Emerging from survival mode…

The past two weeks have been mad, crazy, nuts, with heaps of fun, frustration and stress sprinkled in between.   But  finally, things have calmed down enough that I have enough mental reserves to resume blogging, which must be a good sign!

So, what happened?  Well, the final wasn’t an abysmal failure, but I heard that it was very long and difficult.  Perhaps a bit soul-crushing even, but I believe/hope the students are young and resilient enough that they won’t be too scarred.   Also, as I mentioned before, I had included two difficult ‘nuggets’, which indeed proved to be very very difficult – so difficult in fact that they exposed a matter I can’t comment on in public but has been the source of much stress and frustration, and is not over yet.

Anyway, back to the story of the past two weeks.  After shuddering at the thought of taking the finals with me on the plane to California, I got into the grading-groove and managed to finish grading the final some 12 hours before my departure.  Phew!  The flight to California was nice, traveling without children is so… easy!  I watched Toy Story 3 (great!), and gave up on the Sex and the City 2 two-thirds of the way through.  Yes, it was that awful.  Other than that I was kept company by Wait, wait don’t tell me and RadioLab – my perennial NPR favorites.

I landed late on Friday night in California, and stayed with Sarah, Augusto and Jason.  For 7 hours on Saturday, I dragged poor Sarah all over the local outlet mall, and went to Katie and Dirk’s for dinner.  Sunday was much calmer, with only short shopping excursions, but in the afternoon Sarah and Augusto hosted a pizza party with some good friends from Stanford.

Monday was mostly spent running errands on the Stanford Campus, such as printing out my poster for the conference (just in time!), and catching up with  more people.  On Tuesday I took the CalTrain up to the city to attend the AGU conference (aka more Stanford people to catch up with, as well as some Icelanders), but in the evening Edda hosted a fantastic ‘sewing club’ for the Icelandic women.  Wednesday was spent doing more shopping (poor Sarah!) and packing.

My return flight took off at 6:20am Thursday morning, and boy oh boy will I ever pay the premium needed to fly though Seattle in the future.  The three-plane trip through Phoenix and New York was exhausting!  I landed in Iceland very early on a Friday morning, but had to haul myself into work in the afternoon to finish making a make-up exam for the couple of people that reported being sick during the final.   Just writing all that makes me tired!

This past weekend we celebrated Anna’s upcoming Christmas Day birthday three times(!!!).  On Saturday we entertained Anna’s classmates (just the girls), then in the evening we went to Finnur’s parents’ place for a family pre-Christmas/Anna’s birthday celebration.  On Sunday we had my family over and some friends.  We would have liked to invite more friends, but our apartment just isn’t big enough!

This past Monday was spent trying to sort out the ‘matter’ I mentioned before, as well as packing (again!) because very early the morning after we left for England!  We were incredibly lucky, because just the day before all airports in England had closed down due to snow, but Heathrow re-opened in time for us to land.  The airport was rather deserted though, except for baggage claim, where bags were stacked all over the floor!  My dad picked us up, and we had an easy drive to Gillingham, since the roads were mostly empty – apparently the English fear driving in the ‘snow’!

Yesterday (Tuesday) was spent finishing the last of the Christmas shopping, while the children over-dosed on television.  I believe they will have had enough television to last them into March once we leave! 🙂

Which brings us to today.  It’s been a mostly quiet day.  The lads went out shopping and took the kids.  We’ve otherwise mostly stayed indoors although I might take the kids out for a short play in the park.  Then Finnur and I will be taking Anna to the theater to see a pantomime version of Jack and the Beanstalk.  I hope it will be fun!

And thus endeth the marathon recap of the last two bonkers weeks.  I’m hoping to add some pictures in later, and they will be appearing under this post…