Making Sense(s):

Sights: A mixture of cute and stupid over the past 48 hours.

We headed to the just-reopened Bark Park first thing Sunday morning. More like second thing; we delayed an hour because they had their annual Coffee Hound get-together beginning at 9, with caffeine for the humans and treats for the pups.  I pulled out of our driveway and saw a cop on our nearest corner, engaging in CSI: Amherst-



Yeah, some drunken idiot took out the hydrant and just drove off. Hours later, both hydrant and car parts were still there- so much for chain of custody- but by morning the hydrant had been replaced with a highway cone and the evidence was hopefully bagged up.  The rise of a sudden crime wave within a mile of home also brought this bizarre report-

The brawl that broke out at the Chuck E. Cheese's on Harlem Road in Amherst this weekend is hardly an isolated incident.

A year before a video surfaced of a fight that broke out Saturday between several adult women inside the supposedly kid-friendly restaurant, the same establishment was the scene of a simmering family dispute that led to a woman being slashed in the face in the parking lot, according to her lawsuit against the corporation, the Town of Amherst and the Amherst Police Department.

But it's not just the Amherst Chuck E. Cheese's.

Fights at other Chuck E. Cheese's have been reported around the country – and videos of the brawls have a tendency to go viral.

I haven't been in that venue since Emily was little, but I drive by it daily and it always exudes a real skeevy vibe, especially late on weekend afternoons when the rounds of sugared-up kids are leaving and entering all at once.

But let's get away from the stupid and back to the cute:  Ebony was a little slow-moving getting into and even out of the car once we got to the Parp!, but once inside was her usual adorable self, meeting all the n00bs and checking out the wide selection of treats (both in barrels and buttocks):



We ran into one of the trainers from my gym, out with his beagles Peter and Piper. Here, one of our favorite mooches Diesel (the short one) and Magnus (the, well, magnificent larger one) give David their finest begs:



Feels. Just being around all those pups took away much of the weather malaise of the past week(s.... month(s)....), but so did the temperature going back up to Near Normal for, now, three whole days with this mysterious yellow shiny object in the sky.  Our new neighbors had their ball-chasing yellow Lab out yesterday, and other cross-street neighbors were just sitting in their driveway, playing games on their phones and positively basking.  Still, I'm in no hurry to take my snow tires off:P

Sounds.  My audio consultant friend Scott stayed home in Rochester Saturday while his wife and daughter came here for the Marvel trivia.  He wound up having a busy weekend- seeing Leslie Jones at RIT Saturday night, and then getting to report on a surprise drop-in by Paul Simon at a local Music Hall of Fame induction of a couple of his longtime sidemen. But Scott still found time to suggest a couple of audio options to complete our new home system. The new word is "soundbar," and it basically lies in front of the tv for its full width to spread most of the sound out across the room. A subwoofer on the floor does the rest.  The interwebs told us one choice was on display at Best Buy Closer, while the other was at BBAnnoyingMall. So we picked Closer, and found the choice would work quite nicely:



On the right, as it comes- they stack on the selling floor like a giant game of Tetris- and the left, as installed. That's a Herbie Hancock live DVD on the new tv, and the sound is awesome. (Or so I'm told- with half of my hearing largely shot since childhood, I asked Eleanor to come along for this part of the selection because, as I said, me testing out home audio would be like Ray Charles test-driving a racecar.)

To give it some more compare-and-contrast for my own memory, if not eardrums, I brought home the box set of the first two Star Wars trilogies- remastered and on Blu-ray. (The prequels are caca, but hey, the three originals alone are worth the box-set price.)  It was joyful, seeing the opening crawl, and hearing the theme, both seeming as close to the original (small Long Island) cinema experience I saw it in during its 1977 first-run.

Tastes: Eleanor made crepes last night. Yum.

Smells: Ima just gonna leave this here: