the unlikely orange

i am so ready to get lost. with the stupid writer's strike, it seems like most of the tv has been lost. but tonight, it is back. as i write it is about 3.5 hours away. click here for lots of hoopla. otherwise tune in to abc at 8 for a refresher course in what has happened, and get ready for season 4. i hope its awesome.

as i begin to write this post this morning, i need to tell you that it is before 5 am and i have been up for awhile. i'm in the hotel corridor (again) at the computer station, and cade is sitting next to me in his car seat which is sitting on one of those wheeled racks that hotels use to move luggage. he is on that contraption because i used it to wheel him around the hotel several times as i tried to get him to fall asleep at about 4:15. i needed him to fall asleep at 4:15 because he woke up at 4:13 when i brought him through the cold morning into the hotel. i was bringing him through the cold morning into the hotel because we had just spent the previous 40 minutes driving through extremely rural pennsylvania (quarryville, anyone?). we were driving through extremely rural pennsylvania at 3 something in the morning because i couldn't take his screaming in the hotel room anymore. neither could shannon. neither could jackson. so now he is sleeping in the hallway. on a luggage rac...

hi friends. so i'm writing this morning from a quiet hotel hallway. it is 6:30 in the morning and they have computer stations around the building, so i thought i would take advantage of them and write a couple of lines. what is on my mind this morning is the very thing that we are both doing: reading and writing this blog. three of my fellow young clergy members from the conference (there aren't too many of us young ones!) addressed the whole group last night with a session on blogging. it was an interesting session for me since i am one of the very few (i think i saw two hands) who were already blogging. but as they spoke, one thing kept coming up over and over again: purpose. what is the purpose of my blog? i'm just not sure how to answer that right now. i guess it serves many purposes for me at this point. it is a place for reflection. it is a place for self-awareness. it is a place for helping people stay in contact with me and my family. it is a place for me...

so my parents came into town this weekend and we had the second half of jack's birthday party. shannon was not at all pleased with her first attempt at making a castle cake with dragon accessory, so she tried again. below you will see some pictures from jack's birthday, take two. marzipan dragon: three dollars and fifty nine cents. castle cake: ten dollars and 72 cents. castle cake equipped with fire breathing dragon: fourteen dollars and 31 cents. your son screaming during the singing of happy birthday because he just wants to play with his presents: priceless. aww, the joys of parenting. in all honesty, we must pause (as we should every incredible day) to recognize just how blessed we are. we are blessed with incredible family who will travel long distances to celebrate important days with us. we are blessed with family and friends who love our children. we are blessed with two awesome sons who are discovering what it means to be alive in this crazy world every day....

last summer shannon and i had received a gift certificate to a place we had never heard of called the pluckemin inn. the gift card was for $350 and we couldn't imagine how we would spend that kind of money. well, as my mom and dad are in town which gave us free babysitting, we decided to finally use this gift card last night. it was a wonderful dinner. here's what we ate: shannon: firsts: hearts of palm, grapefruit, avocado, peanuts, mache & fresh coriander seconds: golden tilefish, shrimp dumplings, smoked hon-shimeji & citrus-celery nage thirds: corn-fed Angus strip steak, confit peanut potatoes & merlot reduction dessert: coconut & banana "mille-feuille" with peanut brittle dustMaldon salt and coconut espuma greg: firsts: Pluckemin Salad: Three Meadows Farm lettuces, seasonal garnishes & dressing seconds: herb crusted wild Alaskan salmon, coriander broth & maitake thirds: well, this one isn't on their online menu , so i can't m...

happy third birthday to jackson andrew milinovich!

"swamp" paper collage on heavy cardboard gregory a. milinovich i have been going through piles and piles of old collages the last few days. it seems i've made a couple hundred collages in the last eight years, and i never really kept track of them, so i've been trying to just get their information down so i at least know how many i have, etc. now that i've sold a few here and have had to say goodbye to them, i feel like i need this. in the process i have found many collages that i had forgotten about, some that i would be embarassed for anyone to see (i made that ?), and many that just sort of show how i've grown as an artist. you can bet that i will be sharing them here from time to time. the one above is one that uses color, line and pattern more than juxtaposition, and so is a bit of a departure for me. maybe that's why it sticks out a bit for me. i am drawn to it. ~ other random items for today: ~ -my parents come to visit tonight until sa...

it occurred to me yesterday that i never posted any pictures or blogged at all about our christmas. quite frankly, it is overwhelming to me when we have so many pictures and so many experiences in a short time, but now that we are nearly a month away (already!) from it, i thought i would share a few pictures. these pictures were taken early in the day on christmas eve by shannon on our front step. i love these pictures! we have several more, too. they just look so adorable to me in their little vests adn ties. christmas eve was a long day for us as our church has 4 christmas eve services! i was able to miss one of them to have a chance to be at home with my family as we did our own christmas traditions (like leaving noodles out for santa). the best parts of christmas eve for me were preaching to a packed house at the 7:00 service and getting to spend some time with my family at home. the worst part? losing my voice during the course of the 11:00 service (i didn't really ge...

'i don't understand. we have a day honoring martin luther king but he didn't even work here." -michael scott

our son is really into dragons right now. sometimes i'm afraid we are raising a little dungeons and dragons role playing child. but, it seems harmless enough for now, and we have enjoyed seeing how much he enjoys playing with dragons. above you will see that he and i built a lego castle so that his dragon could fly around it and breathe fire. friday is jack's birthday. he wanted a dragon theme. now, just like last year we are celebrating his birthday twice, on two consecutive weekends, due to family coming in. so we had birthday, part 1 on saturday, and you can see the fingerpaint dragon above that shannon and jack made together. if you look carefully at the terrifying fire being breathed from the dragon's mouth, you will see that it says cheerfully, "happy birthday, jackson." shannon decided to try and make him a castle cake, which turned out to be more difficult than she had imagined. but here it is above. the object protruding out of the top center o...

'diamond" paper collage and acrylic on book panel gregory a. milinovich here is a collage that i've had for sale over at art locals only since late december. as you may remember i contacted this online art gallery that shannon and i read about in our local paper. shannon encouraged me to try it, even though i thought that they would never like my collages (too simple and not artsy enough, i figured). but i did, and sure enough they liked them and i became one of the artists on the site. then, when i returned home from christmas vacation there was an email in my inbox saying i had sold 4 of my collages! what? sold? i still can't totally wrap my brain around this. since then i have sold three more. so in less than a month i have sold 7 of my collages. this is very strange to me. it is affirming to be sure. but it is also strange. so, if one of you is the buyer of my collages, thank you. thanks for taking an interest in my art. thanks for seeing something interesting a...

'create in me a clean heart, oh God...' -psalm 51:10 saturday morning i was at an event where a praise team was leading us in worship and one of the songs they were singing has these words: change my heart, o God make it ever true change my heart, o God may i be like you. it had never occurred to me before, and didn't that morning, either, until the third time through the song. "change my heart?" i thought to myself while singing the words. "o God!" my mind immediately thought of a man in my church who i will call jh. jh went into the hospital at the beginning of january for a double knee replacement surgery. everything seemed to go well with the surgery and when i went to the hospital to visit him the next day everything seemed to be great other than his blood pressure being a little low. a few days later he left the hospital and went to a rehab center to begin working with his new knees. but the next morning he had a heart attack and landed back i...

"things to remember" paper collage and acrylic on hardbook cover gregory a. milinovich here's a collage i made tonight. greg.

dear hollywood, i miss you. i miss our nights of laughter and situational comedy. i miss your drama. i miss the stories you used to tell me. i even miss the tension between us when you'd make me sit on the edge of my seat. darn it all, i miss you. it doesn't seem like you miss me so much, though. night after night i look for you but can only find old pictures of you re-running over and over. or something called reality tv. i keep hoping that you'll show up, especially at our old regular meeting time on thursday nights, but you're nowhere to be found. it saddens me that it seems you've forgotten me so quickly. i thought we had something special. but it occurs to me that maybe you haven't known me well enough. in fact, if you really knew me, maybe you'd be looking for me, too. i'm a writer. that is, i enjoy writing. i pretty much write for free (are you listening now?). and i even write weekly. with a deadline. sometimes i make people ...

yeah. so i'm sure many of you either watched the game on saturday night or at least heard the score. and i'm sure that as you've checked the blog over the last few days you've expected to read words of pain, but have found not even a mention of the crushing defeat. there's a reason for this: denial. i just turned off the tv saturday night and haven't really thought much about it sense. but in the back of my mind i've known that i'm going to need to do this. so here goes. this sucks. it really does. i mean, i know i'm not a player. i know that i don't go through the intensive off-season workout program. i know i'm not the one going to minicamp studying a playbook. i know i'm not the one sweating my very soul out at training camp in august, trying to earn a starting spot, a salary, another year. i know i'm not the one under tremendous pressure in the locker room as the entire team watches my performance week after week on fi...

so we watched the m. night shyamalan film 'signs' last night at our reel life: discussions on film and faith. while it could be argued that this movie is kind of corny, and there is no question that it is a direct homage to hitchcock and other sci-fi b-movies from days of yore, i love this movie. i love it in part because shyamalan really knows how to scare you by showing you just enough but not too much. no matter how many times i've seen this movie i am still a little nervous when morgan is standing in front of the coal chute, or when the kids are looking out the window during the brazilian birthday party. but i love this movie for more than its ability to thrill me. i love it, too, for its confounding ability to get people to really think about God's role in the world. it does a fantastic job of looking at the issue of coincidences versus an immanent God who is involved in even the most minute details of life. do things happen by random chance and luck, or are the co...

here are some of the things i got for christmas: its only a replica. but its awesome. if the steelers can win on saturday, i'll be wearing this quite a bit over the next few weeks. maybe these will make me work out. if the steelers DON'T win on saturday, at least i can relive 2005. oh yeah. ben hangs on the tree next year. to put your i.c. light on. because everyone needs steelers markers. this is a band t-shirt for the postal service. sweet band. cool shirt. this is for my collaging. not a stress kit. a distressing kit. paper for collage. for collage, and more collage, and more collage, and more collage, and even more collage. still a guilty pleasure. for the little magician in me. sweet sweet music. worship. done techno/trance style. this is worship for me, as well. just done with an acoustic guitar and a wise old voice. so i can listen to all my new music. and worship. so i can sip something warm and life-giving while worshipping to cash and sufjan. this is a book of post...