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.
We had a great day (and long and tiring day!) today at Ontario Place — they’ve put in a few new areas since the last time I was there and it really is top notch if you’re looking for a place to entertain someone between, say, age five and ten. The water park (with water slides and spray systems for people who aren’t comfortable swimmers) is as fun as I remember it over twenty years ago, and there’s a new enormous play structure with tons of tunnels and tubes to climb that replaces the mazes and play area of the past. There’s also a building full of foam balls and devices for shooting them that was fun, as well as the Cinesphere (the oldest IMAX theatre in the world) and bumper boats, “driving school” and so on.
The weather was perfect for the visit — bright and warm, but with the occasional bit of rain to keep it pleasant. I did get a bit of a sunburn (ouch) and am looking a little pinker than usual. Either that or I’m slowly transforming into a pigman. Both are reasonable theories. Oh, and it was shockingly empty, so there were never any waits and there weren’t crowds to deal with.
