I really like parades. It's like a huge party in the middle of the street that all your neighbors are invited to. George was suspiciously quick in agreeing to come with me to the Old Town Alexandria St. Patrick's Day parade. Turns out he just wanted to sit in a coffee shop and do homework (boring!). But I had fun on the street.
Naturally, there were doggies.
The one on the right was totally insane. He's gear up and run full-speed (not much for this guy) and then get jerked back on the leash. He'd recover and by then his walker had met up with him and he's run top-speed again.
The cops ended the show, as always, but these guys had a whole motorcycle routine choreographed. As you can see, the adults were quite impressed while the children seemed to be scared out of their wits.
I forgot all about the parade, so when I overheard the next guy getting his haircut mention it, I got all excited. My ever-patient husband acquiesced and gave me approximately seven minutes of quality parade time. There is perhaps an equation to describe these situations in our marital life. One factor is my enthusiasm and the other is his reluctance. There is some maximum "benefit to couple" relationship between these two factors that allows us to optimize our time at the parade. Today, factoring in such things as cold weather, threat of rain, and remaining errands and chores, our time at the parade was approximately seven minutes.
I don't mean to say that my husband is a buzz-kill, but I definitely represent the overly-enthusiastic side of the relationship, particularly concerning parades and the like. Then again, I probably just like them because there are lots of interesting people to photograph.