Check Out These Speculations

• Pinochet is dead. Good riddance to bad rubbish. He brought terrorism to my hometown in 1976 with the assassination of Orlando Letelier and his aide by a car bomb in downtown D.C.
  
  
• Big Box Stores scare me. I accompanied my Dad to Costco yesterday to pick up a new microwave and assorted other household items. I hadn't been in one of those kinds of stores in several years. Wow. Scary. Too many people. Too many juxtaposed items (meat not more than thirty feet away from garden hoses). Just too much. Call me old fashioned, but I'll gladly go to the grocery store, the hardware store, and the liquor store separately.
  
  
• Baking is upon us in earnest. This weekend, Sweetie mixed together about 5 batches of cookie dough which is now chilling nicely in the fridge. I experimented with my Mom's cranberry cake recipe by baking it in smaller sizes. After two batches, we figured out how to make "mini-cakes" successfully. Look for these in a holiday gift basket near you.