Rommel,
There is, of course, an extremely slight chance you may "brick" your phone during the upgrade process. If you are willing to accept that, then I would recommend building yourself a ROM using the WM6 kitchen. The ROM building process is very simple, and you can start off with a very basic ROM to get your feet wet. If you need to take your phone in for service, make sure you install the official Verizon ROM first. You can get it from here:
http://www.utstar.com/pcd/downloads/...0_WWE_Ship.exe
For your first ROM, try building it with the following apps:
Verizon Carrier Customizations
HTC Camera
Comm Manager (10 button)
dotFred Task Manager
Chess
Kevtris
Adobe Reader
iBliss PhonePad
HTC SmartDialing
PocketIRC
1Calc Lite
Advanced Configuration
SPB Mobile Shell (if you have the serial)
Inbox Menu Extensibility
M$ Voice Command
Esmertec Java
GSFinder+ (Dutty WM6 Explorer)
Flash Video Bundle
Sprint TV
PocketRAR
Windows Live Search
BL OSX Aqua Keyboard
Make sure you have the .net framework installed on your PC before you attempt to build a ROM. Try that out, and refer to the kitchen thread for specific questions relating to "how do I do this or that?"
Have fun cooking your first ROM!