all the little fire setters

i like my job. i mean i really realy do. the down side is the pittance i receive for what i do, and believe it or not i do a lot. my favorite part about my job is the FYRE program. that's Fire Youth Resource Exchange and i get to work with kids who engage in fire play. it's very interesting and i enjoy those kids a lot. tonight i had to go to a fire chief's meeting and speak to all the chiefs in chemung county (and one from tompkins). not surprisingly they were all men, all pretty big guys and most of them were older. i handed out my stats and my graphs that i worked so hard to put together and the brochures and the referral forms. i explained that while the numbers have gone down we need to have the fire departments on board with the program, to help connect us with the families who would benefit from the program. it seemed to me that there wasn't a lot of people in that room who thought the program doesn't do any good. and that's ok but i need them to buy in to the program if we're going to get them to make the referrals. but mike smith was really backing me and trying to get the word across that the program is making progress from where it was before i took it over and that was good. caroline wasn't even introduced, mike only intro'd me to the chiefs and caroline didn't even really utter a word, i mean she didn't really need to be there, but i think it was important to know that i didn't goof anything up or say something i shouldn't have. i tried hard not to offend anyone, but i think i pissed off WEFD a little bit...but they used to run the program and i think that makes them a little pissy about the program anyway. but i hope that some of the guys took something away from what i said. at least caroline said i did a good job presenting the information. that's gotta be a good thing right?