Oh baby … what a wild winter

It will be several months before we get the final tally on last winter’s “stay indoors” implications for the local birth rate.

If you catch my drift.

But in your own surveys of young-adult women attending backyard cookouts, have you noticed a prevalence of pregnancy?

•Sunday quiz: This area once had a zoo that Parade magazine ranked among the 10 worst in the country.

You could argue that inclusion on such a list was unfair. And you might wonder what exactly Parade magazine would know about quality. But can you name that zoo?

I’ll send a coveted reporter’s notebook to at least one reader submitting the correct answer.

•Take a seat: Do people take it personally when passengers boarding a crowded STA bus choose not to sit next to them?

School teacher Connie Jensen admits that she does.

She acknowledges that she might still be suffering from a bad case of “last one to be picked for the team-itis” she contracted in middle school.

But when strangers “Choose to pass me by in favor of the emo-kid sitting behind me …”

Well, it makes her curious.

“Does anyone else wonder what’s so wrong with them that people will elect to stand rather than sit down next to them?”

•This date in Slice history (1995): Pam Galloway couldn’t understand why the announcers kept calling the Mariners’ pitcher Randy Johnson “The Big Eunuch.”

Actually, they were saying “Big Unit.”

•Slice answers: I received several heartfelt responses to the question asking which local boss has personally driven away from Spokane the greatest number of good people.

Some of these anonymity-requesting readers understood when I explained that I wouldn’t be printing a list of alleged executive bullies, and that this was really a “discuss among yourselves” question. Some didn’t.

•Warm-up question: In the course of a typical month, how often do you have the same thing for dinner?

•Today’s Slice question: Hayden Lake’s Sigrid Carlson mailed me a note last week. One of the postage stamps she used was an Expo ‘74 commemorative designed by pop art icon Peter Max.

As you can see, it’s quite colorful. According to something I read, it depicts a Cosmic Jumper leading future-minded visitors through a garden paradise.

Which is pretty far-out for Spokane.

How many people around here still have some of these world’s fair stamps?