Bits’n’Pieces

Welcome back to Bits’n’Pieces, a weekly look at some of the interesting, funny, comical and sometimes outright weird things that happen in and around Montgomery County. Have something you think should go into Bits? E-mail it to us at [email protected], won’t you please?

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WELCOME BACK! It’s a new year and we’re glad to see you coming back to one of our favorite weekly columns (judging by the reader reaction)! We’re pleased and humbled to see you back here, and we’ll do our best to keep you entertained through 2022!

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WE LOST a great one when 99-year-old Betty White passed away on New Year’s Eve, just 17 days shy of her 100th birthday! Some folks are suggesting we honor her by sending $4 to our local animal shelter on her birthday. Makes sense to us!

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ONE OF our readers sent us the following tips. They made sense to us, so we’re passing along these simple home fixes: Avoid cutting yourself when slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold the vegetables while you chop; For a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives, then you’ll be afraid to cough; You need only two tools in life – WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn’t move and should, use the WD-40. If it shouldn’t move and does, use the duct tape; And lastly, if you can’t fix it with a hammer, you’ve got an electrical problem.

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YES, IT is true that our own Tim Timmons had a heart attack. It happened on Christmas Eve and we are pleased to report that Timmons tells us the outlook is good. He is going to have surgery soon and will be out of the loop for a bit. But we expect him back – and back to his old self – before Groundhog Day!

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ANYONE ELSE rooting against the Patriots and the Tampa Bay Bucs?

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DON’T FORGET that your favorite Montgomery County daily will be closed Monday, Jan. 17 in observance of Martin Luther King Day. We won’t be publishing that day either.

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SPEAKING OF 2022, this is the year that NASA says we are going to start seeing big steps in the goal of going back to the moon. For those of us who remember the days of Apollo (and Mercury and Gemini), this will be exciting! We can’t wait!

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AND WHILE on the subject of space, why are UFOs so much more in the news now?

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SPEAKING OF subscription rates, we are still holding off on our price increase for now. We’ll let you know as soon as we can when that might change.

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YES, WE ARE hammering on this, but we truly hope that you will patronize advertisers in The Paper. If it wasn’t for them, there would be no daily edition. In addition, we hope that you will choose to shop local whenever you can. Without local businesses, communities would look a lot different – and decidedly not better!

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ON THAT NOTE, please say thank you (and patronize) those businesses you see on our pages. Without their support, there would be no Paper of Montgomery County. We are here to serve you, thanks to them! If that doesn’t deserve a tip of the seed corn cap, we don’t know what does!

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HERE’S OUR first riddle of the new year: David’s parents have three children – Snap, Crackle and . . . what’s the name of the third child?

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ANOTHER knock-knock for you . . .

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Watts.

Watts who?

Watts for breakfast?

I don’t know, but be sure to have your tablet or phone handy so you can read the latest from the friendly folks at The Paper of Montgomery County!

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HERE’S AN interesting tidbit from one of our favorite publications (besides The Paper of Montgomery County, of course), the Farmer’s Almanac. If you see all pessimists as pessimists, then that makes you out to be a pessimist. We’re not sure we follow this one, but ok.

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CONTINUING our official countdown . . .

Groundhog Day – 28 days

First day of spring – 74 LONG days from now

First day of summer – 167 days

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THE ANSWER to our riddle: Did you say Pop? Nah! Remember, we asked about David’s parents. It’s David!