Setting Priorities

Hello Everyone,

I originally sent out this email on May 3rd, 2013.

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There are times in life when a number of situations come up simultaneously, some of which you really want to take part in, some of which you really should deal with, and a final category where you absolutely have to deal with immediately. For instance, you might have this trio of events on your plate at once: 1. You want to watch the opening game of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. 2. You have homework to do. 3. Your house is on fire. This is not the situation we faced on Tuesday night, but it provides a nice explanation of the principle. Sure, you want to watch the game, and yes, you really should do some homework, but holy hell do you have to deal with the fact your house is burning. To wit, on Tuesday night Anna and I faced this little quartet of situations 1. Anna had just spent the better part of the day chatting with James Carville and was eager to talk about it. 2. Our roommate was moving out the next morning and we wanted to chat with her. 3. Anna had to file her taxes by midnight. 4. Arthur just got sprayed in the face by a skunk. No matter how much we wanted to take part in #'s 1 and 2, and how it was important that Anna get # 3 done, wow did we have to deal with #4. 'Immediately' did not even cover how time sensitive that one was. First, we had to lock both dogs in the bathroom before they touched anything, especially Anna's nice new clothes. Second, we had to look up the best remedy to get the smell off. I had some Nature's Miracle, but didn't know if you could apply it directly to the dogs. I also used to keep some skunk odor remover on hand, but those supplies had run out and it was too late in the day to buy more. We ended up washing the dogs with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and liquid soap that worked pretty well. I slept with them downstairs to minimize their contact with other parts of the house and took the morning off work to go to the pet food store, buy industrial quantities of skunk odor remover, and blanket the house with it. We seem to have got the worst of out now, though it's hard to tell because continually sniffing your dog's face for skunk smell does bad things for your olfactory senses.

While Sophie wasn't hit directly, she did smell and had to go through the torture of being washed. The pair of them seem to work in concert to find the worst possible smell. For instance, at the dog park on the weekend, Sophie found a dead fish to roll in and Arthur was helpful enough to run around with a 6 inch chunk of its spine, complete with rotting flesh attached, just to make sure I knew what they had got into. For a guy who picks up dog crap twice daily, it takes a lot to make me gag. But holy moly did that reek.

Last thought for the week: it's easy to make fun of the group of people known as hipsters (see: my sister), and Lord knows I take full advantage of that (see: the reference to my sister earlier in this sentence), but they've got this going for them: they make great food. Whereas a hipster's obsessive search for new and obscure music (see: driving to Nashville and New Orleans) can be tedious, the insistence on good food has tangible benefits. On Sunday, Anna and I went to a place called Art Is In (say it quickly to get the double entendre) for breakfast and it was spectacular. The place is in an old industrial part of town, lending it even more hipster cred, and the employees don't go for anything so old fashioned as uniforms or even colour co-ordination, making them largely indistinguishable from customers and thus harder to flag down, but damn it all, their fried egg, confit duck and melted cheese hangover special is an amazing bit of food. Worth the drive from wherever you are.

Hope everyone had a good week. Go Sens. wes

#Attemptathumour #Dogs