[Photos taken 01 – 14 June 2024, posted online 20 September 2024. One job interview completed this week, just got notified I’d made it to round two, but lots of unemployed fish in the sea.]
June kicked off with a presidential election in Iceland, and for the second time ever a woman, Halla Tómasdóttir, was elected. The position is mostly ceremonial, with lots of meets and greets, but holds (very-rarely-used) veto power over new laws.
Then it was prepping stuff, followed by moving it, to mom’s new abode, interspersed with a few “adulting” tasks around the house like cleaning the garbage bins, and taking care of a leaky car tire.
My sprained back kept being fragile, such as when I re-injured myself bending down slightly to wash my hands. I was therefore banned from carrying stuff, and instead reverted to my old physio exercises to claw my way back to good back health.
We leaned hard on the kindness of friends to feed us, which kept us in good spirits.
Saturday 01 June 2024
Arriving at the local voting location. There was a steady stream of people, but hardly any lines.
If you have a smidgeon of a public profile, it’s not very hard to become a formal presidential candidate in Iceland, and this year we ended up with 12 of them, equally split by genders. The rules state: “Each candidate must turn in 1500 – 3000 endorsements, divided proportionally by the number of voters in each quarter of the country.”. This is easy enough that the rumor is that some people keep running just to keep it on their CV for international business purposes…
I began hunkering down in the mornings at this cafe/bakery, which is still my custom pretty much every day. The lack of windows makes for a few good seats to do computer work in.
Reunion time! It’s now been 30 years since Finnur graduated from MR (junior college)!
Sunday 02 June 2024
Anna and I managed to find and install a latch for the veggie-box-lid that had blown open in the wind.
Adulting project of the day, washing the dirty bins.
We should do this more often… it’s actually quite fun!
The black plastic recycling bin was our old regular garbage bin back in the day, and the switch-over did not include a cleaning…ugh! Then, I kept missing the window of time where the bin had just been emptied, but I finally got it!
Monday 03 June 2024
Barrel saunas are pretty popular in Iceland. This one was outside one of the hardware stores, they sell them as kits.
At the gym, running through my essay of shoulder-physio-exercises, in the hopes they also do the sprained back some good.
I had been diagnosed with a left-butt-muscle-on-strike in February (when I kept spraining my left calf), so I also ran through the “turn-the-butt-muscle-on” exercises. Apparently, spending 2-3 hours in the gym calmly doing physio exercises is something you can easily do when out of a job.
An enterprising friend of Anna’s made some macarons from scratch, sort of as a personal challenge, and biked over with a sample for her. They looked a bit crinkly but tasted great!
I volunteered to BBQ hamburgers at a sewing club that evening. The weather was lovely!
Sun still visible past 11 in the evening.
Tuesday 04 June 2024
The weather began being tumultuous and never quite settled down all summer. Here, the high winds had felled some of our flowers…
When you cross your fingers and hope the spooky-looking update is legit.
Please don’t fail… please don’t fail…
My computer as a mirror, in “my corner” at the cafe.
Back in “my corner” at the gym. Note the blackness of the walls, and the scuff marks of things having bumped into them. (In relation to wall close-ups at the bottom of the page)
Wiggle, wiggle, with my arm to the ceiling. Upside-down kettle-bell holds are fun, particularly after you get some practice and get over the shock of how unsteady you are when you first start.
Mmmm… muffin!
Wednesday 05 June 2024
The stars aligned with surprising speed, and we formally got the keys to mom’s new apartment.
Brother spotted at the gym, as I headed to “my corner”…
At the fruit delivery fridge, disguised as something fancy.
The lemon gave me flash-backs to California!
Grass almost fully green.
Even more flowers had been felled by the high winds, so I gathered them and brought them inside.
Nice on the eyes!
Thursday 06 June 2024
This is written from exactly the same seat as this photo is taken from, only 3-4 months later.
My back felt up to cleaning the new apartment. Was glad for the elevator, and the shopping cart that’s on the premises to drive stuff around.
The previous apartment owner had “never received the keys” to the mail-box, so I started trying to break into it, but didn’t quite have the guts to really go for it at that point.
My saint of a sister-in-law, going through mom’s books with her.
Once upon a time it was my 8th birthday and there were guests!
Mom still had enough old towels to support a whole shower-mad family. They joined a few other things en route to the recycling center.
Car stuffed full of stuff headed for the recycling center, not for the last time this summer.
Friday 07 June 2024
Remembering to put the summer flowers outside to get them used to the cold.
The original two mattresses for this expandable-sofa-bed came back from the summer house, meaning we could really start thinking about finding a new home for it. The single “real” mattress that was in replaced the mattresses as a spare at the summer house.
Saturday 08 June 2024
We’d rented a moving van the following day, so this Saturday was moving-prep day!
It was a lovely day!
I remember this painting from my youth. Sadly it had sustained damage at some point.
We drove a few boxes and bags over to the new place.
The first items of clothing appearing in the new closet space. The fashion now in new construction is to have open clothing storage units, although these are hidden in a small room with a sliding door. I’m very tempted to rip the doors off of our own closets!!
Found an old photo of mom and thought of Emma!
At home base, Anna had taken pity on my poor sprained back, and volunteered to do a bit of weeding.
I plunked down some summer flowers I’d picked up.
Planting out the home-grown summer flowers. We really need to put new earth in those pots, and clean them. The plants are no longer thriving in them.
I put the cushions down for the first time that summer. The summer was so weatherly-tumultuous that it only happened 2-3 times more.
Getting greener.
We invited ourselves for dinner to some good friends, under the guise of picking up some moving dollies!
Yum, dinner!
The heavy-duty moving dollies loaded into our car.
15 minutes to midnight.
Sunday 09 June 2024
Our “drive-it-yourself” moving van.
Since my back was still as fragile as a newborn kitten, I was mostly there to direct traffic, and do small odd jobs. No carrying for me! Thankfully, Anna and Bjarki now have fully functioning adult-sized bodies, and they stepped up to help.
Dolly coming in handy.
First of two un-loadings of the day!
Many hands make light work!
Hard workers, making their last drive of the day.
At the end of the day, like magic, stuff had been transported from one place to another!
Keys to the moving van returned along with the van at 7:30 in the evening.
Our friends invited us over for dinner, knowing we’d be exhausted and starving after a long day!
Yum!
Monday 10 June 2024
Adulting job of the day was taking the car in to have a slightly-leaky-tire fixed.
Emma started the first of her summer half-day camps. This one was tennis, which she seemed to enjoy.
In the new apartment, I frowned at the architects/builders that ok-ed having just a smidgeon over 120 cm for a washer and a dryer (minus the door-frame at one end!). Each machine is basically 60 cm wide, so this was a very tight fit, and no space to shake.
Would it kill designers to use common curtain widths like 160 cm?!? This would have to be a special order… 🙁
Of course I smashed some glassware on the floor. Well done me! That must be a lucky sign, right?
More stuff to recycle! We were very much working with “does it spark joy?”
Tempting dinner on the BBQ after a day of unpacking boxes.
Tuesday 11 June 2024
I was pretty exhausted after all the moving action, so I basically did nothing aside from hanging out on the computer and spending quality time at the gym for the next few days.
Wednesday 12 June 2024
More gymming… Documenting sweating after staying on the endless-stairs for longer than usual, trying to coax my back into healing with gentle motion.
Shoulder exercises require light loads.
Thursday 13 June 2024
Sometimes one finds the cars all covered with a thin layer of sand in the mornings, usually after a windy night.
More sweat-documenting at the gym.
Playing with the ceiling lights in “my corner” at the gym.
Birthday-celebration dinner downtown. It wasn’t clear that the offspring could make it, so we were the backup “table-fillers”.
Oh yeah! Protein always perks me up!
Friday 14 June 2024
At the airport in the morning, with mom’s bag on the self-service bag-drop.
Saying goodbye to cheerful mom, as she was about to visit the Swedes, for some real summer. She’d done about everything her health allowed her to do in the big move, and some distance was in order!
Huge weight-plate-management-update at the gym! The plates got relocated to a new “bigger” corner, stands were added, the stand-wheels were taken off, so they were more stable, and a new bar-rack was added. Thus I could finally stop worrying about somebody getting a stack of haphazardly stacked plates collapsing on themselves.
At “my corner” in the gym I noticed that in a particular light, the scuff marks on the black wall accidentally created what appeared to be stalks with leaves…!
