My goodness, the Rams did a lot of unspeakable things to the Broncos on Jesus’ birthday.
Seemed unchristian.
Today I opened my Evergy bill and there was a dead squirrel inside.
Here’s a name that’s a blast from the past for our longtime readers. You may remember our reporter Kim Fickett (was actually Kim Tiefenthaler–her maiden name–when she started with us) from the early to mid 2000s. Kim had a couple stints with us here, like from 2001-03-ish and then she came back in late 2004 to replace Mark Vasto (uh oh, another blast from the past) when Vasto left here to start burning bridges in Parkville.
Anyway, since leaving the KC area Kim has had a nice career working for newspapers in her home state of Iowa, left for a bit to work for a chamber of commerce, ended the foo-foo-ness of working for a chamber after a very short stint and went back to the newspaper, and now has left the newspaper biz for television. She works (not on camera) as news director for KTIV-TV in Sioux City, Ia.
In her early days with us, during some inter-office banter I referred to Kim as Kimmie. She quickly took offense and told me to never call her Kimmie. So from that day forward I always called her Kimmie. Cuz that’s how we roll. This office isn’t for the overly sensitive. You can’t choose your own nickname. That’s life. I don’t make the rules.
The good news is Kim eventually not only accepted being called Kimmie she actually embraced it.
To mix it up, I’d sometimes refer to her as Lil’ Kim, a nod to the female rapper by that name. And when I was feeling confident in my game and fairly certain I wouldn’t get slapped, I’d call her Lil’ Kimmie Fickett.
The day applicant Kim Tiefenthaler Fickett first stepped into The Landmark for a job interview? It was Sept. 11, 2001.
Read that date again. There was a lot of stuff going on that day.
Lil’ Kimmie Fickett and her husband Terry still drop in on us at The Landmark on their occasional visits back to the KC area.
Another former Landmark reporter, the talented Stacy Wiedmaier, dropped in when she was back this way around Thanksgiving. Stacy, who was a freshly-trained Park University journalism student when she was cranking out the news for us 15 years ago, is married and living in California, where she works in public relations for a non-profit.
Speaking of blasts from the past, our Rambling Moron Chris Kamler will return next week to his normal spot on page 3. He has been sitting on the sideline for the past several weeks handling some personal stuff and is now ready to jump back in the game. Is he ever. I’ve already seen his column for next week. Trust me, you won’t want to miss it. It’s an LOL’er, in particular if you’re into power outages and stuff.
By the way, I’ve been fortunate enough to get my hands on several copies of Kamler’s latest book, entitled My Best 10%. In it you’ll learn about his rise as a Twitter superstar in KC and how he got his start here at your Landmark. I don’t know how much these books are going for on Amazon but I’m selling some on the black market for just $8 apiece. Come at me if interested. You can grab a copy at The Landmark office, 252 Main Street in downtown Platte City.
Big shout out and major thank you to our buddy Brad Carl for filling in at Kamler’s spot on page 3 in recent weeks. Brad, I think, is ready to go back to being the first guy off the bench. He will be writing an upcoming music feature for us on country artist Mark Wills.
Mail delivery in Parkville zip code 64152 still sucks and I don’t think anybody is surprised to hear this. I also don’t think community leaders at Parkville still pretend everything is fine. I mean you can only say “there’s nothing to see here” so many times when everybody else is seeing that there is, in fact, something to see here.
One Landmark reader told me this about mail delivery in 64152 in an email sent on Christmas Day:
“So far in December, in 25 days they have not delivered mail on 10 days out of the 21 delivery days. They have missed all three Mondays.”
Keep in mind the writer is emphasizing that delivery of all mail is a problem. Not just delivery of newspapers.
As far as newspaper delivery (and it’s all newspapers affected, not just The Landmark), the Nov. 30 Landmark arrived Dec.7, the Dec. 7 Landmark arrived Dec. 13, the Dec. 14 had not arrived as of Dec. 25, but the Dec. 21 Landmark arrived Dec. 23, “which is amazing.”
It’s college bowl season so some degenerates are reading this looking for betting tips. You know who you are, don’t make me name names. Play these with confidence and thank me later.
*Take the over 68.5 in KU vs. Arkansas
*Take Florida State -9.5 vs. Oklahoma
*Take Washington +3.5 vs. Texas
*Take Kansas State +6.5 vs. Alabama.
(Drink a 29-degree beer responsibly on New Year’s and email ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)