Monday Melting Pot

In a previous post, when I talked about Tim O’Brien’s book, I told you I was reading two short story collections and had planned to write about the second one today. Alas, I haven’t finished reading it yet, so I’ll just catch up on a few other bloggery things.

From the results of my last poll, it appears that most of you don’t really care to read samples of writers’ work when you visit their blogs. In light of that, I should be thankful I got even a handful of comments when I’ve shared a flash or poem in the past. I haven’t figured out what you do prefer to read—maybe another poll is in order. If I possessed that particular golden ticket, and my blog readership skyrocketed, I could brag about my “platform” in my agent query letter. How soon do you think I could increase my daily post hits to at least a thousand? 😉

I’m sure you all remember the momentous day I blogged about bacon presses, so I thought I should update you. I did buy the one pictured, and as you can see, it works perfectly to keep the bacon flat. The bacon cooks evenly, but it also cooks faster, so I’ve had to watch the timing. What is it about bacon that people love so much? Within my circle, there is only one carnivore who doesn’t like it, but then she doesn’t like any pork product.

Because I’m a research addict, I went online to further my bacon knowledge. What we in the USA call bacon, is not necessarily what the citizens of other countries know as bacon. Americans refer to fried, smoked pork belly when they speak of bacon. Non-Americans may call that “streaky bacon” because their preferred bacon is leaner, cut from the sides and back of the pig—although there’s also “fatback” cut from the back, which is almost pure fat. What we Americans call “Canadian bacon” is back bacon. I also discovered that what I grew up calling jowl bacon, was not jowl at all, but just belly bacon with the rind left on. For the record, my favorite bacon is applewood smoked. And now I really, really, really want a BLT.

If you’ve been keeping track of my Creativity Workshop progress, you may have wondered why there was no update posted yesterday. Well, the simple answer is there wasn’t any progress to report. My goal last week was to write a short story, one of four connected by place, but I only managed to write maybe half a story. I know the rest of the story, so I’ll get it written eventually. I also failed to do Merrilee’s writing exercise, in fact, I forgot she posted an exercise. But I’m giving myself a pass because this was a busy week, with the end-of-school awards and a high-school graduation.

That’s not to say I did no writing this week. I wrote three little poems; it seems all I have to do is be quiet in the morning, especially on the way home after driving my husband to work. I also finished my final polish and format clean-up of my novel. This time I know I’ve done all I can do because I’m down to deleting and inserting commas.

Okay, that’s that. Thanks to all who participated in my weekend discussion on publishing options. Today, I hope to finally get my new dishwasher installed, and then I will—once again—ignore the crabgrass that is taking over my flowerbeds because it’s supposed to be 100° F here today and I truly, totally cannot stand to sweat.

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