A Small Visitor and Fall Colors
[Written 15 October 2012]
My uncle and his wife went on a childless trip for a few days, and we agreed to entertain their younger cub for a Sunday afternoon to give the other caretakers a bit of a break.
Before our little guest arrived, Anna decided to make coconut-balls (kókoskúlur) from a recipe she got from a friend the day before. (Oh, and during an epically productive day the day before that, Anna got her hair cut short to make combing it easier.)
Our visitor hanging out on one of the swings while the two siblings dig into the sand.
Fully Packed Friday
[Written 18 October 2012] Out of respect for harried parents who prefer to use their 5 weeks of vacation in large solid clumps, as opposed to a day here and there, the daycare and school in our neighborhood try to coordinate staff-days. The first such day this school year was this past Friday 28 September,Read more
Anna Gets Her Arm Back
[Written 15 October 2012] Just before Anna went to bed, I summoned her to free her arm from the splint she’d been wearing for two weeks. It took a while to cut through all the layers of cotton and gauze, but we got there in the end. There was a clear difference in muscle massRead more
Attack of the Organizational Monster
[Written 15 October 2012] On this pretty Sunday the whole family got wrangled into a car and taken on a 5 minute drive to Ikea. The objective: Buy more plastic buckets for Bjarki’s room, and try and find some furniture for Anna’s room that would increase her display and storage space, and stem the flowRead more
Sport-School
[Written 14 October 2012] Just thought I’d post a couple of pictures from Bjarki’s ‘Sport-School‘. He started attending one on the west side of town a few months after we moved to Iceland to help with his (preemie-related?) unsure gross motor skills, and since he’s really enjoyed it, we’ve kept attending ever since. Sadly itRead more
NORDUnet Conference in Norway
[Written 12 October 2012]
Last year, when I was still in a mood to say ‘yes’ to most everything, I agreed to be on the ‘Program Committee‘ of the 27th NORDUnet Conference, to be held in Oslo on 18-20 September 2012, serving as the ‘Icelandic delegate’. (NORDUnet is: “a joint collaboration by the 5 Nordic National Research and Education Networks in Denmark (Forskningsnettet), Finland (Funet), Iceland (RHnet), Norway (Uninett) and Sweden (SUNET) and operates a world-class Nordic and International network and eInfrastructure service for the Nordic research and educational community.”)
I am of course pretty clueless about both networks and eInfrastructure, but probably know more than the average Joanne, so I figured I’d say yes and see what would happen. Mostly I got to meet interesting and pretty cool people, read over a few abstracts, but most importantly, travel for free twice to Oslo, and once to Copenhagen, neither of which I’d ever visited before!
Anyway, fast forward a year from saying yes, and the conference itself was about to begin. One of my duties as an organizer was to ‘chair’ a couple of sessions (The Data Deluge, and Campus Issues 1) so to Oslo I went. (Being a ‘chair’ means you introduce the next speaker, and then watch the clock and tell them when time is running out. That’s it.)
Monday 17 September 2012
For a span of 24 hours Finnur was in England and I was in Norway, and the kids were in Iceland! Thank goodness for grandparents!! 🙂
Quick Trip to Laugarvatn
[Written 27. September 2012] On Saturday, 15. September 2012, Finnur took off at dawn with some of his buddies to fly to England to worship their football-gods. The morning went pretty much as planned, I took Bjarki to his sports-school session before lunch while Anna disappeared to visit a friend. After lunch I took theRead more
Busy Bee Day
[Written 27. September 2012] I’d say that the week starting on 3. September was the the week when I started ‘waking up’ from my pregnancy-induced slumber for ‘realz’. Which means that weeks 6-16 were pretty much a wash. That started an era of doing multiple things per day at home, I even joined a ratherRead more
Cast Replaced With a Splint
Anna had a cast-removal appointment yesterday morning, but 30 minutes before she was due to arrive, I got a call from school saying she’d just vomited all over the floor. Once I’d brought her home, I called the hospital, and the lady there told us to just come whenever she was well again. Anna spentRead more
Peter and the Wolf
My brother Pétur and his fiance, Signý, very kindly invited us to see Peter and the Wolf, as performed by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and a puppeteer in Harpa. I was too wrapped up in the show to record a video until the very end. I tried to catch the kids on video, but failedRead more