Kadin

We have plenty of snow, and you're welcome to come get a few truckloads. Denver, where I live, normally gets its snow in a series of 3-6 inch storms that melt away within two or three days. We've had major storms every week for the last month, and the south metro area has had 56 cumulative inches of snow in the last three weeks. We got another inch this morning, and the forecast calls for another 6-8 inches by Monday, which will be well over six feet of snow in a month! :wacko: It also very seldom drops below 0 degrees F here, but as I write this, its 1 degree F, with a brisk north wind behind it. It's gonna be cold this weekend. I need a job somewhere further south! Kadin

Linzi; First off, let me say that I greatly respect what you've done here. Very few people are willing take in teenage boys, let alone a gay teenage boy. I've been looking into doing something similar here, and lets just say that I've learned it's more just a little difficult. As far as suggestions go, I don't have a book for you, but since you obviously have internet access, I strongly recommend you put your young man in touch with the young folks over at The Mailcrew. There he'll find young men like himself with a positive outlook on being gay, and young people will often respond better to a group of their peers, as we all know. Your foster son couldn't find a better bunch to learn from. Check it out at: http://www.themailcrew.com Kadin

Landofthefey.com...I love it and it ties in nicely with your stories. Rick

I used IE6 for years, and still keep it current, but for most day to day stuff, I use Firefox 2.0. One caveat, though, FF has stability issues with Yahoo mail...for whatever reason, even when using an IE tab in Firefox, the program will terminate unexpectedly. This could have something to do with Yahoo optimizing their stuff for IE7... Rick

It is a good read...check it out when you have a chance. Rick

Colin; Thanks for finding the article from Ellen Goodman, you're right, its a great read. Still, we're a long way from seeing this kind of story in the Salt Lake Tribune, Dallas Morning news, or Denver Post. There was an interesting article in Time magazine not to long ago that drew a similar distinction between true practicing Christians and what the article referred to as "Christianism". While not exactly the same subject, there are some interesting parallels. If you're interested, here's the article. Link to Time.com My Problem with Christianism A believer spells out the difference between faith and a political agenda By ANDREW SULLIVAN Posted Sunday, May 7, 2006 Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the religious right? I know the feeling. When the discourse about faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion has been taken away from them. The number of Christians misrepresented by the Christian right is many. There are evangelical Protestants who believe strongly that Christianity should not get too close to the corrupting allure of government power. There are lay Catholics who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues like contraception, gay rights, women's equality and a multi-faith society. There are very orthodox believers who nonetheless respect the freedom and conscience of others as part of their core understanding of what being a Christian is. They have no problem living next to an atheist or a gay couple or a single mother or people whose views on the meaning of life are utterly alien to them--and respecting their neighbors' choices. That doesn't threaten their faith. Sometimes the contrast helps them understand their own faith better. And there are those who simply believe that, by definition, God is unknowable to our limited, fallible human minds and souls. If God is ultimately unknowable, then how can we be so certain of what God's real position is on, say, the fate of Terri Schiavo? Or the morality of contraception? Or the role of women? Or the love of a gay couple? Also, faith for many of us is interwoven with doubt, a doubt that can strengthen faith and give it perspective and shadow. That doubt means having great humility in the face of God and an enormous reluctance to impose one's beliefs, through civil law, on anyone else. I would say a clear majority of Christians in the U.S. fall into one or many of those camps. Yet the term "people of faith" has been co-opted almost entirely in our discourse by those who see Christianity as compatible with only one political party, the Republicans, and believe that their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone. "Sides are being chosen," Tom DeLay recently told his supporters, "and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will." So Christ is a conservative Republican? Rush Limbaugh recently called the Democrats the "party of death" because of many Democrats' view that some moral decisions, like the choice to have a first-trimester abortion, should be left to the individual, not the cops. Ann Coulter, with her usual subtlety, simply calls her political opponents "godless," the title of her new book. And the largely nonreligious media have taken the bait. The "Christian" vote has become shorthand in journalism for the Republican base. What to do about it? The worst response, I think, would be to construct something called the religious left. Many of us who are Christians and not supportive of the religious right are not on the left either. In fact, we are opposed to any politicization of the Gospels by any party, Democratic or Republican, by partisan black churches or partisan white ones. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus insisted. What part of that do we not understand? So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike. That's what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn't. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It's time the quiet majority of believers took it back. Visit Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish, at time.com

Okay, here's one of my favorite comfort foods: Rick's Chicken Enchilada's Grill and shred two large chicken breasts. Put a splash of olive oil in the bottom of a heated saucepan, and add a teaspoon(ish) of minced garlic. I like garlic.....sue me. Cook to heat, but do NOT allow the garlic to burn, add the chicken. Add 1/3 of a large jar of Pace Picante Sauce (I use hot, adjust to your own tastes). Add sliced Jalape