[Photos taken 22 – 30 June 2026, posted online 30 May 2026. We’ve been busy! Bjarki graduated from junior college this week, a huge milestone!! And Finnur and I just returned from a long weekend in Scotland with my company.]
After long and detailed negotiations, Bjarki got permission to take six of his buddies up to the summer house over a weekend, unsupervised, to celebrate his 18th birthday at the end of June.
Previously, Finnur would have gone up to the house ahead of the group to get everything up and running, but the morning after Anna’s graduation he headed to the airport to spend a week in Germany for work! Thus, it fell to me to take Bjarki and two of his buddies for a daytrip to the summer house to go over their impending arrival and subsequent departure.
The rest of the week was a tale of stuff breaking and getting it fixed: Our charging station gave up the ghost, and so did Emma’s orthodontics. I also met up with a few girlfriends, there was a double 50th birthday party, and an old coworker of Finnur’s from California came for a visit with his gang.
Sunday 22 June 2025
Watching the landscape wizz by as we drove to the summer house.
I discovered, perhaps not surprisingly, that just about every condiment sauce in the fridge had long since expired…
We practiced opening the hot tub, and fastening the lid for safety.
We practiced putting the fly-nets on the windows, to defend against the midget flies that bite.
Ugh, I don’t like plumbing stuff, but it’s seemingly a necessary evil out in the boondoggles.
After spending a couple of hours going over things, we headed to nearby Borgarnes for a snack before driving home.
Bjarki and two of the many buddies he made in junior college. These two are a part of a solid group of kids from a single school in Reykjavik that Bjarki slotted right into! (And all three of them graduated this past week in 2026!)
A neighborhood cat got a bit of love.
Homebound around dinnertime, and the lupines were pretty. The line of cars was unusually long but moved at an ok speed. Apparently a big something had been happening in the north of the country that weekend, and everybody and their uncle was returning home to town.
It’s nice to be the passenger in the tunnel, as it’s not my favorite stretch of road to drive on, although the adaptive cruise control makes it a lot less awful.
It was a lovely day!
Monday 23 June 2025
Emma kept outgrowing toys, and I kept handing them over to one of my brothers. It was very convenient to leave it in the staff room at the gym he works at!
This was the day that our 10 year old charging station died… sigh.
I would find out later that the replacement charging station did not have an internal circuit breaker like this one, and thus the electrician ended up having to rewire the electrical cabinet itself. Double sigh.
Tuesday 24 June 2025
Things kept breaking! Emma’s “palatal expander” (or whatever it’s called) broke in two, but thankfully they managed to fix it fairly cheaply.
The summer-sillies began consuming my brother in his gym-planning.
Taking a moment to roll out stiff legs before heading to work.
The mattress was well used!
The orthodontist’s office squeezed Emma in for a quick visit, phew!
Parked downtown for a CA-sewing-club.
So lovely!
Wednesday 25 June 2025
Met a lady for lunch!!
Yay, fresh fruit!
Thursday 26 June 2025
It was MAX day at gym! It looks like I did 6 x 90 kg squats, and 3 x 55 kg plus 2 x 60 kg bench presses. (Now, in May 2026, after a winter of shoulder issues, I eeked out a 1 x 55 kg bench press, and probably could do 3-4 x 90 kg squats. Hrumph!)
Went to buy a new charging station, it’s a pain to be reliant on the public ones.
The store had some calling cards for electricians. I called around and found that the EcoRaf people had an opening!
I tidied up the garage a bit so that an electrician could walk around without having to perform parkour maneuvers!
Friday 27 June 2025
Some greenery!
The electrician showed up!
The guts of a charging station.
A brand new part in our electrical cabinet. It would turn out to be insufficient!
The master electrician came to do final measurements, as his underling had done the grunt work. He took some measurements, hrumphed, but sort of ok-ed using the station. Later on he would call me and tell me that the unbeknownst to him, these stations no longer had x (can’t remember) so he would have to return the following week. He was annoyed, because he himself had just bought a few of the same stations (they were on offer) and now installing them would be more expensive. Details, details.
The car was happy to get juice, details be damned.
Back at the paint-store for more wood stain/oil.
Finnur reclaimed from Germany!!
Saturday 28 June 2025
Saturdays are good for Ikea visits.
Mom sitting on the rug that was her belated birthday present, along with the little plant-stand/mini table.
The two of us heading to a double 50 year birthday!! It was fun!! Out in the country, Bjarki turned 18 years old, and we got reassuring signs of life from him as a group of 7 dudes did their best to make their own dinner!
Sunday 29 June 2025
Anna made some unholy cinnamon-bun-monstrosity. It tasted very good!!
One of Finnur’s old California coworkers came by in the afternoon with his gang! They’d been traveling all over Europe for a while. Finnur then took them to the summer house (swapping places with Bjarki), where they stayed for a few days and did excursions from. I stayed behind, as I didn’t have vacation days to spare.
This came out of our yard!
Omg, Ikea two days in a row?! This time around was because Emma really wanted a mirror for her room.
Anna happy with her chili-plant. She was less happy when she rubbed her eyes with those fingers without washing them…
Salad in the making!
Steaks in the making!
Yum!
The reason for the fancy steaks was that Bjarki had returned from the summer house trip with his friends, alive and well and one year older! He got a now customary “OMG, I’m an adult now!” mug with photos of himself in honor of his 18th birthday!
Oh yeah!
By special request by the birthday boy: BBQed bananas with chocolate and ice-cream for dessert!
The mug in question!
Monday 30 June 2025
Picking part two of mom’s belated birthday present: a lounger for her patio. Such a charming pick-up point!
