Picture Sunday

Hello, end of weekenders. Welcome to another world-weary round of Picture Sunday.

I'm not necessarily world-weary. But Picture Sunday is. And so I'm going to cut right to the chase here.

See, I like pleasing my tens of readers. And so I try my level best to get a Picture Sunday going if at all possible. But it's getting harder to do that, and frankly, I'm losing the will to try.

The reason for this is two-fold. The first has to do with Blogger, and how they've changed their picture uploading. Pictures must be uploaded as pictures, and can't be uploaded as files anymore. Therefore, to upload a picture, one must do just that, upload the picture, then drag it to the spot. Now, that doesn't necessarily sound like a major piece of work, but it ends up as such. It's actually taken me weeks to find the easiest solution to the new system, and that's to write my blog, in WordPad, just like I'm doing right this second, then insert five dashes where a picture will go. When the whole blog is completed, I transfer it to Blogger, then start uploading and dragging pictures. Upload a picture, drag it to its correct set of dashes, go to the end of those dashes, drag back to the beginning of them, place the picture, remove the dashes, and move the next paragraph underneath the picture, being sure to leave an extra space underneath to the typeset doesn't go all silly on me. After all the pictures are placed, I still have to go back to the top of the page, because every picture uploaded sets the title of the blog down a space.

I hate this. It makes me curse. Last week's Picture Sunday had two measly recipe pictures inserted, and it took me a solid hour to do it.

The second reason for my distaste of Picture Sunday is simply because, well, I'm running out of damn pictures! Unless there's some sort of special event, I usually come up empty at this time of the evening. I may love my camera, and be delighted I got it back after losing it, but that still doesn't mean I carry it around with me at all times snapping pictures of my life.

So for this reason, Picture Sunday as we know it is taking a little vacation. Now, don't start getting hinky. It's not disappearing. If I have pictures, I'll gladly put them up, dragging, dashes, and all. And more importantly, this is not the end of the recipe du jour. Now, to be honest, the recipe du jour is no walk in the park, either. Thinking up a recipe, making it, taking its picture, uploading, PhotoShopping it, going to Word to make it into a recipe card, printing that card out, cutting it to size, scanning it, and PhotoShopping it again. (Understand now why I end up bitchy on Sunday nights?) Anyway, I know you all like the recipe du jour, and to be honest, I like it too. I like the feeling I get when I've completed a recipe card that actually worked, and so for that reason I'm not so keen to nix it from my life as yet. Maybe in time we'll rename Picture Sunday to Recipe Sunday. Or Recipe Sunday With Pictures.

I kind of came to this decision when spending the weekend at Mr M's. Of course I had no pictures, and so I figured I needed to start by-God making some for tonight. Lucky he had that huge mallet lying around.

























Don't worry. I'd never hit Sherman with a mallet. However, I would hit someone else. In fact, with glee, and probably while whistling.

























Alice the kitty made mincemeat of my right hand this weekend. Then during the night, she started in on my naked foot without provocation. I have a gash. That cat loves my flesh more than a baby loves milk.

Anyway, when Picture Sunday has resorted to this kind of stuff, it's time to give it a rest. And so, that's what I'm doing. There might be a picture next week, there might not. Fiddle dee dee, what do we care - we're people of the world, right?

OK.

That said, let's get back to the recipe du jour, and Mr M. We were having dinner last night, and he made an announcement. He told me he thought he deserved a little recognition for being the one to push me towards making my own recipe cards after my originals ran out. And although I personally think that recognition should be in the form of a sock in the jaw (read above recipe card directions), I knew I couldn't do that right in the middle of the restaurant. So I thought the only fitting tribute was to turn him into his very own recipe card. So from the "In Appreciation" file in cardland, please say hello, if you dare, to the Mr M Salad.






















All you need for this is a salad, and a Mr M. The salad part's easy, I used the leftovers from my tuna salad platter at that same dinner. That would be, minus the tuna, I ate that, some shredded lettuce (wet, too), three tomato slices (at the hairline), cucumber slices (eyes), and a nice pear (nose). The Mr M, well, maybe he's available for hire. Just spread your salad ingredients over your Mr M, and you've got about as bitter a salad as they make. Blue cheese dressing optional.

Actually, watching him squirm under those cold, wet fruits and vegetables gave me a feeling of satisfaction way better than I'd have gotten socking him in the jaw. He was quite creeped out.

Happy week.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Still spreading the "My Name Is Earl" love. My movie list is suffering, but I'm one DVD away from having viewed the whole first season. Mr M swears it's filmed not with actors, but real people from B'field. No way. We don't have such culture.