"It means that your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is, whatever you make it. So make it a good one, both of you. "

Have you all been able to guess what movies all my blog titles are from? I know some of you have... it's kinda fun looking through my lists trying to find the one to match my blog.

Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR!! What? That was 3 weeks ago? Really? Well damn...


So, not much has been happening here in ol' Vermont. The New Year was nice. I got to go to what is called "First Night Burlington" an all day affair that features performances by different acting groups and galleries open by different artists. There was a Chinese New Year parade with dragons and everything (missed that one sadly) and fireworks over the lake at midnight. I'm uploading my pictures now, and will hopefully get those up tomorrow. Just need to do some tweaking here and there.

All the snow is gone, but more is on the way. Of course, just when I buy some snowshoes and make a plan on going snowshoeing every weekend to get some exercise, all the snow melts. It is nice however to be able to see to get out of my driveway again. The snow had been piled up so high that I had to sit halfway back in the driveway just to see the on coming traffic.

Some new and exciting things are getting ready to start for me at work. In conjunction with my starting up the new mentoring program with the Baird school, I am going to start working on developing a training manual for mentors with teens. Traditionally, we don't match kids once they are over the age of 13. The teenage kids are hard to match and even harder to get them to commit to doing something with their mentors once every week.

We have been getting calls from some of our mentors however who's buddies have now matured into the teen segment of the population worried because their mentee has been blowing them off to go places with friends and what not. So, I started looking through our database trying to see how many of our matches are now teenagers. I discovered that 50% are, and there are quite a few more who are on the cusp of it.

So, this week, I'm going to be starting work researching training for mentors with teens and using my contacts at Spectrum (another mentoring agency that deals only with teens) to try and develop a training that will work within our agency. It should be challenging, but fun and I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into it.

In other news, I started reading a very good book entitled "Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" It is very entertaining. I don't believe it has any biblical significance at all, though it is apparent that the author, Christopher Moore, has extensive knowledge of the Bible itself. You have to be able to open your mind and not take anything literally, or else it'll just piss you off. But if you can look at it as a piece of fiction, and take things with a grain of salt, I would highly recommend it.

Just to give you an idea, here's an excerpt from the Prologue:
"Why now after so long, the four Gospels have been fine so far, and why him (speaking of biff)?"
"Because it's some kind of anniversary in dirt-dweller time of the Son's birth, and he feels it's time the whole story is told."
Raziel hung his head. "I'd better pack."
"Gift of tongues," Stephan reminded.
"Of course, so I can take crap in a thousand languages."
"Go get the good news, Raziel. Bring me back some chocolate."
"Chocolate?"
"It's a dirt-dweller snack. You'll like it. Satan invented it."
"Devil's food?"
"You can only eat so much white cake, my friend."