The Slice: Maybe we’re pacing ourselves

Maybe you have noticed this.

Even though it’s clear that Spokane is changing, does it sometimes seem as if it isn’t? You know, because much of the rest of the country appears to be changing even faster.

Let’s move on.

Where you most recently experienced sticker shock: “At my attorney’s office,” wrote Curt Olsen.

Postcards to The Slice: Bill Tracy sent one from Texas. “The biggest difference is that Austin marmots are weird,” he wrote.

The picture on the card shows a pair of armadillos.

Saying “never again” re: camping: Several themes emerged when readers answered that question.

1. Some people prize easy access to a real bathroom, a full fridge and a warm bed.

2. Some people’s all-purpose take on flora and fauna is “Get it off me!”

3. And, to borrow Woody Allen’s line, some people are simply “two with nature.”

Today’s camping story: Spokane’s Petrelli family was headed home after visiting Disneyland in 1964.

They stopped to camp next to a river in northern California. The dad, Lou, needed to work on the ice-box drain in the trailer. So he handed 14-year-old daughter Sheri the block of ice and instructed her to place it somewhere cool.

Sheri, whose last name is now Miller, positioned it between a couple of rocks in a shallow part of the river.

As her sister, Lori Martinelli, tells it, the moving water quickly made it disappear. And when their dad was ready to put the ice back in the ice box, Sheri could only point to a wet spot in the river and say, “But it was right here.”

Freezer finds: About 10 years ago, Ken Stout and his wife, Kathy, dined in a seafood restaurant on the Oregon Coast. Ken ordered the Captain’s Stew. “Or something like that,” he said.

It included small squid. Ken plucked one out, put it in a plastic bag and stuck it in their trailer’s freezer for the trip back to Spokane. “It is still in our home freezer.”

Today’s Slice question: Who in the Inland Northwest holds the record for having said “Yes, but it’s a dry heat” the most times?