The Slice They’ll Do Just Fine In Your Absence

Here’s The Slice’s four-step “How to Take a Vacation” clinic.

1. Don’t prepare a “While I’m away” memo longer than the Bible.

2. Don’t take work with you.

3. Don’t call the office.

4. Don’t think they can’t get along without you for a few days.

Sometimes people do the right thing: A 40-ish woman held her hand out, palm down, to a guy seated across the aisle on an STA bus. “Look what I got,” she said, trying to suppress her excitement in case he was blase about her modest engagement ring. But he wasn’t. He smiled sincerely and said all the appropriate things.

Watching that woman’s face go from tentative to unabashedly happy, it was clear that the guy on the bus had just given her a wedding present way better than a crock pot.

You can tell a 10-year-old boy to leave a wasp nest alone: But that doesn’t mean he will.

More of him to love: Spokane’s Howard Stien is understandably proud of having been married to wife Pat for 50 years. But that’s not his only source of pride. “I am also constrained to boast that I have restricted my weight gain for that period to a mere one pound per year,” he wrote.

Slice answers: It would appear that not many Slice readers are fans of the singing group Hanson.

And most respondents did not agree that Laura Ashley and Kathie Lee Gifford look alike. “Please don’t insult Laura,” wrote one reader.

Three issues you ought to care about more but don’t because all you ever do is watch “Seinfeld” reruns: 1. Water quality.

2. Mass transportation.

3. Space aliens masquerading as roofers in North Idaho.

The great dividers: Hiking, garlic, soap operas, Christian radio, speed limit zones posted at 20 mph, swimming pool water, Jewel, Mike Myers’ “Austin Powers” character, body piercing and the belief that sunglasses improve one’s personality.

Best golf scene in a movie: It’s Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald’s links outing in “Going My Way.”

Warm-up question: What Inland Northwest resident does the best impression of an unsuspecting swimmer being attacked under water by a gigantic, ravenous steelhead?

Today’s Slice question: In terms of sheer squirt-gun firepower, what is the Spokane area’s most heavily armed neighborhood?

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

MEMO: The Slice appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098. Intentional brush-back pitches in Wiffle ball never fail to crack us up.