Frost Takes Over, Two Feet Keep Moving

2020-11-14Us Standard

[Photos taken 14 – 30 November 2020, posted online 01 May 2021. Spring is solidly in the air, and green grass has begun peeking out.]

All through November, Covid-19 infection rates kept decreasing, but slower and slower, until we reached a point of small-group-infection whack-a-mole, and Covid-19 just wouldn’t die. Therefore, our social life kept being close to non-existent, and about the only time I bothered taking photos was during walking/jogging outings… again.

We did make it to house #2 at one point, my work organized an online-event, yule-light got put up, and some tidying occurred, but aside from that, blergh. (80-ish images total)

Saturday 14 November 2020

A rare non-walking photo! Our family was part of the team in Finnur’s family that won the first ever ‘swimming pool challenge’ that year, and the kids mugged for the camera when Finnur’s sister delivered the awards!
Darkness kept claiming a bigger slice of the day, so it was time to put up the outside yule-lights.
I think this was the third year for this particular set of lights, and it still worked!
By 4 pm it was time to go for a walk, and I again chose the sliver of teenage-woods surrounding the Breiðholt hill.
Tree-tunnels are my favorite.
Mount Esja showing off in the near-distance, mount Akrafjall a little further off.
On a whim (and because my shin splints wanted me to take shorter route back to the car) I took a right turn and entered the Breiðholt neighborhood proper. Between the trees is my childhood home.
The backyard was smaller than I remembered, but about as barren. It’s weird nobody thought to plant actual trees there a long time ago. It would do wonders for wind-control.
A raven found something to pick at.
Graffiti and a surprising amount of grass still. This is up high enough that a nice large wooden area would cut down on wind a lot.
The long row of apartment blocks. My aunt used to live in one of those. Today this is the ‘cheap’ part of town, and a lot of foreigners live here.
I know I walked this path very often when I was young, as it leads to a small shopping center. Most of the houses on the left were built after I moved away.
My old school. There was a time when the most popular outside game was the “hareem” game. In it, the boys ran around grabbing girls, dragging them to a dug-down entrance to the basement in the corner of the L-shape, where they were guarded by the boys, and then the girls tried to escape. Sometimes the gender roles were reversed but the girls-grabbing-boys games never lasted nearly as long as the boys-grabbing-girls ones. I remember myself and another girl where super tall for our age, and we mostly refused to play, grabbing those yellow rails in the distance and hanging on, being too strong for the boys to budge us, and they eventually gave up.
There are two elementary schools a hop and a skip from each other, serving either side of the hill-top. Amazingly, the area between them now has a sizeable ‘forest’, where some 35 years ago this was all barren.
At home base, I downloaded the puzzle game Creaks, as life was just too boring.

Sunday 15 November 2020

Finnur and I enjoyed a Pokemon-date by the harbor area, driving around for Pokemon community day.
Emma completed her Lego-boat!
By 5 pm I was outside again, this time exploring the teenage-woods that lie south of our house.
Looking back towards civilization. This path circles yet another hill, this one belonging to our town.

Monday 16 November 2020

Noon-jog commencing from a parking lot in Garðabær.
My office is across that lava field behind the houses in front.
Motion-photo.
Crooked motion-photo. there shall be no stopping! The path leads along the coastline, that’s mount Esja again in the distance.
The hidden beach with yellow sand up ahead on the left. I only discovered it a few years ago.
Trying to make my way past a lot of construction.

Wednesday 18 November 2020

On Facebook I posted: “Covid-work-from-home madness intensifying. My brain decided that yes, going on a 5k jog in -6C (21F) on this idyllic day was a great idea. My thighs are still trying to reach normal temperature, an hour later. Assuming brain wins again in the future, what do actual runners do to avoid thigh-freezing?!”
The pathway was frozen, but thankfully not slippery.
Later that day I waited for Bjarki to finish his gymnastics practice, and noticed the car measuring -10 C/14 F outside. Brrrr!

Thursday 19 November 2020

A dusting of snow! It would turn out this winter was one of the least-snowy for the past 40 years or so.

Friday 20 November 2020

On advice from Facebook-friends I tried layering my leggings with woolen underpants. It was a little better but still not great. I also put the studs on to avoid slipping.
Can you see which part has been salted by the city? The studs quickly came off!
Proof it was me.
Afterwards I went into work to pick up a goodie bag!
Snacks and drinks for an online-party night!

Saturday 21 November 2020

Finnur made good progress on the insane garage-pile. The neat-ish pile by the table was ready to be re-garaged.

Sunday 22 November 2020

Studs on, time for a walk.
Buddha, check.
The entrance to the teenage-woods south of us. I only realized what I’d been walking past when looking at the Strava heat-map.
Brrrr…
That hill offers a nice view over Vífillstaðavatn-lake, and Garðabær. Off in the far distance on the middle-left is the mountain peak, where in March 2021 an eruption would start nearby.
I made it to the look-out point at the top of the hill. That grassy area below is the cemetery I often loop around.
Looking to the right from the lookout point, flatness.
Houses on the left, golf-course on the right, ice below.
Finnur cracked me up. While going through the garage stuff, I’d opened up an “earthquake survival kit” he’d gotten from Google in 2007, as California had had an earthquake scare, and found it was packed with expired dried food, and water-boxes. He pretended to serve it for dinner! 😂
We ended up feeding some of this to the birds that winter.

Tuesday 24 November 2020

We discovered we could create our own nature show by feeding the birds in the backyard!
They puff themselves out to guard against the cold.

Wednesday 25 November 2020

Yet another piano-lesson walk by the river. At least it was still and gorgeous.
I’m happy those little trees are poking their heads up.
Aaaah, big-ish treees.
White-balance, what white-balance? There were horses!

Thursday 26 November 2020

The living-room nature-tv continued.
What a strange existence.
Oh look, an offspring! She kept up with remote-learning like a champ.

Friday 27 November 2020

I finally found the mental energy to move the garage-ready pile into the garage.
Not bad!
Yay, tidy-ish living room!
Booo, still some random crap on the big table. To be continued, I guess?

Saturday 28 November 2020

With covid-cases on the decline, I began visiting cafes again on weekend-mornings to work on photos and blog. This is my therapy I guess. As I was sitting at Te & Kaffi (with every other table closed down still to keep the 2 m distance), my mom posted a photo of another café in the west-end of town where she’d gone that morning. 🙂
We’d decided to seek a new horizon, and drove to house #2 after Emma’s skating practice. I’d gotten badly bit by the tidy-ing bug (yule approaching!) so I’d gone though the large frames we had stashed under the stairs, and picked a few to bring to house #2.
Anna drove.
Passing mount Hafnarfjall, one of my favorite mounts.
Visibility was not great.
Bjarki, the thrill seeker, decided to go out into the snow sans shoes.
Yes, snow is cold! 🙂
The big kids taught Emma a card game, and they managed to play a few rounds before screen-time began.
El Salade Clasico.
Anna in the kitchen.

Sunday 29 November 2020

Emma is a great packer. She packs her own toys when we travel, and this time she brought along some magna-tiles, and Sylvanian Families animals, which are suddenly popular again.
I began painting the master bedroom that morning, nothing claims a room quite like painting it.
Yes, the snow is cold, and frozen quite hard.
Anna.
Emma in her skating-fleece.
Assisted dipping.
Siblings! Finnur drove them home so I could paint in peace and quiet.
Many hours later, at 5 pm, I claimed victory over the wall.
Sadly, I managed to finish all the painting tape, so this was as far as I got.
Here’s hoping the color lives up to its name!
Packing up the car at 5:30 pm. That’s the moon! The lights off in the distance are other “summer”-houses.
The car battery was too small to make it all the way home in one go in winter, so I stopped by at Borgarnes to top up both the car battery and my own.

Monday 30 November 2020

Our living room nature-tv resumed operation.
A new type of friend! Thus endeth the most boring of Novembers in recent memory.