Sunday, April 19, 2009

A pleasant evening's stroll

No pictures. :-p

Jenn and I took an evening to just be. The kids were at my mother's place for the evening, and we took Suka down to main street, and went walking. Glorious weather, perfect night... Cool but comfortable for t-shirts; the day's light breeze tempering down to the merest hint of a breath - just enough to waft scents from the numerous restaurants along. Being the first really excellent weather of spring, the college students were out in mass force, spilling out of bars, chatting in the sidewalk-seating of the various restaurants, walking, joking, moving from party to party. One street over, there's a frat house that always has live music on Saturday nights... Local college bands, many of whom are quite good. Walking along, the music filled in the missing peices of atmosphere.

Suka was generally well-behaved, though there were a few examples of uncertain barking at people she found to be exceptionally strange - smokers all, and mostly men. I need to work on that - We've been neglecting her socialization; Shame on me! However, as I've no doubt said too many times, she's a good dog, and took correction well, and was willing to make friends with those strange burning people... Or at least was willing to accept that they weren't a threat, and accept a bit of scritching from them after suitable introduction. I have to say the college students were really game, working with me to help defuse Suka's anxiety with their good nature and cooperation.

Despite a thousand opportunities to snarf spilled food, raid public trash cans, and otherwise ingest things she ought not eat, she didn't take one single scrap of food from anywhere but my own hands; she really isn't food driven. :-D Instead, Suka put her nose into every nook and cranny where an interesting scent might be found - Scent driven, she most certainly is!

Jenn and I sat down at a favored spot, California Tortilla ( http://www.californiatortilla.com/ ), and I watched the world go by with Suka whilst Jenn went in and placed our orders. Suka was a bit anxious to get moving along again and sniff more scents - I spent maybe fifteen minutes working on getting her to settle. Settling in public is another thing that I've been neglecting; well, last night was a good chance to work on it. As we were eating, my sister and brother-in-law walked past, and also ordered. We didn't pester them, though - It was too perfect an evening, and we didn't want to intrude on their evening.

Of course, college kids being college kids, and this being a Saturday night, someone had to get stupid; every patrol car in town pulled up in front of the shop and a small swarm of blue uniforms went purposefully down the alley and into the parking lot behind the building. There are a couple bars fronting onto that parking lot, and some drama was going on. Dunno what exactly it was, but shortly, a large swarm of college kids came back out of the alley, and one kid was frog-marched out. I love small-town police - They basically walked this kid along, all in a big gaggle, two officers supporting and moving him along, the rest kinda chatting; with the kid, with each other. If it weren't for the uniforms and the handcuffs, it'd have looked like any other group of strollers out for the evening air. Suka, having settled by this point, was supremely indifferent to it all.

Strolled a bit more afterwards, stopped by Cold Stone Creamery ( http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/ ) for some really evil concoction of Jenn's, and finished up our walk juggling soda, icecream, dog, and conversation with random people who wanted to meet Suka.

Really a pleasant evening, even with the drama.