(Before you ask, no acro tomorrow. Acrobasket has informed me he does not work on July 4th, Christmas, or his birthday.)

Picture Sunday

Hello out there, all you holiday weekenders. Welcome to another installment of Picture Sunday.

And may I just say we have an assortment of lovely pictures for you this week.

As you all know by now, I almost died this past week (three times), and the podmobile is lingering between life, death, and being traded off because I'll never feel safe in him again. And while I'm in the process of finding out which of those three he shall be, I'm in the Temporary Podmobile. I've actually driven him surprising little, which is a shame, really, seeing as how I have unlimited mileage. I should just get in that sucker and take off for parts unknown. Anyway, there he sits, taking it easy in the driveway. In fact, I caught him there this way.

I don't know. Truth be told, that looks more like a lady podmobile substitute than a man, but what do I know about sexing a car?

What else has been up? Well, for those of you who have it, I'm sure you know BBCAmerica's showing a Monty Python marathon. Now, this is going to be hard for me to say. Because BBCAmerica may well be the favorite channel I get, and God knows how I love the Pythons. But they're starting to make me - yes - a little sick of that show. They show it all the fuckin' time! 4 and 5 episodes at a time, a marathon every few weekends. I love the stuff, but give us a break! Spread it out, make us appreciate it a little more!

Anyway, Mr M was down yesterday, and we were watching, and so of course he asked me if I'd put on the closed-captioning. As you know, I've had some fun encounters in the world of closed-captioning. But yesterday's may have been the most fun yet.

See, when the titles came up for every Python, a caption would tell us that [Sousa's "LibertyBell March" is playing]. Then at the end of the titles we'd get [Music ends with a raspberry], or [Music ends with a squawk], and once I even saw [Music ends with a rude noise]. But on a few rare and golden occasions (two to be exact - one yesterday and one today), we'd get this.

Can they do that? Well, I guess they did.

Both yesterday and today I got to have a little quality time in the pool. I hadn't mentioned it before, but I'm back on the swimming treadmill, if in fact there is such a thing. I'm currently at 45 laps and hoping to increase, of course.

But what's the good of having access to a pool if you can't have a little relaxing fun there? Well, that question was not mine actually, it was posed to me by someone very special, who sees a swimming pool as an opportunity for fun and not work.

Don't worry. He's wearing spf 250. He also did a little relaxing by the pool as well, since my swimming created some waves and he was under strict orders from Mr You-Know-Who not to get his clarinet wet.

Finally, it's recipe du jour time. And this one comes from the "weight control" file, and why not, if I was served soup that looked liked Rachael Ray's garbage bowl, I could probably keep my weight down too. Look out below, it's Cioppino!

It's just like the soup version of paella! All those shells and bones and shit floating around in there. I don't care what it tastes like, it looks like garbage. Get it out of my sight! Well, no, bring it back here and at least let me have the broth, because the serving suggestions are a relish bowl and ginger pears. Guess who's going to bed hungry tonight....

Happy week.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* In an effort to raise the level of sophistication around here, and to keep Mr Peanut off the booze, Peabody has started a reading club amongst the characters in my house. He and Peanut are reading "War and Peace," Sherman's reading "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Huckleberry Hound and good luck baby Lily are reading "Dick and Jane at the Seashore," and Gossamer ate a magazine.
* I've watched two - count them, I know you won't - movies in one week that had the same song as the opening credits song. That would be "So I Married An Axe Murderer" and "Fever Pitch." The song would be "There She Goes," originally by The Las.