KILGOROUND
BILL WOODALL

YOU READ that right...

WHEN you report for duty on Monday postage for a first class letter will be 39 cents, up from 37. And postage on postcards — does anyone still use postcards for personal correspondence anymore? — will be up also.

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IT’S NOT free, but $45 strikes us as a reasonable fee to find out whether or not you’re at risk for a stroke.

LIFELINE Screening, a Dallas company, will be at East Texas Treatment Center (that’s right around the corner on Dudley Road) to screen your carotid artery for plaque buildup. They’ll also check abdominal aorta and peripheral arteries for an additional fee.

ALL of the above happens on Thursday, Jan. 19 but you have to register in advance by calling 1-800-324-1851.

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BILL Mishkind, who describes himself as “an educated guy,” says if you’re medicare-eligible and you haven’t started researching the new medicare prescription plans, you’d best get started.

MISHKIND says he spent hours and hours studying just the 40-some plans available in Gregg County.

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THE TECHIES among us — a group which includes neither this writer or our e-mailless friend Winston Gardner — will be pleased to know that the new word “podcast” has been deemed the most useful new word of 2005. A podcast, for those still clinging to their AM radio and cassette tape player, is a digital feed with audio or video files for downloading to an MP3 player.

FUNNY new words — born of visual distress — include “whaletail” to describe the appearance of your daughter’s thong above the waist of her low-cut pants, and “muffin top” to describe that horrible roll of bulging flesh hanging over the top of her hip-or-lower-hugging jeans.

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THIS writer recalls sitting in a college classroom in the fall of 1972 and reading a very short news story about a handfull of schmucks being arrested for breaking into the Democratic party offices in the Watergate building in D.C. Our recollection is that several of us wondered if it would amount to anything.

THE whole business about lobbyist/fraud man Jack Abramoff and his contributions to politicians of both parties, dredged up Watergate memories. It’ll be fun – or at least interesting – to see whose political careers get hammered in the Abramoff scandals.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY (Sunday) today to Jo Mitchell, Debbie Carter, Mike Blankenburg, Annie Lou Ballard, Larry Dorsey, John Taliaferro, Ann Carroll, Bo Heisel, Elizabeth Painter, Justin Blanks, Jim Cleary, Mary M. Osborne, Tammy Turner, Ricky Jordan, Carey Walker, Marilyn Squier, Vickie Haynes, Cody Wayne Crutcher. CELEBRATING anniversaries Sunday are Ed and Pat Ebel, Mr. and Mrs. James E. Robinson, Robert and Edith Blankenship.

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AND HAPPY birthday Monday ave Bagay, Roger Adams, Brenda Hodges, Dan Connelly, Neta Harvey, Patricia Neal, Rev. Eddie George Ferguson, Roger Brigmon Jr., Dee Dee Thomason, Florence Bowlin, Myrtle Smith, Virginia Howell, Wanda Edney, Scott Stallard, Mike Lewis, Quinda Rentz, Katharine Grace Sweet, Brent Jackson.

CELEBRATING anniversaries Monday are Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Palmer.