Lisa checked our home voice mail – No messages from anyone.

We talked to the concierge about things to do and see. The Peter Gabriel concert wasn’t until 7:30 and before that we were meeting some friends in the restaurant upstairs for dinner, so we had the whole day basically to walk around the city.

The concierge was very helpful and gave us maps and brochures, which we looked at over a breakfast grabbed at the Einstein Bro’s Bagels located on the ground floor of the hotel. (Coffee and bagels – the basics.)

At 11:00 we walked across a road bridge to The Phoenix Civic Plaza, at which point Lisa did a double-take as she realized that she’d been here before, at this exact place: After Microsoft bought Fox Software, they had a big developer’s conference in Phoenix. The speakers (of which Lisa was one) were put up in the same hotel we were currently staying in. It was during the Summer, and she remembered making the journey from the hotel to the Civic Center in the bright sun and scorching heat trying not to melt before they got to the building. We stopped and walked about the civic center walkways, admiring the gardens and reminiscing about the early days of FoxPro conferences. At that time, Lisa and I hadn’t yet started dating, I guess you’d say, but I do remember her describing the Phoenix conference to me at one point.

Was it a sign? And if so, of what?

On the other side of the Civic Center was Heritage Square, a piece of Phoenix Olde Towne that has been maintained, along with a small History Museum and a Science Museum. We spent a very pleasent time walking through the exhibits at the History museum, reading up about Phoenix early days. (It didn’t explain why there were two 2nd streets though.)

The Science Museum was full of school children who had obviously spent all morning there – they were eating their lunch, and left shortly afterwards, leaving relatively empty exhibit halls behind.

The Planetarium was fun. So was the ham radio station they had running there, manned by retired engineer-type people.

At around 4:30 we returned to the hotel room – I had a headache, I took a pill – and rested up before taking the lift up to the Compass Restaurant on the top floor of the hotel at 5:30 to meet Linell and Bob for a quick dinner.

Linell is an old friend of Lisa’s from when she worked during the Summer between high school 30 years ago!

It was a nice meal, actually I think my dish had the nicest piece of pork I’d ever tasted. The vegetables were a bit weird, though. Grilled but not cooked very well.

We bid farewell to Linell and Bob – we had an evening concert to attend.