The Daily Mustard

caoimhinolorica and I had lunch Monday at a coffeehouse in Greensburg. By day, it's a small restaurant; on weekends, it's a church. There was a large dining room as one entered, with a bandstand at the rear; across the bandstand one could see the rest of the room, which was set up with seats for a sanctuary. More rooms for Sunday School, an office, and restrooms were in the far back. A bible was on every table, along with a red-orange pamphlet of the sayings of Jesus (which reminded me of "The Little Red Book of Chairman Mao" -- the Little Red Book of Chairman Jesus? -- hmmm). Christian Satellite TV droned on (thankfully, quietly) from a couple of wall-mounted monitors.

It was an interesting arrangement. I had never been in such a place before, but I understand that they're springing up like mayapples, or so I hear tell. The food was pretty good, the service mediocre. I said to Kevin, "What we really need is a Christian Pub." Though I'm not sure that such an establishment could really double as a church: those who would like the pub atmosphere would probably prefer their churches a little more stained-glass-ish.

Our Sassy is a very hot dog these days. Even though summer hasn't come crashing down in full, she refused to go out all day until our afternoon walk. I made it a short one. She finally wanted to go out as the evening started, and things got cooler.

She's spent most of today lying around the fan. Once the A/C gets inspected and turned on for the year, I imagine she'll be an even bigger couch potato. Poor dog. All that fur, and asthmatic to boot. We've upped her Prednisone already.

(When she was younger, our vet told us her heart was malformed and that she wouldn't live long. We took her to a specialist, who did an ultrasound and said her heart was fine. Her gasping after exercise was an effect of bronchial inflammation -- in effect, asthma. So she's been on Prednisone and a bronchodilator ever since. We take very good care of our pets: when you've been adopted by us, you've hit the gravy train for life. that_guy_zach even asked if he could be adopted as a pet.)