iHave iPad from drworm on Vimeo.

Any guesses how I got ahold of one of these 3 weeks before they were released? :)

...your wife, at your request, makes your daughter a CMYK hairbow.

I was just checking the stats for my Plain Bible Teaching website. I had one lone hit from ststephensplainfield.com. I didn't know what this was, so I checked it out. Turns out it's the website for a Lutheran church up in Indiana. For some reason, they have my site linked on the front page under the "Important Links" section. Huh??

I really don't think my articles are so generic that some denominationalist could visit & link to my site without noticing that a lot of the things I'm saying in my articles would not be welcome in their pulpit. I mean, the most recent article is one against the doctrine of total depravity / original sin. It just puzzles me. How did they pick out my site and decide to make that one of the four important links? I don't get it.

My first thought was to contact them and ask them to remove my link so as not to give the impression that I was in any way in agreement with them. But then I thought, if they want to link to my site, maybe it will provide an opportunity for someone to stumble upon my site from theirs and be taught the truth. What do you think?

Then again, I don't know that I want to be associated with that site design. Those animated gifs make me cringe.

Periodically when we're out in town, Rachel will have to stop somewhere like Walgreen's to pick up a few things. Rather than unloading everyone from the car, she goes in while the kids & I wait. During this time, one of the things the two older kids have started doing is telling me their dreams. To be honest though, I'm not sure what stories are actually dreams and what ones are made up. But I think a good number of them are made up.

So this weekend Rachel had to make a quick stop somewhere. When she went inside, I decided to try something different with the kids. Instead of having them tell me their dreams (real or made up), I told them we were all going to tell a story. I would start, then they would take turns continuing the story. Since they were likely making up a good number of their "dreams" anyway, I wanted to try to develop their story-telling abilities.

So I began a simple story about a dog named Rufus. Rufus was in the backyard when he saw a squirrel on the fence. Rufus tried to get the squirrel, but it ran away. So Rufus looked around for a way to get out of the yard to chase the squirrel. Eventually he found the gate. The gate was open, so Rufus left the yard.

Then I turned the story over to the kids. To summarize, here's what happened:

The dog found the squirrel and ate him.
Then the dog found a turkey named Lucy.
The turkey ate the dog.
Then there was another dog.
This dog found another huge, giant, 100 foot tall turkey.
The dog ate the turkey's legs.
The dog found 100 squirrels.
One of the squirrels ran into a hole.
The other squirrels couldn't get into the hole.
So the dog ate the rest of the squirrels.

I think next time I'm going to have to institute a new rule: None of the characters can get eaten.

With the time of the kick-off of the Super Bowl in the middle of church services, and not having the luxury of a tivo or some similar device, I missed the first half of the game. Not a big deal. I was hoping to make it back in time to see The Who play at halftime. We came home right at the end of their performance. Oh well. But that at least meant I got to see the whole second half. My prediction for the outcome was half right. I guessed the Saints would score 31 points. Unfortunately, I picked the Colts to score 34 (instead they scored 17). It was weird watching it this year. I can't really explain it, but it didn't feel like the Super Bowl. It was a good game in any case.

And what's a Super Bowl without commercials?
- I guess the much talked about Tim Tebow commercial aired in the first half because I didn't see it. Maybe it will show up on Youtube eventually.
- The Census 2010 commercial was a colossal pile of steaming horse manure. I mean really. The government's going to spend $3 million of our tax dollars to run an ad in the Super Bowl for the Census (which is ridiculous in itself), then they produce a nonsensical ad like that. All the calls by the American people to cut wasteful government spending, then they do that. I really think they were mocking us. I'm not even kidding.
- The Audi Green Police commercial really disturbed me. More about that on my other blog.
- I thought the funniest one was the Doritos samurai commercial. Second would be the VW commercial, mostly because of Stevie Wonder at the end.

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Looking for some brainstorming help. I'm trying to make a list of instructions in the Bible about our spiritual lives that use a financial analogy. I'm not so much looking for instructions about finances, but instructions where the financial is a metaphor for the spiritual. So far I've got...
- The value placed upon the soul (Mt. 16:24-27) -- worth more than all the world
- Buy the truth & sell it not (Pr. 23:23)
- The pearl of great value (Mt. 13:45-46)
- "Buy from Me gold refined by fire" (Rev. 3:18) -- self reliance vs. reliance upon Christ
- Lay up treasures in heaven (Mt. 6:19-21)
- Gains & losses (Phil. 3:8) -- count all things as loss to gain Christ

Any other ideas?

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Have you heard this one before? When Paul wrote to the Romans, he wasn't condemning homosexuals for engaging in sexual relations with those of the same sex. He was condemning heterosexuals for practicing homosexuality.

Yeah, someone's actually used that to try to defend homosexuality. I wrote more on that here on Plain Bible Teaching.