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The Slice: Seasons change with hint of regret

Mike Almond reflected on his audit of the season.

“The older I get the more September reminds me that another summer is past and asks: ‘Did you wring every last bit of enjoyment, every piece of goodness out of it you could?’

“Even after a quite full and satisfying summer like this one, I am afraid my answer always comes up on the ‘No’ side.”

Mistakes were made: “My camping dream was to crawl into a cozy sleeping bag on a weeklong camping trip in the Colorado Rockies,” wrote Nancy Betts of Spokane Valley. “My dear husband was so busy checking to see if I had packed enough goodies that he forgot to pack our sleeping bags and mattresses. Instead I was provided with a dusty, stiff tarp, a shedding Labrador retriever and a very sorry husband.”

Today’s piece of study-habits advice: “First, don’t procrastinate,” wrote Mike Altman, a Slice reader who said he speaks from experience.

Bed city: Slice reader Jean Kindem has a theory about why Spokane is sometimes viewed as a rather sleepy burg. “There are more places to buy a mattress than there are fast-food restaurants.”

Charlotte Thacker wonders: How many others have mistaken their recycling bins for their lawn waste bins?

“I’ve done it three times, and each time I made the error the debris I dumped into the recycling bin was not a nice tidy branch or two from a shrub but a huge mountain of dusty swept-up pine and fir needles from the driveway. Three times my neighbors have been treated to seeing me dump a full load of the mish-mash onto my driveway, pick out the recycling items for return to their bin, then load the yard waste into its bin.”

Slice answer: In the matter of the question — How many times did you get sent to the principal’s office? — Alan Howard had his own query.

“Did you mean in one day or for the whole year? Seems I almost lived there.”

Today’s Slice question: Who around here has watched the highest percentage of “Saturday Night Live” installments since the series began in the fall of 1975?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Kevin Decker, Paul Lewis, Elaine Gotfredson and Douglas Sather were among those in attendance at that NFL preseason game in Spokane back in 1974.

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