the unlikely orange

i'm sorry if you don't like sports posts, but THE YANKEES CLINCHED A PLAYOFF BERTH THIS WEEK, BABY! oh yeah, the yanks are in the second season for the 13th season in a row. i always say that your main goal during the regular season just has to be getting into the postseason anyway that you can, because anything can happen in those little 5 and 7 game series. usually, it isn't necessarily the better team that wins, but the hotter one. that being said, i feel good about the yankees because they are pretty hot right now. only 3 games of the regular season left. its october, baby! as homer says, "woo-hoo!" greg.

the tips of the tines of the fork gently scrape across the plate; its a kind of ringing scraping sound. the incessant and restless jaw, chewing and tearing the food, a rumbling and rather animal kind of noise. the internal hiccup of swallowing. the clang of the silverware on the table. the faint hum of the air conditioner in the background. the give and take of a rational, intelligent dialogue. these are all sounds that are associated with dinner. perhaps you know this, though. i forget that not everyone has a two-year old at home. but, you see, i do. i do have a two-year old at home. and i had also forgotten that these were noises associated with dinner. well, until this week. when we left central pa on saturday we left something behind, in the form of a small, independent, overly sensitive, and, above all, loud little human being named jack. we left him with his neenah, as he calls her, his pappy, and his aunt shay and uncle butter (don't ask. actually, do ask i...

i don't want september to pass by without acknowledging the passing of one of the great writers of our time. on september 6th, madeleine l'engle died at the age of 88. most of the world knows her as the author of the children's classic "A Wrinkle in Time," but many others know her as a woman who inspired them in their faith journey. l'engle wrote beautifully but honestly, gracefully pulling back the layers of pretense and facade that we so often live behind and, by exposing her true self, allowed us to see ourselves again in new ways. she reminded us that sometimes we need to just 'be.' she wrote beautiful poetry (which i have used in worship several times!). she was known for making fascinating connections between faith and science in a way and at a time that very few christians dared not. madeleine l'engle was known for all of this, and more. but, to me, she was even more. i referred to it in a post back in february, but if it were not ...

tgim. i love mondays. once again the steelers dominated an average team in the nfl, and continued their efforts to communicate to the nfl that they are indeed a force to be reckoned with. next week will bring ken whisenhunt's arizona cardinals to the table, which should be an interesting matchup, but it is clear that the steelers are one of the elite teams in the nfl, and are benefitting from a relatively easy start to their schedule. it is also clear that the rooneys knew what they were doing in hiring tomlin. and then we have the yankees, who are playing so well and have just about clinched a wild card berth, and are still very much in the running to steal the division from the idiot sox. there is only one more week of regular season baseball. its getting exciting! man i love mondays! greg.

even though it is my day off i am sitting in my office at the church. shannon needed some time without kids to get some of her graphic design work done (she does have her own business, after all, on paper designs ), so i took them here to my office. jack is watching madagascar on a portable dvd player (and by "watching" i mean that he is stomping around my office roaring into a styrofoam cup). cade is sleeping peacefully, ignoring the ferocious lion of a toddler on the other side of the door, and i am sitting at the computer. i thought i would throw a quick post up here since i'm going to be out of pocket for a couple of days. we are traveling to central pa for some family birthdays (neice and nephew), and i won't have access to a computer. so here is what is bouncing around my brain today: -the yankees are now only 1.5 games behind the red sox in the american least, with a magic number of 5 to win the wild card. the playoffs almost seem like a lock right now, and wi...

what do you think of my new profile pic?

this is my pillowcase. it is much whiter now than it was only a few weeks ago. but i am telling the end of the story already. let me go back a little... i am a very tidy person, for the most part. i feel quite strongly that everything should be put in its proper place, and should be neat and orderly. but not necessarily clean. some (annoying) people say that cleanliness is next to godliness, but i prefer to say that cleanliness is next to wastefulness. it wastes time. it wastes energy. it wastes water. it wastes space. and it wastes good ol' dead skin cells. seriously. i mean that. i, for one, like me. self-loathing has rarely been an issue for me, and that is more than simply psychological - it is downright physical: i like my smell. you know what i mean. each one of us has a smell - the combination of our cells falling off, our souls oozing through our own pores, and our very essence, our life-breath, filling the space around us. yes, we each have our smell, and ...