"My mind is a-glow with whirling transient nodes of thought, careening through a cosmic vapor of invention."

So, fall has come and gone here in New England, and there is now snow covering the very tops of the mountains. The colors were absolutely beautiful! Bright oranges, reds, and yellows
covered everything you saw. Driving to work or to trainings in Montpelier,
fog would hang think and heavy in the valleys. Everywhere you looked it looked like a postcard. I have discovered that it is very hard to take a bad picture here. Here are some of the pictures that I took this fall:

"Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week! No job is too big, no fee is too big!"

So, I'm trying to update here a little more often than once a month. I'm shooting for maybe 3 times.... we'll see how it goes :)

It strikes me that I have yet to really post anything about where I "serve" (we Americorps don't work we serve or so I've been told on several occasions), and what it is that I do there. I am serving at the HowardCenter. It is the largest mental health facility in Vermont. I'll give ya the webpage so that you can check it out yourself: howardcenter.org

I work (shhh, don't tell Americorps, but i just can't get used to saying "served") with a group called Community Friends Mentoring and we are a mentoring program (bet ya didn't see that coming didja?) here in Chittenden co. Right now, we have a little over 100 matches. Here's a little more info if you want it.

It is my job to plan and host events throughout the year for our matches. Like, right now I am in the middle of planning our big holiday party that will take place on the 1st of December. I also put together our monthly newsletter (if you want, you can download a copy off the website linked above). I also do a lot of office work like copying, filing, e-mailing, gossiping... well, you get the idea.

What my main job this year is getting our new mentoring program off the ground. We are trying to start a new school based mentoring program with the Baird school and HowardCenter employees. The Baird school is a small school for at risk kids located in our building. We have 3 groups waiting to get started, and I matched the first group today. It's really a good feeling to match a kid who really needs some extra attention to someone who will be there for them.

It really makes me think about the mentors I've had in my life and the impact that they made on me. I don't think I've told them enough just how much they mean to me and how much a difference they made. I've been thinking about that quite a lot lately. I think I'll try to sit down and write to them tomorrow. Let them know just how much I truly appreciate what they've done for me.

So, that's pretty much what I do right now. Exciting, and really fulfilling work. Just when I think it's getting tedious or boring and I'm really not enjoying it, something happens that makes it all worthwhile.

Like a few weeks ago. I had planned this even around Make-a-difference-day, which is a national day of service. We plan a service project and invite our mentors to participate in it with their buddies. Well, I had planned for us to cook a full dinner for the HowardCenters residential houses that are located out in front of our building. The residential houses are for kids who for one reason or another can not live at home. There are about 6 kids in a house and 3 adults, and it's hard for them to plan and cook dinner.

So, I planned to do this dinner for them, and we had 4 groups sign up to do it which was awesome, but then the day came and everyone but 1 mentor had backed out on me. I felt like such a failure. All the years before, they had had 4-5 groups show up to do this, and here everyone but this 1 girl had backed out on me.

Well, we cooked and made our lasagna, salad, garlic bread and cookies and delivered them to the houses, and I went home happy that we were able to provide the houses with a good decent dinner for one night, but bummed that no one had shown up to help.

Then the next day, Kristen, our groups fearless leader, drops a stack of cards on my desk. They are thank you cards from the kids in the houses. I had to leave and go down to the bathroom cause I got a little misty eyed (i don't think they bought the excuse that I had something in my eye).

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these guys are great! they are a group of high schoolers from barre. this is the new biggest thing in vermont. everyone's talking about them. take a look!

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

So, yeah... my plan to post here everyday, that went right out the window. I have been so busy here lately! 50 - 55 hour weeks are not uncommon. I pretty much go to work come home and go to bed, just to get up in the morning and repeat it all over again.

But, I have been exploring on weekends as much as possiable. The cool thing about Vermont is that there is always a festival or art show or something going on almost every weekend somewhere in the state. Like this weekend, I plan on going to the Tebit Festival in downtown Burlington.

I have so many pictures that I need to upload, I just don't have the time... but fall in New England is everything and more that they said it'd be. The colors were absolutely beautiful, and they seemed to just get prettier every week. However most of them are gone now, and I'm just witing for all this snow they keep talking about! Can't wait to see my first Vermont snowfall!

Just to let you in on some things I've learned sense I've been up here.

Things I learned on my drive up:

1) West Virgina likes orange barrels, but doesn't like to clean their bathrooms! (i swear, out of my whole trip, WV had the natiest bathrooms of all)

2) New Jersey smells funny

3) NEVER try to drive through NYC at night... actually, never try to drive through NYC at all

4) toll booths are the dumbest things ever (but really, you knew that right?)

Things I've learned about the north:

1) Northerners like the sountern accent. I keep getting people asking me to repeat what I've just said (either that, or they can't understand me... but I try to keep positive)

2) There are more dirt roads up here than I ever saw back home

3) People automatically assume that because you're from the south, you've never seen snow before... and are stupid about how to act when it gets cold.

And the last thing before I leave you for now, some sage advice from an anonymus person who hung this little note up in the women's restroom at work:

Things to be aware of when using this bathroom:

1) Don't poke your eye out on the purse hooks, which are right at eye level...especially in the smaller stall.

2) Thanks to our magnificant cleaning staff who do such a great job on the floors at night, one can be in one stall and see everytihng going on in the other just by looking at the floor.

3) Notice the humerous name or the company located on the door latch (of course I had to look, and must admit, it is a pretty creative name... hineyhiders :) )