More Pad Thai and Dog Hair...

...but not together.

Not that it is particularly helpful, but in my ongoing quest for the best Thai food in Provo, I decided to try a Thai restaurant down here in Phoenix.  I'm down visiting my dad, and my step-mom is out of town, so it's been dinner out every night.  I figured, why waste a great opportunity for Thai food, right?  So I looked up the best Thai restaurants in Chandler (the suburb where my dad actually lives) and found The Mint Thai Cafe (be warned, the site plays a little blurb of music when you click on it).  It was not the number one rated Thai restaurant, that one was too far away.  But it was a pretty well rated one.  Plus, my dad said he'd been there before and thought it was good.  So away we went.

It was...fine.  I mean, the food was good.  I got my traditional Pad Thai and dad got something called "Siamese Twins" (I find the hyper Asian stereotyped names these places come up with to be vaguely insulting...to pretty much everyone involved) that involved bamboo shoots and coconut and green beans.  I advised him to get this dish  based on the existence of green beans which, as everyone knows, are the world's greatest vegetable.  I couldn't try much of his because it was spicy and I'm a complete pansy when it comes to hot food.  But what I tasted in my one bite before my tongue started writhing was very good.  Mark up another win for green beans.

My Pad Thai was also pretty good.  The flavor of the sauce was quite nice, though I find I prefer my Pad Thai a little juicier than most people make it.  These guys went quite dry, even more than usual.  But there was plenty of chicken and even egg, which I do appreciate since it adds a bit of variety to a dish that can get a little monotonous.  When I asked for my side of lime the woman brought me a dish of lemon slices.  Apparently the only lime they had wasn't looking too fresh and she didn't want to give it to me.  I appreciate that I guess.  The waitress herself was a little eccentric, but pretty good I think.  All in all, I found The Mint Thai Cafe to be satisfactory.  Decent food, decent service, decent prices.  Probably, if I ever get Thai food down here again I'll try a different place.  But if you ever need a place to have dinner and you're craving Thai, you could do much worse than eat there.

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this is what I found when I did an image search for dog hair...
not really want I wanted, but too dang cute to pass up

Visiting my dad is quite an endeavor.  You see, my dad and my step-mom own five dogs (plus my cat, which he's now trying to tell me belongs to my step-brother...pshaw...).  Cristy has a thing for Corgis, so they have four of them, plus an older, giant German Shepherd.  All of the dogs are pretty good tempered and since they're corgis it's not as if they can really jump up on your nice clean shirt.  However, all five of them are indoor dogs, all with permission to exist on the furniture.  This all means that at any given moment, pretty much every surface in the house has dog hair on it.  I find the ubiquity of dog hair in this place to be...somewhat trying.  I don't want to go to church and spend the first 20 minutes trying to pick all the hair off my skirt.  

I have found my intense dislike of doghair generally translates into a dislike of the dogs which produce it.  Any time my dad's dogs try to insinuate themselves into my affections I push them callously away.  See, that's one thing I don't like about dogs.  They try too hard to get you to love them.  Everyone knows you shouldn't be desperate for friends...  Cats, on the other hand, do a very good job of exuding the "Yes, I know you're responsible for my daily food and water, but don't let that fool you into thinking I wouldn't eat you if you died..." (this is a fact.  house cats will eat the body of their deceased owner if they run out of food...).  The point is that dogs, unlike cats, are just desperate for you to love them.  Hence, the moment I sit down on the couch at least one of the dogs will jump up next to me and lay his head in my lap and look up at me appealingly as if to ask me "Now really...how can you say no to real, legitimate puppy eyes???"  

I have managed to rebuff these efforts now for several years, but this year I find myself faltering a little.  One of the dogs is quite old and goes by the name of Jax.  He doesn't force himself on me, he just comes and quietly sits nearby just in case I should decided to pat his head.  He has taken, on this visit, to sleeping in my bedroom, not on the bed, just in a corner.  To be honest, I feel like I'm being courted by someone who is keenly aware of the sort of courtship I would not be able to resist.  I feel weak that I'm succumbing to his charms.  But at the same time...it's just a dog.  Everyone loves dogs (or at least cats or birds...whatever you have as a pet).  It does not reflect poorly on me because I happen to also like dogs.  After all, I love my kitty unabashedly.  So I guess I'll grudgingly accept Jax as my friend...