What did you do this weekend?

Calgary had an absolutely insane hail storm on Saturday night, with hail up to almost the size of tennis balls in some areas. The hail itself did a lot of damage to houses/cars/gardens/etc., but it also came down so heavily and melted so quickly that there was major flooding in a lot of areas. This CBC article has some good photos of things like the shredded vinyl siding on houses.

Our house is a little higher up and was fine, but there was probably about 2.5 feet of water on our street at one point, with the cars parked on that part of the street having their wheels entirely underwater. Someone tried to drive down the street when it was still bad (even with people outside yelling at him not to) and the car died when it got to the deepest spot. Two guys had to climb out of its sunroof, jump down into a couple feet of water, and push it out (and had to get the car towed later—it wouldn't run any more).

The rain/hail stopped and the water drained after a couple of hours, but there's a lot of damage to yards and basements for people at the lower section of the street. People were ripping out carpets and getting cars towed yesterday, and looking outside today I can see a couple yards full of ruined furniture and other stuff that people have been hauling out of their basements. It's a huge mess, and this wasn't even one of the hardest-hit areas of the city. I'm sure it's far worse in other places.

We've made another disturbing discovery about the grounds of our new house. The area exposed to the sun after removing dead ash trees has been rapidly blanketed with what we thought was a harmless and attractive ground cover. Turns out we've now got half a hectare of goutweed, a devastating invasive which crowds out native vegetation and is nearly impossible to eradicate permanently. Enter the weed-wacker, and many hours of knocking down the evil weed in the hopes that we'll have a better idea of what can be saved from under it if given a chance to compete. We may try solarizing and replanting with native meadow a patch at a time, but it's a years-long project we hadn't anticipated.

Four large raised beds assembled and waiting for 5 m³ garden mix to arrive.

One visit to a favorite winery that's figured out social-distanced service outdoors - the weather has been gorgeous.

A significant amount of my weekend was spent feeling bad for itchy watery eyes due to allergies.

On Friday, part of Ontario including where I live entered "Phase Two" of reopening, which included the ability to enlarge your "bubble" of people that you interact with. We chose to merge my family's bubble with my parents, and we went to their house yesterday. The hugs after 3+ months of not hugging the grandkids were fantastic, and we also had burgers, fresh bread baked by my daughter, and played board games.

I did a bit of outdoor work on the house, but not too much; just maintenance. I did a bit of office cleanup.

I played some Elite Dangerous and stranded myself several hundred light years outside of the bubble. I thought I'd planned a route with fuel scooping, but apparently not.

One of the guys had a birthday this week. We've been friends for decades now so we don't do gifts really, usually it's just being treated to lunch by the others. This time he wanted us to come out to his place, about 90 minutes out of town, to hang, sleep over, work on cars, and go swimming. So that's what we did. Moved one of his project cars under the carport, started tearing down an extra engine, got some other work done on the project, and then we watched Starship Troopers, ate catfish, got drunk, went swimming, and had ice cream at midnight. You know, adult stuff.

Went scuba diving in a quarry in Kentucky. Pretty chilly and the fish were having a great time nibbling my ears. My wife and I bought new regulators recently and wanted to try them out. We normally go diving in the warm waters of the Caribbean, and were scheduled to go to Hawaii next month, but now we're not because of COVID. Hopefully next year that might be an option.

I'm working on getting my Game Boys back up and running (pocket, color, advance). Some new lighting peripherals (worm lights for the GBs, a Pelican screen cover light for the Advance), and got a couple of EZ Flash carts (Jr for the GBC/P, Advanced for the GBA). The goal is, mostly, stuff like LSDJ or Nanoloop, but I also have full ROM collections I can put on them for extra fun.

I also went for a serious attempt at rollerblading at the park (regular, not skate). I got them a week ago, and it's pretty much a full-body workout, with the occasional short massage. My adductors have been screaming at me for two days while I try to rest for a long bike ride this week.

I lastly sort of started a Pico-8 game based on this tutorial, but am trying to implement some extra features (lives, a HUD with inventory and lives) on my own, then end-level splashes and teleports between screens. I wish they had docs for the lua-based DSL, instead of community contributed stuff (which is helpful, but not like actual language docs). It'll also mean all of my handhelds can be played without the original cartridges, which is a huge plus (GB, GBC, DS, GBA, 3DS).

I went to trim my hair again, my sideburns (lite?) had grown back again, along with some weird proto-neckbeard hair under under my chin. Asked him to trim it all since I don't like body hair and would shave the rest of my body if motivated, although in some areas the cut hair would end up being more like a bunch of thorns.

My wife and I went to some yard sales, which is one of my favorite American (I think it's mostly an American thing?) past times. There's always the chance you can find a great treasure for almost nothing

And I did come out really well. I found this. It's an enlarger for a darkroom. Analog photography has been a hobby for years and I've been wanting to start a darkroom for a while, but the initial cost is pretty high.

This enlarger with the head unit would have cost me about $800 on ebay, and Saturday I got it for free!
That's the magic of yard sales :D