Last night I bought a bottle of Smoking Loon pinot grigio, a bar of raspberry Perugina chocolate and a bar of bittersweet Toblerone at the Safeway on Sterling Boulevard. I made it to my destination only to discover that my chocolate was not in my bag. I called the number listed on my receipt. The customer service man told me to just bring in the receipt and they would take care of it. I asked when the store closed and the man said midnight.

At 11:00 PM I started heading home with a planned pitstop at Safeway to recover my abandoned chocolate babies. The short drive to Safeway was punctuated by frequent police sirens, horns, lights. I turned into the parking lot and was abruptly stopped by the wall of "police line do not cross" tape covering the parking lot and the cops everywhere.

If you're reading this and you're in Sterling, go cause mayhem because nobody will catch you - the entire police department is at the Safeway. I'm getting the feeling that I'm really not supposed to have this chocolate.

Maybe somebody's holding my chocolate hostage! Maybe this is the result of the cashier paying more attention to her cell phone than to the transaction and she was actually busy coordinating a chocolate hostage heist instead of ringing me up!