Now maybe my wife will let me do some crazy things with our own yard. I wonder if she'll let me put a roller coaster in.

We're back from Disneyland (literally just flew in an hour ago), but I'm walking out the door for another quick trip. We had a great time though.  We spent quite a bit of time in both Disneyland and California Adventure.  Even though it's Summer we never waited in line for more than 30 minutes for a ride and that included ride time.  We must have really been lucky. By early Monday afternoon we had covered half of Disneyland and headed over to California Adventure to check it out.  We spent the rest of the day over there.  We saw the Pixar Play Parade and I was even able to get my wife to go on The Hollywood Tower ride.  She doesn't like haunted rides, but did admit to thinking that one was pretty cool. After that we waited in Sunshine Plaza for the Electrical Light Parade.  Once that was over we headed for the hotel. Tuesday we hit the rest of Disneyland, and went over to DCA to ride Soarin' Over California because we didn't want to wait for it on Monday.  This is one of the rides that we got lucky on.  We didn't wait long but when we got up to the ride and prepared to board we were told that it was broken and were given Fast Passes for any ride in either park. We left for about 20 minutes but decided to try out luck again.  When we came back the side we had been on previously was still down but the other side was up, so we used our Fast Passes and were on the ride within a few minutes. Another bit of luck that we had was on Space Mountain.  We had Fast Passes, but as we approached people were coming down the ramp telling us that the ride was broken.  We decided to find out for ourselves.  As we approached the ramp ride operator there were only 4 people in front of us.  We inquired about the wait time.  He wasn't sure, but we figured that we'd give it 10 minutes and see what happened. At the end of those 10 minutes, the ride was back up and running and we were headed down the ramp.  10 minutes later we were exiting the ride. The one bit of bad luck that we did have was with Fantasmic.  We had great seats and waited for three hours on Tuesday night.  When the show was to start an announcement was made that the show would be delayed for a few minutes.  A little bit later, an announcement was made that the show was cancelled, but that fireworks would begin shortly. We found out that the 10:30 show was still going to happen, but we had to get up to leave for the airport at 3:30 am, so we unfortunately didn't get to see the show.  I guess that means that we're going to have to go back.  We just need to decide if we're going to take the kids this time or not. Overall it was a great trip.  You can see photos here. A HUGE thanks to my sister and my wife's sister and her friend for helping us out with arrangements and deals for this trip.  We really appreciate it. Now it's off to Varsity Big Event, but I'm ready to go back to Disneyland with my wife.

So Six Flags is filing for Chapter 11.  To be honest, I'm not surprised. In a business where you have to have the biggest, the fastest, the tallest, the most "whatever" these guys will do whatever it takes to get that title and to be honest I doubt that the customers would come to their parks if they didn't do these sorts of things. Let's hope that they can restructure everything, get through it and move on.  It wouldn't surprise me if we saw more and more entertainment companies like this have similar announcements in the somewhat near future.

[hidepost] Exhausted, but want to say that Fahrenheit at Hershey Park is awesome.  So is Storm Runner. [/hidepost]

If all goes well, I will be riding this sometime this summer. While my back may not appreciate it, I'm really looking forward to it.

The list of things that I need to do continues to grow. Things that must get done:

1. Fix/Adjust the blinds on every window in the house
2. Paint many walls/rooms.
3. Hang many things on said newly painted walls.
4. Clean up/out my sanctuary...errr....garage.
5. Finish and Paint the walls in the garage.
6. Add shelves and organize the garage.
7. Work on finishing the basement.
8. Finish redesigning/installing the home network.
9. Finish setting up new home Firewall.
10. Finish setting up new home fileserver.
11. Fix damage done to house this winter.
12. Finish Mud Room Bathroom Shower.
13. Finish Mud Room Lockers.
14. Fix broken door knob.
15. Put up fence around yard/house
16. Finish Fountain and Pond in front yard.
17. Put in Flag Pole in front yard.
18. Finish flower beds in front and back yards.
19. (Start &) Finish RV Pad and gate.
20. Rotate tires on all four cars.
21. Change oil in all four cars.
22. Fix nail pops and other various types of wall damage within the house.
23. Caulk the bathrooms and kitchen.
24. Deep clean kitchen tile floor.
25. Setup computer(s) for kids to use while doing homework.
26. Get Truck trailer lights and brakes wired.
27. Get Van trailer lights and brakes wired.
28. Get into MBA school.
29. Finish MBA school.
30. Finish Wood Badge tickets.
31. Finish University of Scouting tickets.

and the list goes on. Here is a list of the hobbies that I would like to take up or do more with.

1. Get a Snake.
2. Get a Motorcycle.
3. Learn to be a better cook.
4. Get a Shotgun.
5. Go Clay Pigeon shooting with said Shotgun.
6. Go Camping (more often).
7. Go Backpacking.
8. Do more Mountain Biking.
9. Pick up Basketball again.
10. Pick up Softball again.
11. Get a Black Powder Rifle.
12. Go to target range with said Black Powder Rifle.
13. Get a 22 rifle.
14. Go to target range with said .22 rifle.
15. Take up fishing.
16. Do more woodworking.
17. Learn to weld,
18. Buy snowmobiles.
19. Go Snowmobiling.
20. Tour the world riding the worlds great Roller Coasters.

As you can see the second list is shorter, so I'm thinking that I should start with that list first, though I think that my wife has other thoughts on the subject.  She may even veto many of the items on the second list.

We've pretty much had either cable or satellite since we were married.  The married student housing that we lived in during our first 7 years or marriage offered free basic cable.  Then we moved in with my parents for 18 months and they had satellite hooked up the week we moved in. When we moved into our current home we also had satellite setup.  In the Village (married student apartments) about the only thing on cable that I watched was ESPN, especially when it was the Utes playing. My tastes have changed a bit since then.  I hardly watch ESPN anymore, in fact I hardly watch any sports at all.  I do however watch a lot on Discovery.  It has to be the coolest channel on any form of TV. I watch American Chopper and occasionally MythBusters, but two of my recent favorites at Future Weapons and Build It Bigger. What's better than checking out cool futuristic weapons and watching an Architect who's afraid of heights scale tall buildings and roller coasters.

This is awesome.

I love roller coasters.  Anyone that knows me is already very aware of this fact.  This time of year is always fun for me because the parks are all announcing their newest [insert "record breaking" reference] coasters. I realize that it's all marketing hype at this point, but for me it's fun to see what's coming out next week.  It's like my own little Roller Coaser Fashion Week (hmmm..there's an idea). One of my favorite parks is Hershey Park in Hershey, Pennsylvania.  Living in Utah, I don't get there very often, but I do try and keep up on their latest and greatest rides. Since I was last there they have built Roller Soaker and Storm Runner.  Last month they announced Farenheit for Spring 2008. Now where did I put that Travel Agent's phone number.