Nefarious and I went climbing today at Rock Oasis, an indoor climbing gym, which was tons of fun and completely tired her out. I belayed for her (except when she was bouldering), and she climbed non-stop for an hour and a half after school (up to a 5.6, which is cool impressive given that she’s five and has five-year-old-length limbs). She’s got at least one other kid in her class that goes climbing so next time I bump into her father I’ll see if they want to go together.
When I made the appointment yesterday, they double checked to make sure I understood that she would not be able to belay for me… I’m like, “um, she weighs less than a quarter what I weigh, I know she can’t do that!” — apparently it’s a pretty common assumption first-time visitors have. That surprised me, because it just seems like common sense, but while I was there I listened to the receptionist taking quite a while trying to explain to someone who’d never climbed before that they would need a second person to belay for them… I guess the mechanics of it all are hard for some people to understand.
I mentioned our Toronto hail a couple days ago, so my friend Lane sent me these photos that he took in the West Edmonton Mall yesterday. They got large hail — almost an inch across — and the mall got minor flooding, with about half a foot of water covering the floors. Then looting and anarchy broke out! Oh wait, no, that would be too rude for Canada.
So we’re at the grocery store yesterday, and Nefarious grabs a sweet potato and is like, “look, look, it looks like a duck”, and got me to post it and then brought it in to school for show-and-tell… haha… it rained again today so we didn’t hang out at the park too long, but tomorrow we’re leaving early to go rock climbing at an indoor wall, so at least the weather won’t affect that.
Well, I’m going to add a few more cars to the kitcar blog still tonight… one of the interesting things about Price Of His Toys is that even though there are a lot of people putting in enormous hours toward homebuilt auto projects, there are virtually no blogs on the subject. Because I’m interested in DIY in general, I’m thinking about doing two more blogs, one on homebuilt boats, and one on homebuilt planes as well. I know I should really launch my new project, but not only are legalities holding me back, but so is kind of enjoying just twiddling around on these very stress free little projects!
On account of the dreaded pirates that have been terrorizing Nefarious’s Playmobile universe, we built a jail cell for the worst offenders. It’s made out of some Fimo, BBQ skewers, and a bunch of silver spray paint (yes, it’s a little blobby). The skewers are exactly the right size to be fit their hands!
So today after we’d been at the park for about forty-five minutes it started to thunder (what is this now, the fourth day of electrical storms?) and rain, so we ran for the truck. When we got about half way there, we realized that it wasn’t raining, but that it was pea sized hail coming down on us! Hail! In the middle of an already hot summer! The weather forecast says that this might actually be followed up later by hailstones almost an inch across… Maybe I need to not be so flippant about the apocalypse, hahaha.
My highschool friend Jen stopped by today and dropped off a painting that I did something like 17 years ago! It’s more of a sculpture than a painting, done in a mix of latex and plaster bandage (casts of my face and hand). It was all black, but I’ve decided to repaint it, making it my oldest ongoing project. It’s called “Birth”, and it was done at school on LSD — my highschool art thesis was about exploring the collision point of psychedelics, bloodletting, and art. I doubt they’d allow that sort of thing these days, but for a small country school, my school was very progressive.
