the unlikely orange

this is cade's picture for halloween, or hollowin, as he calls it.  at least frankenstein and the angry pumpkin-head-man can agree on the spelling, and are very clear about what day it is.   in preparation, we were hollowin' out some pumpkins.  photographic evidence follows.   top row, left to right: jackson's nightmare before Christmas, caedmon's bat symbol, my steelers pumpkin. bottom row: quinton's (well, shannon's really) gotham city and here is shannon's scary scarecrow and a better picture of my steelers pumpkin. this is hollowin!!!

and so it comes to an end.  the baseball season, which began way back when the trees were sprouting buds, has finished, just as the leaves are letting go of their grip, the giants of san francisco have won in 7 games, and while i may not have been very invested in which team won, i was very invested in the fact that i won't have big league baseball for 5 months. it makes me very sad. except for one little thing: oh yes.  it is the week that the steelers prepare for their evil foes from baltimore, the oily crows. yes, they've already faced each other once this season.  and yes, that was a game i'd much  rather forget. but in all fairness, things have changed.  the steelers have shown themselves capable of being both dr. jekyll and  mr. hyde, sometimes in the same game, but are on a recent streak of winning two in a row in fairly dominant fashion, over two very good teams.  last week they put on an offensive clinic, which, while not susta...

-last week this creepy scene actually happened at our church.  our music director called me over, saying we had a problem at the church.  i walked up and saw the above scene: what appeared to be a tiny baby left on the doorstep at the church.  for the briefest of moments, there is this sense of overwhelming panic, that we are going to have to take care of a newborn human being.  it got me thinking a little about some of the situations we do get to deal with in the church, and how sometimes people bring the issues they don't want to deal with, and they "drop them off" at the church.  it's not always convenient, but we always try to do our best to help out however we can.  thankfully, this was just a plastic doll, and it disappeared a few days later, so i assume the child who left it was able to get it back. -here's another update on the ridiculous cuteness that comes out of quinton's mouth:      "be fries!" = surprise! clink this link ...

here we go indeed.  are you kidding me?  when i turn the tv on to watch a steelers game, i have no idea which team is going to show up.  will it be the one who lost to the tampa bay bucs?  or it will it be the one that put up a 51-spot on the colts yesterday, moving the ball through the air at will, and even put some pressure on the colts and their high-powered offense.  who is this team?   after the first game of the season, which ended up being a (just barely) win against the browns, i wrote about the jekyll and hyde nature of this team.  i  had no idea just how much that would come to be a theme, at least over this first half of the season.  but, if the steelers were able to win yesterday, and stack their first wins of the season, and maybe move towards some consistency, it was in large part due to the play of ben roethlisberger.    ben was hyped.  he had heard about the great andrew luck all week, and i think...

win, lose, win, lose, win, lose.  can you guess what comes next in the pattern? on monday night the steelers held off the equally desperate houston texans, using one of the most insane and exciting 3 minutes of football i've ever seen.  looking lackluster (and pretty much just plain awful) through most of the first half, things turned with a few minutes to go in the first half, with a field goal, a sack, a touchdown pass, and then two turnovers inside the 10 yard line, putting the steelers in goal-to-go situations, which they were able to capitalize on. part of that flurry included a crazy little gadget play in which ben tossed to antonio brown for an apparent reverse, only to have antonio reverse his field and throw left-handed to a crossing lance moore (it was a well-thrown accurate pass), while ben threw a block and j.j. watt tried to chase antonio down.  crazy play, but it gave the steelers a touchdown in the red zone, which has been a rarity, so i liked the...

we had the fun opportunity to attend a family art project at our local ymca arts center, here in sunbury.  the project was for the whole family to do individual self-portraits as if your face was a pumpkin.  it was neat to see how the kids interpreted this, and what kinds of things came out of it.  here you can see a couple shots of us at work: the final project was done on small rectangles of wood, strung together vertically to make a fall decoration for our home.  we had a blast doing this, and here, then, is the milinovich (pumpkin) family: pumpkin quin pumpkin cade pumpkin jack pumpkin shannon pumpkin greg

do you see how bad that ink is?  i could draw a better steelers logo with my eyes shut.  while sleeping.  and without the use of my arms.  but that's not the point.  the point is that, as bad as that tattoo is, it really isn't even as bad as the way the steelers tried to play football yesterday against the cleveland browns.  i agree with ron cook who says the biggest surprise of all this year is that the steelers are 3-3, considering just how bad they've played.  i love my black and gold, of course, but it looks like it could be a long year.  hopefully not as long-lasting as that tattoo. in other news, happy columbus day!  once again i invite you to check out andrew dost's awesome soundtrack to columbus day, called "columbus."  you  can listen to it here .  it is so worth checking out.

well, it wasn't exactly the picture of dominance that many would have liked to see (including yours truly) against an 0-4 team, but the steelers fly out of jacksonville (pittsburgh south?  holy goodness there were a TON of steelers fans there) with a win, and that's what matters most of all. and anyone who thought that the steelers had to go down there and stomp them in order to prove something is dead wrong.  this was a desperate team; a cornered team; and a team starting a quarterback who was desperate to prove that he could take the reins and turn things around.  this was a jaguars team who saw what tampa bay did to the steelers last week, and who was salivating at the chance to do the same thing.  this was never going to be a cake walk, no matter how bad you think the jags are. still, steelers fans would have liked to have seen a little more lopsidedness on the scoreboard in the 4th quarter.  it is hard to believe that the only offensive touchdown was...

heath mcnease is really talented. i first heard about this guy when i was scanning noisetrade.com (a great website full of music and ebooks that you can download for a donation of your choice) for some thoughtful rap music.  i stumbled upon heath mcnease, which was a fortuitous discovery, because once i started listening, i couldn't believe just how talented and interesting this young man is. i first heard an album called thrift store jesus, full of great rhyming on interesting, layered beats, with a ton of thought put into the lyrics.  he is gifted at turning a phrase, and does so in a very interesting, engaging way.  then, i heard that he was putting out an album of songs all centered around the great Christian writer/thinker, c.s. lewis.  when i first started listening to it, i was dumbfounded.  it wasn't rap at all, but some sort of folky, modern rock, indie mashup sound that was easy on the ears, all while dealing with themes from the books and life ...

our youngest's preschool picture.  he's killing me.  with cuteness.  to use his own word, he's aderbadable.