The Slice: We’ve reached a tipping point against thieves

You know you’re a realist when you get up at 3:30 on Christmas morning to put out a tip for your S-R carrier, thereby reducing the window of opportunity for thieves.

•Slice answer: After falling hard about a year ago while scraping ice off her car, Kate Lucas vowed to spend at least part of the next winter away from snow and bitter cold. She decided 57 winters in Spokane was a streak that deserved to be broken.

So what happened?

“I kept my resolution,” she wrote in an e-mail from Istanbul, Turkey.

•Let’s remember: That while high mounds of snow can complicate roadway visibility, a lot of people were bad drivers even before that hazard arose.

•Respecting your elders: So it was Christmas morning at a Spokane retirement facility. One of the residents asked his teenage grandson what presents the boy had received.

At that point, the young man had a choice. He could have rattled off the meaningless name of a high-tech device and, in all likelihood, left his grandfather utterly confused. Or he could have done what he did.

He said, “I got a new music-player.”

Happy New Year, kid. You’re all right.

•Seasonal vocabulary: Nick Brommer refers to the untouched vehicles covered with puffy mounds of snow as “car-shmallows.”

Bob Ludka calls the act of digging through a berm at the end of your driveway “Brokeback-poutin’.”

•Speaking of driveway openings: Has the clearance gotten narrower as your enthusiasm for shoveling has waned?

•Slice answer: In the matter of starting cars on frigid mornings, Jim Clanton noted that newer vehicles have taken the drama out of this.

But once, it took a bit of right-foot finesse.

“Each car had its own unique ritual,” wrote Clanton. “Too few pumps and it wouldn’t catch, too many and it would flood.”

That wasn’t all. “There was always the lurking knowledge that you had to get the thing going before the battery pooped out.”

•Survey says: Voting in the latest battle-of-the-anchors was so light, I’m tossing the results.

•Feliz Navidad: One guy contributing to the S-R Christmas Fund specified that he didn’t want any portion of his gift going to “illegals.”

•Warm-up question: Do most of those who go to your church tend to view issues from a “management” point of view or do they have a “labor” perspective?

•Today’s Slice questions: Do you drive with your lights on during the day? Why? Why not?