Pine Trees Are Relentless Here In The Northwest
Talk about Northwest living.
The Slice has now counted 16 categories of debris that fall from pine trees and require raking up.
* Slice answers: “My husband goes beyond frugal,” wrote a reader in Coeur d’Alene. “When we’ve acquired several deodorant containers that are almost empty, we dig out the remains, melt them in a small pan and refill one of the empties.”
And Nan Waters passed along several money-saving tips, such as using milk cartons and ice cream boxes for freezing garden produce. But perhaps the most striking thing about her note was that it was written on a postcard made from a snapshot that hadn’t turned out well. (The flash hadn’t gone off.)
* A reader named Lisa wonders: What is the appropriate time-of-day window for lawn mowing? (She’s willing to suggest that 7:20 a.m. on Sunday falls outside the bounds.)
Of course, those of us who use unpowered push mowers regard ourselves as exempt from rules.
* Flip-flop sounds: We heard from a North Idaho reader who said her husband was horrified to discover that a pair of sandals he purchased simulate the sound of flatulence.
Trying to compensate for that could really mess up your stride.
“Hey, Dan. Why are you walking like that? Did you hurt yourself?”
“No. I’m trying to not sound like, um, oh, never mind.”
* So this newborn crawls into a bar… : Obstetrics humor often catches people off guard.
* Overheard (two guys in a cafe mulling the WSU football schedule):
“Who can they beat?”
“Do they play Eastwest Louisiana this year?”
* Hurt so good: Janice Skelton recalled a time about 40 years ago when she was suffering from bursitis in an arm. She and her husband decided to go fishing at a lake, thinking the hot sun might ease her discomfort.
While there, a bumblebee stung the wrist of her aching arm.
“My bursitis eased up and then stopped hurting,” she wrote.
The next morning, her arm was blistered. But that got better. And the bursitis never came back.
* Slice stat: People who affect zany voices or attempt to do accents while talking on the phone believe they are hilarious. But in all but 3 percent of such instances, they are wrong.
* Today’s Slice question: Who owns the least upscale lake place in the entire Inland Northwest?