[Photos taken 15 – 20 July 2024, posted online 10 October 2024. This morning we woke up to snow on the ground for the first time this season.]
Nice weather followed the abysmal weather, as it usually does. I decided it was high time to go prune all the dead branches from the hedge by our house, of which there were many. This task ended up taking multiple days, especially as the weather refused to settle, and kept swinging between extremes.
Bjarki’s e-sport camp summer job came to a close, as he only has a set number of weeks he could work via the town’s “work school” program. He therefore had all the time in the world to keep working on getting his driver’s license, which he did, finishing driving school #3, and his written exam.
I kept gymming, and slowly started attending actual gym-classes after my bad back-sprain at the end of May. Aside from all the occupational therapy inherent in cutting dead branches, I also did a stint of ironing for mom. I found it to be mind-numbingly boring, but the results were good, so I figured that was more important. Last but not least, I purchased a new TV for the living room, as our old one had gotten the thumbs down from Anna’s friends, and Finnur held an impromptu tire-changing lesson.
Monday 15 July 2024
Yet another project that had been on my to-do list for ages: trimming all the very dead branches from this old hedge of ours.
What to leave is always such a difficult decision…
This was Emma’s final week of “camp”, and we relented a let her do a week of mornings at the e-sports venue. As it happened, this was where Bjarki had been working for the past few weeks, and he had one more day to work, to make up for a sick day earlier in the summer.
Toasty by Icelandic standards. This had me wilting a bit (17.5 C is 63.5 F).
One of our watchful window-dwelling spiders got itself a nice late lunch.
I visited the gym!
Driving past baby bro as he conducted a training session out on the parking lot. This is what happens when the weather is nice!
Got side-tracked into clearing out dead branches from a non-hedge plant…
I called it quits on the hedge around 10:30 in the evening.
This section of seriously dead branches would have to wait.
The sky was gorgeous!
It was still lovely out there an hour later. This is 30 minutes before midnight.
Tuesday 16 July 2024
With Bjarki’s summer job out of the way, it was time to concentrate on finish getting his driver’s license. Here he is outside “Driving school 3” which is hands-on training in (faked) difficult conditions, etc. It’s nigh impossible to fail this part, and everyone thinks it’s a lot of fun.
I went back out to battle the dead hedge branches.
All that remained… I still haven’t figured out what to do with the bigger holes.
Wednesday 17 July 2024
I decided to start opting for a prettier and hopefully healthier breakfast, so this has been my luxury morning purchase for a few weeks.
Back at the gym, activating those lazy glutes…
Yes, I rearranged all the kettle-bells into the correct shelves. It was that kind of day.
Picked up a juicy fruit-box, yum!
After some research, I went to CostCo and bought a new TV for the living room. I’d been informed by Anna that our old plasma TV had been deemed “too crappy” to watch LOTR on, which hurt my nerdy soul. Thus, an upgrade to OLED was in order.
Reading the instructions! (Mostly for show…) We put the legs on, only to find out that they were too far apart for the cabinet-top, so we had to scour our screw-collection to fasten the TV to the old wall-mount. We got there in the end!
Oh goodness…The TV is not just a monitor anymore but its own programmed computer thing, with a horribly translated “terms and conditions” page. What had I done?!
Thursday 18 July 2024
Mom had bought curtains at Ikea, that were incredibly wrinkled when hung. She’d attempted to iron them using a hand-held steam-gadget, but to no avail. I therefore brought over my ironing board and iron, and spent close to four hours diligently ironing all the curtains. It was all very “occupational therapy”-ish. The saving grace was that the curtains really took well to the ironing, or I would have given up sooner!
During a break, I sat down by the TV and what would randomly stare at me but the Stanford Big Dish?!?!
Before ironing…
After ironing! The curtains all looked so much better!
Hail on the ground in July?!?!
That evening, I continued connecting the TV. It was so clever that I had to re-arrange all the connections from the old setup, and this time I decided to label all the cables with our handy labeler machine.
Friday 19 July 2024
A nervous Bjarki about to take his written driver’s license exam.
My haul. I wanted to repot a raspberry plant that Anna had salvaged from somewhere, and had outgrown its pot. I’ve been warned that they are like weeds, and should not be planted where they can’t be contained.
The happy face of somebody’s who’s just passed his written driver’s license exam! Now he just needed to pass the behind-the-wheel test!
The raspberry plant should be good for now (gray tub).
Went to gym class!
Picking up pizzas for dinner. At this point, I have zero cooking ambitions.
Saturday 20 July 2024
Unexpected find of the day outside “my” cafe.
That afternoon Anna came in asking “what does one do if the car tire is flat?”. I roped Finnur into being a tire-change instructor.
How many people do you need to put on a spare tire?
The boys and Emma setting out for the summer house, and Bjarki got to drive the big car for practice.
I decided to use the nice weather (it wouldn’t last) to continue removing dead branches. I was sooo close!
Lots of deadness.
I made it to the end shortly before dinner time. Phew!
We had amassed quite a pile of dead branches (and a few accidental live ones, oops!). Will we get rid of them before winter arrives for real? Stay tuned!! After dinner, I drove on up to the summer house, to join the others. Finnur was now officially on summer holiday, and I was still very much unemployed.
