The Slice: Peoria still plays in a league of its own

A reader who keeps seeing online product testimonials from Spokane residents wonders if this city has usurped her Illinois hometown’s right to bask in the middlebrow glory of “Will it play in Peoria?”

Probably not. I suspect a fair number of those localized Internet testimonials are fakes. And, as test markets go, Peoria has more diverse demographics than Spokane.

Ten things Judy Boone can see from her third-floor office in the Sirti building on the Riverpoint campus: 1. Geese flying by at eye level. 2. The bell swinging in St. Al’s steeple. 3. Pedestrians reflecting the seasons on the Don Kardong bridge. 4. Eagles. 5. Osprey. 6. Herons. 7. Ducks. 8. Swallows. 9. Finches. 10. Kids jumping into the river.

Wrong number that turned out all right: “When living in Cody, Wyo., I called my son in Kellogg, Idaho,” wrote Lu Mattmueller of Nine Mile Falls.

His next-door neighbor answered.

“I asked what she was doing answering my son’s phone. She told me she was at her own home. I had transposed the last two digits of the number and that was the difference between the two. She called my son over to her house and we had a nice chat.”

For the record: A caller leaving a message Friday labeled me a hypocrite for running that critique of my new mug shot. At the end of that item, I admitted that the woman in question didn’t leave her name or phone number. So printing her comments was, in fact, a violation of Slice policy.

Of course, the guy who called to beat me up about that didn’t leave his name or number either. So I suppose this item also breaks my rule.

Today’s Slice question: Who around here has turned eating at one’s desk into an art form?