I Know Jack

We have a new radio station in the Houston area, called JACK-FM. Instead of being an all-80s or all-90s, or all-anything, their theme is they play whatever the hell they feel like. Duran Duran one minute, Black-Eyed Peas the next. Disco followed by hip hop followed by prog-rock or AOR. It’s pretty cool.

Have you ever made bread in a bread maker without putting the little stirring gizmo in the bottom? It hadn’t, until today. I didn’t notice the little do-hickey wasn’t there. Just put in all the ingredients and turned it on. No stirrer means no “kneading” of the bread. It also means that the yeast sits on top of everything else, so it doesn’t rise. In fact, it means that only the bottom inch or so cooks and the rest of it just remains powder. Not a pretty sight. The biggest problem is that I don’t know where the little gadget went, so I might be screwed as far as this machine is concerned. It’s produced many-a fine loaf of bread—but not today. And I was already savoring homemade bread with butter and molasses. C’est dommage.

I finished up the newest short story I’ve been working on and sent it off to see if it’ll find a home. I originally wrote it for an anthology that offered approx. 2 cents a word, but I wasn’t terribly impressed by what I saw of their web site, so I decided to try elsewhere first. The market I sent it to today pays over triple that, anyway. I also received a rejection letter by e-mail for another story, so now I have two lying fallow. Gotta get them back out the door again.

I watched the special features disk from Lost Season 3, as well as the bonus disk from Wal-Mart. The standard disk has over a dozen Easter Eggs, and I found one on the Wal-Mart disk, too. Lots of cool behind-the-scenes stuff, as well as a few deleted scenes that explain some mysteries, like why Kate was all scuffed up after her breakfast with Ben early in Season 3.