When last we left Dave Dorris, the rather successful Twin City lawyer, he had just won a $67 million jury verdict in an Indianapolis personal injury case, hailed as the largest compensatory award in the history of Indiana. | Read more Flick

Dorris is back in Illinois these days and frankly settling for much less cash.

Like, only $22.5 million.

He won that the other day in a Chicago courtroom, in the defense of the family of a highway construction worker who was killed when a truck veered off a Chicago expressway and plowed into him.

A quiet yet highly colorful sort, Dorris thus becomes only the second lawyer in Illinois history to have won two jury verdicts of $20 million or more in personal injury cases.

Still ahead: picking up that check for $22,500,000.

Or, as Dorris puts it: "I won't forget the day I went to get the ($67 million) check in Indy. It was taking them a while to cut the check and finally they said to me, 'Uh, we're having problems with our check-writing machine. It isn't able to type out that many zeroes."

It was then the always-thinking Dorris offered a savvy suggestion.

"Uh, perhaps you can just hand-write it," he offered.

He then walked on to the bank to make his $67 million deposit. Lawyers generally get a third of a settlement.

Today's deep thought

As mulled by Rob Lee, of Danvers:

"If neighbors Plano and Sandwich, Ill., along U.S. 34 continue to grow and become a twin city, will it become just a Plano-Sandwich?"

Innovative Christmas Present No. 198: Now that smokers have been banished to simply freezing to death outdoors, we might have found (via spoonsisters.com) the perfect gift for that human chimney on your Christmas list - a pair of smoking mittens, complete with a handy hole for your cigarette.

They are flame-resistant, too!

Fishing for votes: Princess Nudelman the Second did not vote in a north Bloomington precinct on Election Day, just as expected.

Sadly, well, umm …

Princess Nudelman the Second?

A former roommate of Stephanie Nudelman, an Illinois Wesleyan University sophomore, she became national news last month when a letter personally addressed to her from a group called Women's Voices Women Vote strongly urged her "to register to vote" so she could "play a part in voting history."

Princess certainly would have done that.

She is, after all, a goldfish.

Heartily amused, the Nudelmans went to the media with the "Vote-Now" letter addressed to Stephanie's pet fish and the story got picked up by the Associated Press, then also The New York Times and NPR, Time magazine, The Drudge Report, The Huffington Report and FOXNews. Even Saturday Night Live weighed in during an election special on "Weekend Update."

Princess Nudelman?

Sadly, we must report now that not only is she a goldfish but she is also dead.

The Nudelmans?

They assume their dearly departed goldfish's name landed on potential voting lists because they had put a second phone line under their pet's name.

History repeats: It was, of course, the Indians who new Illinois settlers rather unceremoniously kicked off their own land centuries ago so that the Indians had to live out of the shadows, continually on the run from the white man.

It is happening today, too.

Reappearing late Saturday afternoon in a "backlot" appearance in Urbana, after the University of Illinois football game against Ohio State?

It will be Chief Illiniwek.

Students have rented out the Assembly Hall for $10,000 so the Chief can reappear.

You'll recall, like his predecessors three centuries before, the Chief was kicked off his own land just last year.

Only roaches stayed there recently: And finally … quietly now gone from the downtown Bloomington landscape, after such a storied life that even Nancy Reagan once stayed there:

The Coachman Hotel.

May it rest in piece.

Contact Bill Flick at flick@pantagraph.com. The Flick Blog: www.pantagraph.com/blogs.