PAgent’s Progress

Culture Club - Time (Clock Of The Heart)

Oooh - note the appearance of a ‘keytar’.


Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time

Styx - Too Much Time On My Hands (Live)

REO Speedwagon - Time For Me To Fly (Live)

go to Fodey for your own animated Ninja text.

Okay, I’ve ridden home in the pouring rain twice now, and I have to say, I don’t like it.

I’m not a big fan of riding when it’s cold. But I have a whole new perspective now on cold and dry, versus cold and wet. My glasses get covered with rain droplets, and they fog up. As my socks get soaked, my toes get cold. Puddles obscure the potholes in the bike lane, and the whole bike jars when I hit one. It’s just thoroughly miserable. By the time I get home, I’m chilled

The last time I visited my General Practitioner, and I explained that I was riding my bike a lot more for exercise, he said “What are you going to do when it starts raining?” I’ve got rain gear, I said. I put fenders on my bike. I’ll keep riding.

He just looked at me. “Get a gym membership.” he said. “So you keep exercising over the winter.”

Please, just let me get through September, and we’ll see how it goes.

***

The girl continues to be … better. Lately, though, she really seems to be pushing her luck with some particular behaviors. If you tell her to do something, she’ll argue with you. If you tell her to do it NOW, she’ll dawdle. She’ll ask one of us, while we’re fixing dinner, if we can order in Thai food, and when she is told ‘no’, she’ll stomp off and pout.

It’s beginning to drive me crazy.

Several times her behavior has been outrageous enough that either the wife or have checked to verify that she has taken her pill for that day. And she has.

This has worried me a bit. It seems like the girl is acting out in ways that we had hoped her medication would help mediate. Are we losing ground? Is she accommodating to the meds? But when I actually mentioned my concerns to the wife, she quickly gave me a reality check. It seems that the mothers of the other girls that are pushing 11 years old are seeing the the same kinds of behavior.

This isn’t something that we can deal with through either therapy or medication. This is the looming foreshadow of having a teenager in the house.

I’m afraid.

I realize that my ramblings on this site tend to gravitate toward geek humor, eating, and the travails of parenting.

Well, I’m going to make a conscious effort to change that. From now on, you can come to PAgent’s Progress for some real culture. For sophisticated entertainment. The kind of thing you can tell your English teacher about, and she won’t just groan and pop another Prozac.

To show you how serious I am about this, let me start off with this excerpt from the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays — Hamlet:

our results:
You are James T. Kirk (Captain)

James T. Kirk (Captain)		85%
Jean-Luc Picard		65%
Deanna Troi		65%
Will Riker		60%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)		60%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)		60%
Geordi LaForge		55%
Spock		49%
Chekov		40%
Data		37%
Beverly Crusher		35%
Mr. Scott		35%
Worf		35%
Uhura		0%
Mr. Sulu		20%

You are often exaggerated and over-the-top in your speech and expressions. You are a romantic at heart and a natural leader.

Click here to take the “Which Star Trek character are you?” quiz…

No way I would have expected that result. Always thought I was more of a Scotty or Geordi.

Shamelessly horked from Miss Cellania

I thought this was a great video. The only problem was, I had no idea what song he was parodying. I actually had to do a Google search to find out.

PAgent is sadly out of touch with pop culture.

I got an email from my hosting service today.

Effective immediately, we have increased the disk space and bandwidth
quotas associated with all of our hosting plans. These changes have
already been applied to your account at no additional cost. Here’s
what has changed:

Tiny Squid

disk space: 150MB increased to 200MB
bandwidth: 8GB/month increased to 10GB/month

Basic Squid

disk space: 400MB increased to 500MB
bandwidth: 20GB/month increased to 30GB/month

Giant Squid

disk space: 800MB increased to 1000MB
bandwidth: 40GB/month increased to 50GB/month

Squid Forwarding

bandwidth: 15GB/month increased to 30GB/month

Here’s more info on our hosting plans:

http://laughingsquid.net/hosting.php

The timing on this is perfect, as even with the new and more robust hosting plan, at mid-September I had already blown through 84% of my bandwidth for the month. This may very well see me through to October.

And how cool is that? I once again congratulate myself for having Chosen Wisely.

My sister called me up this morning, and told me she felt like cooking something. She wanted to know if I wanted to cook something and have dinner together.

Silly question, really.

I made a list then ran off to the store for a couple of roasting chickens. After stuffing the cavities with about 50 (unpeeled) cloves of garlic each, I tied up the drumsticks and dusted them with an herb rub mixture. This is what they looked like:

Once the Traeger was preheated, I tossed them on the grill and cooked them at ~325 degrees for about 2 hours and 45 minutes, using pecan pellets. When they came off the grill, they looked like this:

I fished the roasted garlic out of the birds to squeeze onto bread, but it wasn’t quite soft enough to be spreadable. My sister brought over a huge pan of scalloped potatoes and ham, and some fresh sugar snap peas.

I made a tart to finish out the meal. It’s one of my favorites for summer get-togethers, and really shows off Oregon’s supply of delicious berries:

That’s a pastry crust, cooked, and filled with a mixture of mascarpone and heavy cream, whipped with a little sugar and a touch of vanilla extract. I tossed blackberries, raspberries and blueberries with a glaze made by reducing a little orange liquour and marmalade, then piled them on top of the mascarpone. This is one of the best recipes I have. It always turns out terrific. The glaze adds a touch of sweetness, but doesn’t cover up the fresh flavor of the berries at all. The mascarpone filling is heavenly and light. Usually you would also add sliced strawberries to the mixture, but my wife loathes them.

With the weather turning, and berries going out of season, I don’t know how many more meals like this I will be preparing. This one turned out well, though.

Funny stuff

Man, this is really late this week. Mea culpa.

Last Thursday, on my bike commute home, I got completely drenched by a torrential rainstorm. This spectacular little downpour was the first substantial rain of the season, and marks the end of the warm dry summer, and the beginning of the gray and rainy fall. So, the choice of themes for this week’s MVM was obvious.

Eurythmics - Here Comes The Rain Again

Phil Collins - I wish it would rain down

with Eric Clapton!


Prince - Purple Rain

The Who - Love Reign O’er Me

Oooh, ‘Blame it on the Rain’ by Milli Vanilli nearly made the cut. Maybe next time.