The Slice: Time to share your pet peeves

This is National Pet Peeve Week.

I’ll start. What’s with people who keep walking right in the middle of the sidewalk even when someone is coming toward them?

OK, it’s your turn.

Slice answer (recipe goof): “Years ago, my daughter and family were visiting and I suggested vanilla milkshakes,” wrote Carol Siegenthaler.

Everyone thought it was a great idea.

“This was before I wore glasses,” she noted.

But she already needed them.

In reaching for the vanilla extract to add to the ice cream in the blender, she instead grabbed a bottle of liquid smoke.

Her daughter was the first try one of the resulting shakes. “She came up sputtering and spitting,” said Siegenthaler.

The incident became a family legend.

Misspeaking: Kelsie Crossman’s grandfather was discussing the many uses for celluloid but kept saying “cellulite.”

Slice answer (unusual college pairings): “I graduated with a B.A. from EWU,” wrote Steven Stuart. “My wife graduated with a master’s from the University of Kharkov in Ukraine.”

Speaking of college: “Several years ago, I was taking a class and trying to keep the Huns, Goths, et cetera, straight and so took a look at some web sites,” wrote Loyce Lewis. “As a U of Idaho near-graduate, I had to check out the Vandals. One of the sites called them ‘A tribe of no redeeming value.’ Could this be the problem? Still, I can’t see the Idaho Visigoths as doing any better.”

Probably not. But it might be fun to hear the play-by-play man sigh and say, “It’s another punting situation for the ‘Goths.”

Men’s Journal magazine describes Sandpoint: “Funky.”

Still more Slice answers: In the matter of absurd disagreements, Judy McKeehan said that, years ago, she and husband Mike would argue about how they would spend the money if they won the lottery.

And on the subject of reality for Spokane couples, Sondra Curtis, who wasn’t complaining, wrote, “If it weren’t for doctor appointments, we’d have no social life at all.”

Counting counties: Spokane’s Larry and Karen Parker reported that, in 43 years of traveling together, they have visited all 39 counties in Washington and all 44 in Idaho.

And Colfax’s Jeff Pratt said he has been in every Washington county except San Juan. But he intends to make it there. “My taxes go to paying for the ferry system, so I might as well, at least once, get my money’s worth.”

Adrian Holm’s first food after a medically- ordered fast: “A Whammy at Dick’s. That was the best burger.”

Today’s Slice question (prompted by a preschool boy in a Halloween vampire cape at a grocery store last weekend): What’s something unusual you let your kid wear out in public mostly because you were too tired to fight about it?