• Who: Alex G
• Where: 17th St
• What: Grilled veggie frittata, fries, bloody [big mistake to get eggs at the Fox and Hounds]

Alex was a little bit sad on Saturday, so after going on a bike ride in the morning, she and I met over in our neighborhood to see if we could talk through her problems. Since it was one of the first official nice days of what promises to be another HOT summer, and since nothing makes people feel better than an afternoon cocktail, we went to one of DC’s most famous places for outdoor seating and stiff drinks: Fox and Hounds.

Fox and Hounds was quick to remind us why they are famous for their patio and booze rather than their menu—the food is honestly horrible.  This is something that their patrons always forget, however, because of the aforementioned great patio and booze. In any case, this all mattered little to Alex and me this weekend, because we were on a mission to figure out Alex’s life. A task we had still not completed by the time we’d finished brunch…so off we went to our next location to finish our conversation: The S Street Dog Park (or as Dan calls it, the Gog Park).

So the obvious question one might ask is, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you had a dog! When did that happen?’ Easy answer: no dog.  I can barely get myself to work in the morning with the other 97,000 things I try to squeeze in before 9:00am—I don’t think the alarm can physically be set any earlier. But I do love dogs, as does Alex, and nothing says quiet contemplation more than an hour of sitting and watching someone else’s dogs frolic on a 45x30 piece of astroturf.

I don’t know, is this weird? It maybe seemed a little weird at the time, but now that I’m writing this it kind of feels more weird.**

It was a great afternoon activity, though—watching the dogs run around, chase stuff, make friends with each other, hump a couple times—and since everyone there obviously assumes that one of those mutts must be yours (probably the lazy one that keeps coming up to you since you’re sitting in the shade and still smell like sweat from your bike ride), you can really disguise the weirdness for a good amount of time. Until you run into a friend who’s there with his little black puppy and says “Oh, I didn’t know you had a dog! When did that happen?” [see above.]

The turning point for us, though, was when we saw two other girls, just about our age, doing exactly what we were doing.  We spotted them right away, sauntering in casually with their froyo, acting like it was TOTALLY cool to be watching someone else’s dogs on an 80 degree Saturday.  I mean, who the hell goes to a dog park just to sit and watch? Who does that??  At least we knew enough to get the hell out of there as soon as we realized the dog voyeurs had started to outnumber the dog owners. They just stayed and watched.

**Okay fine, it was weird!!!