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The Slice: Get a jump on the Irish; It’s party time, Italian style

Sure, it’s Monday.

But March 16 marked the traditional start of the woo-hoo Roman festival, Bacchanalia.

So party on.

TV shows we’re slightly embarrassed about watching: For Sandy Tarbox, it’s “That ’70s Show.”

“Fun, if not memorable characters; shallow plot lines, a menopausal mom who must be on acid, a dad who needs parenting classes and a group of teenagers who hang out in a smoke-filled basement, giggling their butts off. The perfect way for me to squander an occasional half hour.”

Three Spokane job titles (as characterized by people outside the fields): 1. “Some kind of counselor.” 2. “Sort of a contractor.” 3. “A para-something.”

Strike that from the minutes: So this good-natured guy running a breakfast meeting of a Cheney service club announced that cougars had been spotted in the area of some nearby lakes. He offered this as a caution to walkers and joggers. And he added that not being able to use hounds to hunt the elusive cats made the prospect of tracking them down unlikely. He characterized hunting for cougars without the help of dogs as essentially taking an uneventful walk with a rifle.

At which point, a club member piped up: “So which are we supposed to be worried about — the cougars or the guys with rifles?”

Knowing your neighbors: “I don’t know the names of my neighbors,” wrote Laurie Dretke. “But I do know the names of their dogs.”

Speaking of dogs (and naming pets after James Bond characters): Moscow’s Lynda Post had a golden retriever named Little Miss Moneypenny. She answered to “Penny.”

On a scale of 1 to 10: “I would rate my kitchen at 9.5,” wrote Steve Haynes. “The only thing missing is that the oven does not have a setting for ‘warm.’ Hard to believe but when I bought it new that was not a feature that I knew to look for, assuming that all ovens had a ‘warm’ setting.”

Pat Grover would rate her kitchen a 1.05. “It’s not so much old as very, very tiny.”

And Jeannie Maki up in Stevens County said she doesn’t mind that hers is, in fact, old. More than 100 years old, in fact. The house is on a homestead that has been inhabited by a Maki since 1895. “My kitchen may seem primitive to some, but to me it is a 10.”

The first sentence of your great American novel: “It was a white and stormy night.” — Mike Carlson

And now, let’s turn to sports: “If Mark Few needs a rallying cry to motivate his Bulldogs, how about ‘Win one for the Spitzer!’ ” — Valerie Mullen

Today’s Slice question: How do you intend to win your NCAA tournament pool?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; call (509) 459-5098; e-mail pault@spokesman.com. For previous Slice columns, see www.spokesman.com/columnists. Feel free to share your ranking of cheeses.

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