20thStDad

I disagree, that is all that pulls us, I mean them, in. I don't care if you call name the roller coaster after mickey mouse, is it a good ride or not? Are the activities fun? You are right, kids don't care about eco-friendly. This should not be one of the top 5 promoting points for the place. It should just be something the developers (and operators saving $$) are proud of. I never decide to do something based on greenness, at best I'll say "Oh, that's great" and then proceed to decide completely based on substance/delivery of awesomeness.

Well, a direct hit isn't likely, but we're going to get wet and might even have to deal with some windy outer bands of action. Reminds me of when I was in Baton Rouge when Rita hit the state line. Somehow, all that day skinny lines of rain/wind just managed to line up right over us all day and caused a bit of damage in a few areas.

So $20 includes the ride and all the donuts I can eat? Score! Someone remind me in a few months, I'm definitely gonna try to do it, with kids in tow.

What's the registration fee? The website was a bit lean on details. I already asked permission to do this...too bad it's Shipley donuts, they might be my least favorite.

One thing they definitely need to fix before it gets beyond ridiculous is the refereeing. Apparently there were 2 more horrible calls today, one that took a goal away from England and one that gave one to Argentina that shouldn't have been. If baseball can get over their phobia of replay (not enough yet but it's a start), then they should absolutely have it in a tournament where people's lives are at stake (revenge, riots, idiotic fans).

I agree, it's a great international tournament. But my interest declines greatly when we are out of it. I bet it's much the same in England right now. They are much more pissed off than they are worried about how Brazil is going to do in the next round. So now I'm just going to pull against European teams out of spite, since all my British co-workers are already way more pissed than we are about our results. Ha. As for why don't we, for two reasons: 1) our best athletes don't play soccer, and it's not even close. There are many more options they choose before soccer, only the ones who are too small or can't hack it in the other ones end up as the soccer stars - in general. You can't tell me that Landon Donovan, as good as he is (though he wasn't yesterday) at his stature and physical make-up would be anywhere near as good as Adrian Peterson would be if they had the exact same training throughout their lives. 2) Our country doesn't care, so we don't have things like the Ajax academy in the Netherlands where kids are trained from age 5 to be soccer stars. Ours play in these suburban soccer-mom leagues where during the first few years they don't even keep score and declare everyone winners.

Interesting, when I looked yesterday the projected paths were much further north/east. Best that it stays away from all of the oil anyway, although one from this location could just keep it further out of Texas (but do LA/MS/AL/FL much worse). I'm hoping a storm doesn't enter the gulf on the Rita/Ike path and push tons of oil this way during the season.

More like...moving on, it's baseball season. Damn the americans just couldn't play defense or pass worth a crap. I'm not seeing this as a very successful world cup for us. We won 1 game out of 4, and we were ahead for a total of 3 minutes the entire cup. That's not good. When our best players don't look on par with the best that Ghana can field, you know we're not putting a quality product out there. There's no reason a country like ours shouldn't field a team far superior than one like Ghana. I might keep an eye on scores going forward, but probably won't watch much more. With today's result I see things playing out much like they did after the gold medal hockey game. No momentum maintained, back to the way everyone felt before about the sport.

$38, F me!! That's why I don't go to that place. The mega mel sounds good, and easy - 2 hours for only 2 pounds of meat? I did go to itty bitty burger barn today, but didn't take the challenge. That's something I'll have to do with guy friends, not 2 kids in tow. My favorite driving range is right there by it, good way to work up an appetite before the challenge.

I am having issues trying to view or download either...maybe it's just me? Anyone else?

Why worry about facts when we can carry on bitching about walmart in TWO threads!! Sam's choice root beer from the machine for a quarter? Find me some change!!

The end was nerve-racking, even watching on gamecast from work. I caught the first half on radio before I had a meeting, but that was worse than gamecast because JP De La Camera is a horrible play-by-play guy. He can't keep up or accurately convey what is going on, and he gets excited at the wrong times then fails to quickly let you know the outcome. I swear Algeria scored 5 first half goals according to the way he called it. Anyway, that was an unbelievable ending. Bring on Ghana!

Oh no, an empty area near some railroad tracks might turn into a Wal-Mart! Why is this bad? The same people who live around here will shop around here. If you don't like the people you live around, you might be in danger of seeing them at Wal-Mart. As for parking lot crime, that is much more about location than anything else so it would happen whether you put an HEB there or Wal-Mart.

ND hasn't received an invitation from any conference simply because no conference is going to be officially rejected. They won't offer the invitation unless they know it will be accepted, and it won't.

Oh that one looks awesome. I know I couldn't finish it, but it sounds like fun to try with a few other people. I remember reading or hearing about some challenge that involved a 5k run and krispy kreme donuts. Something about a combined scored based on time and number of donuts eaten, with there being a minimum number you had to eat at the beginning, end, or halfway point. Hmm. Sounds like a college campus thing. I don't feel like googling it right now, but I might do that challenge.

That's a good one, I would fail with the fries and the bean patty. Everything else is doable. Now I just have to decide whether to tell my wife or not when attempting any of these challenges.

You probably don't want to know. Just be happy to have the separate bathroom, otherwise you'd have a whole new set of things to question. Strange noises...that's all I'm going to say for now.

I was out of there before 10. Not bad! Actually I was hoping to get on a jury, the pool they pulled me in was for the bigger criminal court. But nope, everyone settled and we got to go to work.

At my 4th jury duty in 9 years living here (2 muni, 2 district). Am I winning or does anyone else get called this much? At least it's district this time. Free wireless, and padded seats instead of the punish-you-for-your-sins church pews they have in the municipal jury room. I bet there's another HAIFer in here right now...

After watching a ton of matches now, is it just generally accepted that all soccer referees are bad and will get about half of the calls wrong? Because that's what I'm seeing. No one really seems to care. Half of questionable calls out-of-bounds for throw-in or corner are wrong as I'm watching replays. Fouls are 10 times more arbitrary than they are in basketball. I've seen far less drama queen acting than I remember during the last world cup, but still some. That to me is the worst part of the sport. Whiners should be shot, not rewarded.

Nice. I need to go here regardless of the challenge part. I know I can eat 2 lbs of burger, I used to do that regularly. If all I get is a tshirt I'll just order normal stuff. Considering we "do it bigger" in Texas I'm surprised there isn't a long list of food challenges in town.

Seems appropriate to dig this thread up again, now that I'm to the point I hate living here again. Did it get horrible early this year or did my trips to England and Philly in May throw my calibration off? The only good thing about it is I'm digging the popsicles and playing with the hose and inflatable pool in the backyard with the little ones.

I love Man vs Food, that show rocks. Not that I have anywhere near the size or capacity to do many food challenges, but are there any here locally? I've been to a place outside of Alexandria, LA where if you finish 60 oz of steak it's free and you get your name on the wall, and I've seen tons on TV that do something similar. What local places offer similar fun challenges?

We think Nigerians are great. The one I work with is the nicest person ever, a hard worker, and extremely smart.

I think both were the case - Algeria played well and England looked nothing like a team most of the time. They might be full of talent, but they don't play together worth a crap. Win and move on!