Last week I took my nephew to see the Movie Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. There was one section of the movie that made me think of a passage in 1 Peter.

If you've seen the movie, or a preview for the movie, you're familiar with the squirrel who, throughout the movie, is on a never-ending quest for the acorn. He tries and he tries to get that acorn, and meets with a variety of misadventures along the way. He never succeeds in getting the acorn.

But towards the end of the movie, the squirrel has a "near-death" experience, and...

One of the hymns I enjoy singing in church is "Heaven Came Down and Glory Filled My Soul." It's a hymn that has a nice little echo part on the chorus ("filled my soul/made me whole/filled my soul"). The echo part is sung by the tenors and the altos.

Unfortunately, in our church, not many people are confident enough singers to do those echo parts, so you usually can't hear it very well. But last night was kind of interesting...

From where I was sitting, I couldn't hear any women singing the echo part, except on the "s" of "soul." "S" sounds...

Fear Factor is a television show I've only watched a couple times. The last time I watched it, they had the contestants doing a stunt that made me rather sick to my stomach. ::) So I shut it off, and haven't turned it on since.

The premise of the show is this: you get a bunch of people to do absurdly stupid/disgusting/dangerous stunts, to see who chickens out first, and who sticks it out to the end, and does the stunts better than anyone else.

The winner, of course, receives a monetary prize. I went on the Fear Factor website...

Life is like a roller coaster? I've heard that statement before, but I don't think it's accurate. When people say "Life is like a roller coaster," what they mean is, it's got "ups and downs." But really, that's not a great analogy, because when you're riding a roller coaster, it's all thrills and excitement...and the "ups" are actually less thrilling than the "downs."

No, life is not like a roller coaster. It's like waiting in line for a roller coaster.

One of the boys in our youth group went out to Cedar Point last year, and rode on The Top Thrill Dragster...

Doing business on the Internet, I find all sorts of devious and downright criminal activities going on. I try to help people sort out the good from the bad by posting on my Anti-Spam Website about various scams I find.

But some people are involved in an activity that, although it is strictly within the law, I find absolutely despicable. There are people out there who spend their time looking for website domain names that the owner has accidentally allowed to "expire" and they buy them as soon as they expire. Not because they want the domain themselves, but so...

When my nephew Daniel was much younger (he just turned fifteen this year!), he used to love pepperoni. And he didn't just love it on pizza. Oh no. If he had the chance, he'd chow down on slices of pepperoni straight out of the package. In fact, he used to get up early in the morning, before anyone else was awake, find the package of pepperoni, and just eat and eat and eat.

Until one time, he ate so much he made himself sick. You can probably guess the end result of that; Daniel doesn't eat pepperoni any more. At...

Recently a young man in our community was killed. It was a sad and tragic time for those who knew him. What made it even more tragic was the fact that there was a group of protesters who made plans to picket his funeral. If I told you the bizarre sequence of illogic that made these people think it made sense to protest a funeral, you would hang your head in shame at the idea that there are people in this world so completely incapable of logical thought.

What makes it far worse, however, is that these protesters were representatives...

Last summer we scheduled youth group events for the teenagers at our church. We had, in addition to having the teens organize and lead a Vacation Bible School, some fun events -- trips to the beach, hiking, camping, and other things. Two events stand out in my mind.

First, was our trip to see the SeaDogs -- our baseball team in Portland -- play a Friday night game. Unfortunately, we had picked a week that didn't work well for most of our teens, and the few teens who could have gone, forgot all about it. The result? Three leaders showed...

Our society is filled with people who will start a lawsuit at the drop of a hat, and our court system can potentially get clogged with frivolous lawsuits that people take way too seriously.

Some of my favorites, in addition to the very well-known case of the woman who sued McDonald's because she got burned by the coffee when she spilled it into her lap, include the following:

• The family who sued Sea World because their 27-year-old son broke into Sea World, snuck past security, went swimming with the killer whale, and drowned. Why is this Sea World's fault? Because...

Suppose you were at a store, and as you were getting ready to make your purchase, you realized that you didn't quite have enough money to cover the purchase. What would you do?

Go home and get more money? How about walking up to the person behind the counter and asking "Can I borrow some money from the store so I can make my purchase? I'll pay you back the next time I'm here..."

Well, that actually happened to me today. Fortunately, it was at a place of business I go to quite frequently, so the people there know me...