So yeah.  These past TWO months I’ve glimpsed the (surprisingly) green grass in our backyard for a total of three hours.  Maybe four.  The remainder of the time it’s been hiding under a blanket of snow of variable thickness.  Yes, it’s  Winter.  For realz this time!

I’ve yet to go out on a photo-scouting mission with my proper camera, so a lot of these photos have been taken using my mobile phone camera.  Ready for some white stuff?!

2 January 2012: Anna, her friend and Bjarki headed out with shovels to start digging into the big snow-mountain that the heavy snow-clearing machinery had kindly left opposite our house.

As of writing this, I’m one lecture and two homeworks away from being done teaching the ‘other course’ for a long while this semester.  I’ve also finished gobbling up Merlin (mmmm… Meeeeerlin, also the internets are insane!) and as a result I have a wee bit of mental space opening up.

To celebrate I’m going to attempt posting pictures, starting from December of last year.  I’ll post links on this top post since the other ones will be ‘date-correct’.

From 1 December 2011: Proper Snow
From 3 December 2011: Bjarki’s Daycare Christmas Ball
From 3 December 2011: A Thanksgiving-Feast with Ex-Californians

Lotta, one of our good Icelandic friends who we met in California is a proper arty photographer, with impressive degrees to her name and everything!  This January she and a good friend of hers co-held an exhibition called Echo here in Reykjavík, and she was kind enough to invite us to the opening.  As it happened Finnur was busy, so we plonked the kids down with their grandparents (triple hooray for local grandparents!!) and went on our separate ways.

Looking over the parking lot I used by the harbor.

Newborns in Iceland are rarely given a name before they leave the birth-hospital, as is customary in the US.  Instead, the newbie usually goes by all sorts nicknames while the parents try to suss out an appropriate name, and once they’re done there’s (usually) a baptism, or a naming party, where the kid’s name is ‘revealed’.  Here are some pictures from the baptism of my newest niece, Iðunn Heiður Nökkvadóttir, daughter of Nökkvi and Jóhanna.

Jóhanna and Nökkvi with Iðunn Heiður, who slept through all of it! It should be noted that both parents were feeling a bit under the weather, but decided to go ahead with the party anyway since it had all been planned, etc. etc.

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I have a million and two images to post from the final gasps of December, but first I’m finishing my mental vacation (aka ‘escape from reality’) in Merlin-land.  Yes, at this point in time, I feel it is my duty to stand by my vow to finish watching all hereto produced episodes with the utmost haste, to protect my pride and honor and fulfill my destiny.  And yes, this is the first tv series binge I’ve gone on in a loooong time.  :)

In other news I returned to my office today after a long absence.  It does look like somebody cleaned the floor while I was away, but other than that, it appeared as I left it.  (Oh, and yes, I will be melodramatic from now on.)

Seeing how it’s been freezing outside for weeks now, and the snow is solid and easy to bike on where the paths have been cleared, I took it upon myself to bike to work this morning, .  It took a little under an hour, and I cursed two municipalities for not clearing various parts of one of the main bike routes, but it mostly went really well and was highly enjoyable.

Work was uneventful.  My schedule for this spring semester is to lead second year students on a quest to understand transmission lines, while third year students will get mired in minutia about antennas.  If I am to be thankful for anything, it is that my guide duties for one of these courses are to last for 4-5 weeks only (2 weeks at the start of the journey, 3-ish towards the end), which means that I might have eight glorious weeks where I will only teach one course – a fact made sweeter by the knowledge that I’ve taught it once before.

After a tea-time meeting with a good friend, I headed home in the dusk.  The ride again went very well in most places due to smoothly cleared paths, but not all roads can be smooth, or the ride will be too boring.  And thus it was that I hit a snow patch that my trusty bike could not handle and I was nearly cast off my steed.

As I recovered and mumbled a curse under my breath, my eyes were drawn to the visage of the beautiful sunset happening right beside me.  The view struck me a unusually clear and sharp, and took my breath away.  Sadly my phone does not have the facilities to do the view justice, but this should give you an idea:

The view I would have missed had the bike path been properly cleared. It is good to be reminded that stopping and looking around are good habits to have.

Seeing how it is now night-time, I bid you farewell for now.  I shall see you later.

P.s. Congratulations Deirdre and Matt on your baby boy!!

Yeah, the title pretty much says it all!

Happy New Year!!  /  Gleðilegt nýtt ár!!