RedJen's Rearview Mirror

Claire found out that she passed her first set of Board exams! So she's half way through her graduate program and a quarter of the way through all her certification exams.

My nephew and his parents may be coming down to visit at the same time Rugrat and our parents come down later this month. It may turn into a full blown family affair.

If someone had told me before that a person could have so much adrenaline going through their system that they were drunk on it, I would have thought them delusional or a liar. I would have been dead wrong. I feel like I’ve been drinking for the last six hours straight, rather than that I had a daiquiri along with a steak dinner. I am now going to sleep before I fall over in a convincing impression of a sloppy drunk.

For the record, I talk much more than normal when I drink, but I really do love you ladies!

Graphically:

My Life Analysis:

Life: Your life rating is a score of the sum total of your life, and accounts for how satisfied, successful, balanced, capable, valuable, and happy you are. The quiz attempts to put a number on the summation of all of these things, based on your answers. Your life score is reasonably high. This means that you are on a good path. Continue doing what is working and set about to improve in areas which continue to lag. Do this starting today and you will begin to reap the benefits immediately.

Mind: Your mind rating is a score of your mind's clarity, ability, and health. Higher scores indicate an advancement in knowledge, clear and capable thinking, high mental health, and pure thought free of interference. Your mind score is within a healthy zone. This means you have achieved a level of mental balance and harmony consistent with living a healthy, happy life. Continue doing what works, and keep your focus. In our fast-paced world, mental clutter is all too common. Be vigilant in maintaining healthy mental function.

Body: Your body rating measures your body's health, fitness, and general wellness. A healthy body contributes to a happy life, however many of us are lacking in this area. You have a rather good body score, which is an indication that you take care of yourself. There is room for improvement, however. Please keep doing what works. Eat right, exercise, reduce your stress, treat any illness. Doing these things will help ensure your body will be in good working order for a long time to come.

Spirit: Your spirit rating seeks to capture in a number that elusive quality which is found in your faith, your attitude, and your philosophy on life. A higher score indicates a greater sense of inner peace and balance. Your spirit score is dramatic. Continue on your path, do not stray. Continue to reap the rewards which your spirituality brings forth.

Friends/Family: Your friends and family rating measures your relationships with those around you, and is based on how large, healthy, and dependable your social network is. Your friends and family score suffers, yet it does not need to be this way. Strengthen your social network by reaffirming old bonds. Seek out new friendships, and they will provide you the reward you need.

Love: Your love rating is a measure of your current romantic situation. Sharing your heart with another person is one of life's most glorious, terrifying, rewarding experiences. Your love score is very low, indicating trouble. There is love out there for you. Seek the advice of wise people on how to go about finding it. Do not lose hope.

Finance: Your finance rating is a score that rates your current financial health and stability. You have a rather good financial score, which is not all that common these days. Keep doing what works. Avoid common pitfalls and save for the future. You will be glad you did.

Your turn: Take the Rate My Life Quiz

After taking the Rate My Life Quiz, I was asked to consider another question. The question took me to a place well beyond what I expected from a simple internet quiz that I took as a lark. Then again, given that I have a lot of confidence in the concept of actions & consequences or cause & effect maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

My Quiz Results: From the Rate My Life Quiz

Their Request:
Your Spirit score is very high, much higher than the average. If you wouldn't mind, please take a little time to explain how you manage to succeed so well at this aspect of your life. Your words may be read by someone else who scored very low. Take a moment to give them some useful advice. Your thoughts are very much appreciated.

My Reply:
The universe is a very large place and the idea of where each of us fit can be overwhelming. To look at the universe and pinpoint the exact place where you belong is a nigh impossible task. Switch the question and turn in inward. If nothing else exists, what kind of person do I want to be? Do I want to be kind, fair, judging, thought provoking? When I am alone and no one is watching, who do I want to be? Taking away the external definitions and focusing on who you are to you is the first step of knowing where you belong in the world around you. Once you've reconciled who you are as an individual, you need to start looking at how the people and things around you affect you. Each has a positive, negative or neutral effect on you. The thing that makes it complicated is that each person in your life also has an effect on the other people in your life. Through you if through no other way, they are connected. Now you have to decide what stays and what goes. If a person has a slightly negative effect on you, but has a positive effect on others around you, to remove them from your sphere of influence may cause harm to the others, which would in turn cause greater harm to you than accepting their direct impact on you life.

The questions are not easy to ask or answer and when you get done, you have no room left to blame anyone else for any dissatisfaction you have with your internal person. But you will know who you are and what the world is to you. If you still want to find "your" place in the world, you are now looking for a very specific place rather than wandering aimlessly. When you examine a place as a possible "fit" you'll be able to look at the aspects of the place and know whether or not it is a match for you. Know yourself. Know your strengths and your weaknesses. When you can look honestly at who you are, you can approach the world around you to find the place where your strengths are needed, your weaknesses make you human and the community around you absorbs both your strengths and weaknesses. In your strength, you make the community stronger and in the strength of the community, your weaknesses are supported and your overall strength increased.

To be completely honest with ourselves is something that very few people can even imagine. Once there you have no excuses, but you also have no hidden crutches. The world is not going to suddenly shift where you find that do not know who you are, because you have defined yourself outside of your environment and have taken the power to shift your perception of who you are away from everything and everyone who is not you. There is internal strength in claiming this power to define you, but it comes with a price. At times the price is a gift and at others quite heavy. The price I have paid for this power is solitude. I cannot have shallow relations and pretend that they mean more than they do, because I can no longer lie to myself. Those relationships that I treasure have the power to bring me great joy and should they pass from this existence before me, I will feel great pain at the loss. For those are also the people who each hold a piece of what makes me human. They are my community and without them I am still me, but I am much less.

It takes more than a lab coat to be a medical doctor. Any screwball can claim to be an expert, but that doesn't make their claims true. If you choose to take quizes written by people you don't know, have never met AND have questionable credentials, then use the results as tools to make you laugh or reflect. Just don't accept the results blindly. Their is a place for blind faith, but the internet is NOT that place.

It was supposed to be published 4 years ago.

I ordered it 4 years and 8 months ago.

Today Amazon.com claims that it has shipped: A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R.R. Martin

On my way into work the other morning, I heard discussion on the radio of the unrest and riots happening in Paris. One of the speakers kept insisting that it was time for the government to step up and take the proper action to provide for their citizens and save their lives.

I expect to hear the announcement of France's unconditional surrender to the rioting teenagers at any time now.

For a government so steeped in far reaching colonization, they have yet to consider how each new culture colonized creates a change in the cultural identity of the French as a whole. They go into an area selling togetherness and the joy of being French, but after the sale if over, where does it leave the people?

All over the world, you can find people who embrace that their culture was changed with the addition of French colonization. French-Algerians and French-Canadians are only two examples. The French bring in culture in the form of education, art and government. They insist that to be French is to be the highest form of life. In many cases, after arranging for their continued consulting fee to be sent back to Paris, the French appoint someone to keep an eye on things and the rest go back to France, where they are hailed as heroic missionaries. They have brought culture to the savages. Not that the savages will ever fully understand the gift they have been given, for they are so new and it will take generations before the children will comprehend the true divinity of being French.

The French Constitution claims that all French are equal. This equality extends to all colors, religious creeds and place of birth. No one can deny that claim. It is in the practice of such a lofty ideal that problems begin to emerge.

When faced with challenges of discrimination (racial, sex, religious), the United States acted to measure and assess the problem in society as a whole. It may not have been fast and it surely wasn’t pretty, but it happened. Statistics are routinely gathered to help behaviorists to identify and predict areas of discontent. Armed with this knowledge, the non-discrimination laws can be enforced in an effort to prevent that type of activity from spreading.

To be being color-blind simply means that everyone deserves a chance to make their own first impression. It is the same manner of thinking that has prompted much of our judicial system to be run on the premises of “innocent until proven guilty”.

Justice is always pictured blind and holding a scale to weigh the evidence. She is not blind to the evidence, only to face of the accused person. Justice makes no assumptions based on appearance, any evidence pointing to physical appearance can be identified, but prior to that, the size, shape, color, dress, stature of the one accused has nothing to do with determining the outcome.

(Back to the original topic France)

The French government looks upon polls that include racial statistics as vulgar and refuse to do so. In fact to do such a survey would be something that only the dirty Americans would do. So the problem is locked in a closet and ignored. But the problems of racial unrest and feelings of being a second class citizen grow and flourish when ignored and kept away from the light. They grow stronger and larger until the day when not only do they break out from the closet, but start to break the society that ushered them into the closet to grow.

In Paris, the unrest has spilled into the streets and across 163 towns. Over 2,000 people have been arrested in less then 2 weeks as the police try to curb the violence. Knowing the ethnic breakdown of the groups of rioters could shed much light on what sparked off the violence. That type of information could help the French government rebuild relationships with its own people. I only hope that the idea of stooping to the level of dirty/vulgar Americans to find their answers does not cause them to choke on their baguettes.

If you don’t know who is hurting, how can to give them comfort? Until you know who has been injured and how it affects their lives, you cannot effectively treat the cause.

I’m sure some in the French government look upon the riots as the problem and they will look no further. But in truth the riots are just a symptom of a much larger problem that will not be fixed overnight. Societal discrimination and prejudice happen over generations of mistrust and miscommunication. The seeds for these riots have been growing in a dark closet for decades and now there is an arsenal of hate and distrust on both sides. If the world is lucky, France will find a way to expand the idea of who is truly French to include all their citizens, even if it means taking some guidance from the hard learned lessons of dirty Americans.

France now faces a war in which they cannot surrender. This war is in the social fabric that they have created. Without abandoning the je ne sais quoi that is at the core of Paris, the French will have to find a new way or their legacy of colonization will lead to their own exile.

How cute is this guy? I'm really looking forward to seeing him soon. Looking forward to seeing the rest of them too, but this one changes so much between vists that seeing him is an extra treat.

I woke of Saturday morning and with the thought to drastically alter my hair color. It wasn’t a case of going blonde or brunette either. I already had an appointment scheduled later that morning to have my hair cut and colored. The timing of my appointment was what made my color choice a bit different from normal. Saturday was the big Ohio State-Michigan game and it doesn’t get any bigger.

So what did I want to have done to my hair? I decided it should be Scarlet with wide chunky Grey highlights (stripes). I guess you can take the girl out of the Buckeye State, but you can’t take the Buckeye out of the girl…

Junior quarterback Troy Smith and senior center Nick
Mangold celebrate the final touchdown in Saturday's
25-21 win against Michigan. (Jill Bonnough)

May your day be filled with good food, fun and company!

Mom, Dad, Rugrat, brother, sister-in-law and nephew all made it safe and sound to Raleigh. Everyone has been tucked in for the night and settled down to sleep.

(For the record, I decided against the grey stripes, but it was a really close call.)