the unlikely orange

  we are in the middle of yet another series at our church ( catawissa avenue umc ) about hope.  hope has been our major theme over the last two years, as we have come to see that our vision is to be a people of hope, sharing the hope of Christ with our neighbors .  and since we see it as our calling to have hope be the defining characteristic of our church's personality, we continue to grow in understanding of what it means to be full of hope.  yesterday in worship we talked about the power of hope to help us persevere through the difficult seasons in our lives.  there are a variety of ways that hope can do this, but we talked about two ways in particular: history and energy.  first, history .  our hope is not just wishful thinking.  it isn't just a vague belief that "everything will work out alright in the end because that's how all my favorite movies end."  no, hope is based on something.  ultimately, as Christ-followers, our ...

maximus drake milinovich february 27, 2001 - november 20, 2012 well, as some of you already know from facebook, we lost our beloved dog to cancer yesterday.  as i wrote in his birthday post earlier this year, his health was obviously declining over the last year, but he still had a good quality of life until these last few days when we were forced to make that terrible decision about what to do for him.  it was possibly the hardest thing i had to do in my life, as i held his 65-pound frame in my arms and whispered into his ear as his life slipped away.  what did i whisper?  some things i won't tell you.  but i can tell you that i told him how proud we are of him.  how he was the best dog imaginable.  i told him some of the things i will miss about him, like his insanely loud snoring, and the smell of his paws and the velvet-soft texture of his ears.  i told him he was our first child, and he was an amazing big brother.  i told ...

it isn't easy, being green.  apparently, it isn't easy being red, either.  at least not for sox.  that was a brutal 17-inning loss last night suffered by the red pox at the hands of the orioles who handed them a three-game sweep in fenway.  yikes.  that was wicked bad.  not that the yankees are playing that much better.  they just split a series with the royals.  that's like tying a three toed sloth in a foot race.  if not for derek jeter, who leads the league in hits and is supposedly not good enough to be a major league shortstop anymore, the yankees would be neck and neck with the red pox, which would be like tying a cadaver in a foot race.  so, at least there's that.  as i type this, the news is vomiting its political news all over my living room.  as i can already smell the stomach-turning mess, i simply want to say that i'm not looking forward to the political stench of the next few months.  blech. on a ha...

these are some pictures i took of our beautiful bulldog max in some bright morning sunlight, which his eyes had not yet adjusted to.  i liked the way they turned out.  these mondays with max are particularly important to me right now because it seems that max's health is declining.  not sure how long we'll have him around, so we are cherishing our moments with him. 

okay, so i'm a day behind.  i realize that.  i really do.  today is tuesday, not monday.  but since i spent most of monday and sunday fighting with a leaking toilet, i am a bit behind this week.  i want to write about the epic battle greg vs. the toilet, but i will resist the temptation to vent right now and will instead wait until the episode is finally over, so you can get the whole story.  in the meantime, enjoy this tuesday edition of 'mondays with max," again doing what he does best: sleeping. 

a new feature here at agent orange records: mondays with max.  given that our dog is older than betty white, we've decided to show our appreciation of this lazy life by sharing a max picture each monday.  basically, it will be a series of pictures of him sleeping, since that's mostly what he does.  but hey, maybe we should just let sleeping dogs lie, right?  and be featured on my blog.  here he is hugging bert, who looks terrified, if you ask me. but i guess you would be too, if you were a diminutive muppet with OCD and a paperclip collection and you were being strangled by a admittedly cute but full-sized bulldog with titanicly bad breath.  still, so cute, right?