Reflection: State Boards

Writing articles that require me to spend a lot of time on state licensing boards... Occasionally, I laugh out loud. And it isn't just when one declares that candidates must meet the following "eight (9)" standards. State boards seem to have their own character; some become characters in my mind. One will give detailed instructions about the documentation that a person must send to prove a name change; another will treat the process much more cavalierly. One included, in the frequently asked question section, things like, "You mean you're evaluating the ability of my state to..." (I gather that out-of-state applicants were not always happy campers.)

Ah, but the state of Indiana has managed to come across as chipper and cheery. I see that they write 'copy':

The Behavioral Health and Humans Services Licensing Board is excited to offer this new testing opportunity to all future mental health counselors in the State of Indiana and as always, “we work to keep you working.”

Home again... and home again. I went to Arizona to, among other things, cultivate relationships with the little girls before they stop being little girls.

Two red-haired girls. Their mother, my sister-in-law, has honey colored hair, a mixture of blonde, brown, and red, though I don't think she was ever a true redhead. In our family... well, I know there was a great aunt on my mother's side who had red hair; I believe there was also a redhead in that generation on my father's side. I was the only redhead for two generations.

The elder one... Well, I knew I wasn't overstaying my welcome in her eyes. She was glad to have an someone to play with, read her chapter book, direct activities. The little one... well, maybe she'll like me when she gets older. A year and a half ago, she buried her face in her father's chest when she saw me; this time, she buried her face in his chest. In the interim, she learned to speak complete sentences intelligibly, but she hasn't yet reached the stage of abstract thought...or of doing a lot of focused activity. For her, familiar faces are the best ones. And Daddy knows best.

Reflection: Flexibility Revisited

I am revisiting once more the concept of flexibility: How is it that I appear unusually flexible -- indeed hyperflexible -- to friends, yet never scored well on test of flexibility? I was sub-par throughout all my years of P. E., and was, in fact, the worst person in my class in gymnastics activities, performing like a person with joint limitations. (Flexibility wasn't the main reason I was eventually placed in adaptive P.E., but let's just say it wasn't helping.)

Sometimes it takes years to define the perimeters of something; some crucial detail eludes me. Here goes: Tests of flexibility are generally done with the legs straight/ extended. It appears that, for me, though, the ability to bend at the waist depends, to an unusual degree, on also having bent legs. In P.E., students are asked to sit with their legs extended and then touch their toes. The act of sitting with my legs extended is in itself uncomfortable; my range of motion in this position is pretty limited. But if I bend my legs deeply -- sitting on my feet, say, or sitting in yogi position -- then everything changes. I can not only bend my body flat against the ground, but I'm so comfortable I could sleep that way. (Sometimes I do.)

Pictures taken here and there, across my life, are suggestive of loose joints. If you look at the picture in With Legs Crossed, you'll see a small child with some unusual posture. In that pose, it almost looks like my legs detached. Either that or they were pretty durn short... which they weren't. I doubt I could do a toe touch, though, even then. By the time I started school, at any rate, that task was way out of reach.

Once again, I've got to get on my soapbox and say that it's not just about physical capacity. If we look at how a person acts in one context, striking as it may be, we can get into some trouble generalizing or making predictions about how they'll perform in other contexts.

Reflection: Those (Very) Protective Anti-Virus Programs

September 18 was the day Toto's free trial of McAfee ran out (or so it told me). It was hard to use the little netbook in the days leading up to September 18 as McAfee kept flashing dire warnings. I felt I had things under control, but the security program knew how to tug at my heart strings.

On the evening of the 17th, I looked up security programs, some free, some in the neighborhood of $30 to $40. It seemed like the free version of AVG did less than it used to -- understandable, I suppose, in a freemium world. Still, the free program would stave off crisis. Windows gave us a firewall, and AVG would at least momentarily give us our anti-virus; later I could decide if I wanted to purchase something additional for Toto and Snookums.

Now here is where things got curious: AVG proceeded to download more than it indicated it would -- or so it seems. (It wouldn't want to see anything happen on its shift.) Also, it is the 20th now, and McAfee is hanging around longer than indicated. It appears it is thoughtfully giving me a grace period. (Will it win my heart yet?) It put up an icon that we were in a state of alert (no protection? low protection?) But when I plugged my camera in, it warned me that there was this device connected... and did I want it to scan the thing? Perhaps McAfee has downgraded itself, but it has not left. I picture it like the Cheshire cat -- some part remaining.

Choices, choices... I guess most security program companies offer some sort of free download that's separate from their trial. Some offer more, some less. McAfee has a curious program that will let you know whether the security program you currently have installed (whatever it might be) is behaving properly. It will tell you things like, "CA Security reports that things are peachy keen. But if you want even more protection, you can upgrade to McAfee TOTAL Protection now." Snookums-the-Netbook has one of those programs. So far I have not felt the need to get Toto one.

photo: pittaya

Happy 2nd Birthday

I missed this baby's second birthday earlier this month. The blog, not the little one in the picture who has long since grown.

Ah, there have been overextended days: writing 1,500 words of paid articles, a day, working elsewhere... It's lighter now. It can be hard, when I haven't blogged in a while to decide what's that one worthy thing that I most want to put up. I frequently have my 'evening nigh reflections' and yet there are times when it is difficult to post. There's something about critical mass. f I post regularly, I don't have this "It needs to be something momentous feeling". But the most important motivator, for me, is the sense of being read. Blog posts can be siphoned off into emails...

But: Moving into this third year with ENR, I have, for the first time, a little digital camera. That makes online writing easier. A couple thousand words a day is feeling less intimidating. Snookums has an external keyboard and needs to be plugged in, but Toto is on the go. There's still a lot of writing to do... too much at times. But this blog is still my baby... grown now to toddlerhood.

Reflections: Beautiful Minds

Beautiful minds? you're thinking. But that's a pair of... feet. Yes, and those are confident feet, many would say. (I'll tie this together in a moment.)

I'm still doing readings each week on a Blog Talk Radio show, and an interesting theme came up this week. I don't really like the term, erotic capital, but the concept makes sense. There are a mixture of traits that together go a long way to creating interpersonal attractiveness. The host brought up something interesting: He said it really came down to confidence. I would surely agree that the purely physical was only a small part of this nebulous thing, that the charisma and mystique were created more by the things a person did: how they dressed and otherwise 'put themselves together', how they carried themselves, how they interacted. I would surely agree that those things are often associated with confidence. But it doesn't mean they equal confidence.

I'm thinking back to the movie "A Beautiful Mind" which I saw nearly a decade ago. That woman... oh, she had that nebulous thing. The way she blazed into his office -- the fictionalized John Nash's -- when he was an up and coming professor. At first, I didn't like that woman; she seemed shallow. But, oh, did I like her as the movie progressed. I talked on and on about her that evening: the woman who dug both feet into ground when things went crazy.

Is there a biological reason for people for people to be attracted to confidence? I daresay there is. What about associating that blaze with standing one's ground? Ah, perhaps there is. The problem is that a lot of the things on the it list -- the erotic capital list -- have as much to do with polytropism as they do with confidence.