April 30, 2005 in Features

The Slice: Ice cream treat for the winner

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ON WHAT DAY will it first hit 99 degrees in Spokane this year? Take a guess. All you have to do to enter The Slice’s 2005 “Packing Heat” contest is to send in your prediction by Friday. Be sure to include your daytime phone number. I will personally deliver several pints of premium ice cream to the winner. In the case of a tie, the reader who lives farthest from the Review Tower (but still in the S-R circulation area) wins. And if it never gets that hot, I’ll buy ice cream for some little kids.

“ A dozen possible reasons why you no longer go to some of the restaurants you frequented when you first moved here: 1. They no longer exist. 2. That family argument — now known as “The Oxbow Incident” — tainted that one place forever. 3. “Moved here? Hey, I’ve been here my whole life.” 4. Two words: new management. 5. One day you woke up, rubbed your eyes and realized it was time for a change. 6. Suddenly “the usual” tasted weird. 7. You vowed to be the one person in Spokane not stuck in a rut. 8. You don’t go out anymore. 9. That one place mockingly reminds you of how naïve you were. 10. Your ex might still go there. 11. That one chef’s special “didn’t agree with you.” 12. Amnesia.

“ Slice answers (memorable falls): Camera aimed, Sherri Hyams backpedaled outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, went over a curb and fell flat on her back.

A street vendor rushed to her aid. “Who says the French aren’t friendly?” she wrote.

Paula Kramer stumbled on an uneven sidewalk in La Paz, Bolivia, and went down hard, cracking a kneecap. That made her subsequent visit to the Machu Picchu ruins a real picnic.

Chuck Colville tripped and fell in Edinburgh, Scotland, and almost got run over by a bus.

“ How baby-sitting has changed: “Toddlers have become much faster,” said Debbie McMurtery, who is now a grandmother.

“ Reader challenge: Take “Don’t cry for me, Argentina,” and make it “Don’t (fill in the blank) for me, Spokane.”

“ A list in search of a theme: Preferring to go around saying “Looks good” to actually doing yard work, memories of Larson Air Force Base, the 2005 definition of being “grounded,” when little kids name goldfish, Maureen O’Boyle, Bloomsday coinciding with your allergies being at their worst, the appropriate response when told someone is “out of your league,” sunburns and IQ, the sexiness of modest swimsuits, tearing up every time you see video of the Vietnam POWs being reunited with their families, the Slinky jingle, beer and carbo-loading, the fact that Secretariat — building speed like a locomotive — established his Kentucky Derby record time by running each quarter-mile faster than the one before.

“ Today’s Slice question: Who has the Inland Northwest’s best “How I got my middle name” story?

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