It's All Greek to Me

I'm a dog. On Friday, Alicia and I hit the road for a trip up to New Jersey to visit with family and friends.  On the way up to her parents' house, where we were staying for the weekend, we made two stops.  The first was at the recently opened Delaware Welcome Center on Rt. 95, where we stretched our legs and took a potty break. Note to the dogs, dog owners, and future dog owners reading this blog: there is a designated "Pet Exercise Area."  It's a nice-sized grassy area with garbage cans and pet waste bags.  The only two things it is missing are benches for the humans and shade.  Hopefully those are improvements that can be made in the future.  Still, it was thoughtful of Delaware to create this area for pets.

Our next stop was beautiful Highland Park, NJ.  Here we met up for lunch with Alicia's library school friend, Jess.  I'd never met Jess before and I also hadn't ever been to a restaurant, so I tried to be on my best behavior.  We met up at Pithari Taverna, a restaurant specializing in Greek cuisine. They have a nice outdoor seating area that welcomes dogs and a great menu, so the choice was easy.  After exchanging pleasantries, I spent a few minutes sniffing around our table area to get the lay of the land.

Jess already loves and adores me.  And we just met.

Jess and Alicia ordered and I noticed that they forgot to order anything for me, so I took matters into my own paws.  While sniffing around on the ground I found a discarded olive pit.  I licked it and then started to chew it.  Of course, when Alicia saw what I was doing she quickly took it away.  Not fair.  In response, I licked the entire ground area where I had been eating the olive pit and sniffed around some more.

I know the olive pit is over here somewhere.

When the girls' food arrived I kept walking around the table, exploring and holding out hope that Jess wouldn't have the same rules about not feeding me people food that Alicia and Matt have.  Alicia must have told her not to feed me and also to ignore me if I looked "beggy," because it was like I wasn't even there.  Then I noticed that the umbrella wasn't providing enough shade for Jess and tried to adjust its position by wrapping my leash around the pole and dragging the umbrella stand.  Instead of moving the umbrella, it began to topple over onto Jess.  Oops.  It was then that I decided to just relax and take a nap.

Dreaming of eating olives.

After Jess and Alicia finished eating, Alicia went to use the restroom and gave Jess the instruction to use the camera if I did anything cute.  Here's what she got:

Fairly cute, but kinda squinty and pant-y.

I moved after she zoomed in.  I like to do that.

All in all it was a great lunch.  It would have been better if I'd been invited to dine as well, but I'll take what I can get.  The best part about it, though, was the compliments I received/overheard from the wait staff and other customers (guess they didn't catch the umbrella incident).  Someone definitely said "What a well-behaved dog!" and one guy kept checking me out and giving me googly eyes throughout the meal.  

I can be a very good girl when I want people to love and adore me.  I can also eat napkins off the counter, but that's a story for another time.