PAgent’s Progress

Under the heading “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry”:

Last December Vang Khang, his wife, and four of his six children were sleeping peacefully when intruders broke into their home. Fearing for the safety of his family, Khang grabbed his (legally owned) shotgun and fired at the home invaders while his kids huddled together. The response was a hail of gunfire, some rounds nearly hitting the family members.

But it wasn’t burglars, it was a Minneapolis SWAT team, acting on an informant’s tip and raiding the wrong house.

Okay, something went terribly wrong, but thank God no one was hurt. The city paid the Khangs $7,500 to repair the damage caused by the gunfire. One would assume that an apology and possibly further restitution and the circus would be over.

Nope. On Monday, Minneapolis Police chief Tim Dolan awarded all eight of the SWAT team members medals for “bravery in action under fire” during the incident.

Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I don’t think eight highly trained officers with automatic weapons attacking a terrified civilian armed with a shotgun constitutes “bravery under fire.”

Read the whole story at ABCNews

Oooh, if you liked Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog as much as I did, you will want to hie* yourself over to read the Captain Hammer comic posted at Dark Horse Comics:

Captain Hammer — Be Like Me


* hie (hÄ«) – To go quickly; hasten. From the Middle English hien, from Old English hÄ«gian, to strive, exert oneself.

I’m not super big on milestones, but I just wanted to recognize that it’s been exactly three years since I decided to get over my inherent insecurities and jump on the blogwagon.

My first post (back when I was on blogspot) was, not surprisingly, about some parenting challenges I was facing. Some things never change.

In any event, I’d like to thank all of you that stop by and read what I write, look at videos I’ve found, and click on the links I post. I hope you think it’s been worth your time.

And by “things”, I mean my body.

I understand that I was dealt a questionable genetic hand, what with the chronic hypertension, obesity, and high lipids, not to mention the almost certain development of Type II diabetes. But what really gets me depressed is when I start to catalog all the other ailments that now govern my life.

Falling arches – so I need to wear orthotics
Chronic TMJS – so I need to wear a splint 24/7
Advanced osteoarthritis – so my knees hurt all the time
Pituitary tumor – fortunately controlled through medication

And that’s not counting all the other miscellaneous health issues that seem to govern my days. For example, over the last several months I’ve had three periods of painful swelling on the sole of my right foot. Really painful. Like, can’t-touch-my-foot-to-the-floor painful. It’s always gone away, but it effectively cripples me for an entire day. So I brought it up next time I saw my primary care physician.
Read entire article.

The PAgent household is down one body this week. This afternoon I drove the Girl to a girl scout facility near Philomath and dropped her off for almost a week of horseback riding camp. It was a nice day for a drive, but that was still more driving than I like to do these days.

I haven’t been posting about the girl’s escapades lately, and that’s largely because her adventures have toned down quite a bit. We seem to have hit the “sweet spot” with her meds, and she has been keeping a lower profile.

Now, before all the anti-medication zealots pile on me with an assertion that we’ve simply “drugged her into compliance”, let me assure you that we’re still dealing with a metric ton of attitude. However, this attitude is pretty hard to pin on anything other than her being a 12-year-old girl. We’re thinking of putting her bedroom door back on again while she’s gone, but every time she gets her door back she invariably uses it to punctuate her irritation with us on her way to her bedroom. Frankly, our house isn’t well-built enough to withstand that kind of abuse on a regular basis.

The latest confrontation was just yesterday, when the kids had already watched TV all morning, and then watched me play a video game most of the afternoon. The Wife and I were leaving to run some errands, and she asked if she could watch some more TV. Over her shoulder as we left, the Wife told her “no”, in very clear terms.

Later, after we returned home, I went to turn the entertainment setup back on, and found it in a very different configuration than it had been left in. When pressed, her little brother spilled the beans. They had been watching TV.

When she was confronted, there was no regret, no apology, just pure anger. That at least hasn’t changed. There will be a consequence, not because she watched a little extra television, but because she deliberately did something she had very clearly been told not to. But let us compare that to slugging a boy at school, or shoplifting, or any of a dozen things she has done in the past, and it doesn’t seem so bad.

Nevertheless, the Girl exerts an almost overpowering effect on our household, and her absence will change the daily rhythms of our life. Her brother will wander aimlessly, looking for a diversion. In a few days he will forget that they usually fight like cats and dogs. Speaking of dogs, ours will be inconsolable until she returns.

But oh, it will be so much more quiet.

Here’s a beautifully animated short promo for the Beijing Olymipcs from the BBC. The imagery is from the classic Chinese folktale “The Monkey King” (aka “Journey to the West”).

Note how moves from various summer Olympic events are woven into the action. Very nice.

from Drawn!

Update: You can now see a high-quality version hosted by No Fat Clips! Awesome.