Downtown Novato

Today Kristina dropped me off downtown Novato and I walked along the main strip, exploring the locale and enjoying the warm sunlight. I first walked into a used book store where I purchased two books for $2.75. I'm especially excited because I almost purchased the same Nick Hornby novel at another store for $15.

The town is cute and lovable. It has most of the essentials and a surprisingly overwhelming amount of barber shops.

The mountains are the ever-present backdrop of the town. It's quite pleasant.
I went to grab an iced-tea and a home-made creation called "Scuffin" (scone + muffin, get it?) here. The mango iced-tea was sweetened with real mango juice and the barista poured in the tea before he added the ice! (small things really do make me happy). The three people you see in the foreground of the picture all had dogs and were joined later by a fourth person. As a team, they were solving a crossword puzzle. One brought a seat cushion and the other a water bowl for the dogs. I was playing with one of their beautiful K9s, Freckle, while the humans were trying really hard to figure out the solution to 39 across. Once they solved it, they got up, said "see you tomorrow," to each other, and went their separate ways. It was such a peculiar and happy sight!

Novato has a really old movie theater that, unfortunately, has been closed for years. I don't know if it is really as old as the posters along the outside wall lead to believe, but they were really cool nevertheless.

Everybody here just seems really relaxed and genuinely happy. I really mean everybody.