A xeroxed, undated notice was included with today's mail:
Dear Postal Customer:
Mail for delivery to your mail carrier route was stolen today
from the mail delivery vehicle used by your mail carrier while
the carrier was away from the vehicle. We do not know if there
was mail for you in the delivery vehicle. Usually, thieves take
only letter-sized mail and leave the magazine-sized mail.
The target of most of these attacks is federal checks. Most of
these attacks are by people sent by a Los Angeles area gang to
the San Jose area just to steal mail.
Weird. And bummer - I'm still expecting one tax refund check (from
California). My AT&T Universal Card bill just came, so they didn't intercept that,
thankfully. I sometimes worry about my numbers being compromised - my last job I
worked with a lady whose Social Security number had been stolen - an alternate
ID had been constructed around it and she was caused untold amounts of grief
because of this "action at a distance". I don't have a personal paper-shredder,
but it seems like a good idea - sometimes I get neurotic and do the same thing,
tear up discarded documentation which shows credit card & account numbers. And
I tie up the handles of the plastic shopping bags I use for garbage, in an
attempt at thwarting dumpster divers.
I'm eating delicious home-made snicker doodle cookies. This seems to be a somewhat well-known
cookie; I never saw them in DC supermarkets but I'd get them in LA, so I was looking forward to
having ready snicker-doodle access moving back to California, but they seem unknown in NoCal
grocery stores, at least the ones around me. So I got this recipe `off the Internet':
Sift together:
2 ¾ cup flour
2 teaspoons cream of tarter
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
...and set aside.
Combine:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter/margarine
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
...beat until creamy. Add dry ingredients, mix thoroughly, chill 2 hours.
Roll teaspoons of dough in mixture of 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 teaspoon
cinnamon <1>.
Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 400° for
8 to 10 minutes (but my oven burned these, I recommend 375°)
The recipe is attributed to being one of Senator Dale
Bumpers (D-Arkansas) favorites. So maybe these cookies
are a Southern thing?