January Eruption / Company-Event / Fancy Party
[Photos taken 14 – 31 January 2024, posted online 28 June 2024. Bjarki is now 17 years old!!]
Yet another eruption started shortly before 8 in the morning, and this time around I decided to drive to Kópavogskirkja, where I knew I’d have a bit of a view, and take a few photos. Unfortunately I didn’t realize just how freezing cold it was, and was severely underdressed.
Hilariously, some photographer there sold a photo to the Getty Images that had me and my tripod in it. There went my 15 seconds of fame!
Preparations for the much anticipated fancy-annual-sewing-club-party-with-spouses took up a lot of energy, as we rarely host those kinds of parties. But, the party was a success, and we could relax a bit!
In between all that there was a lot of snow, and snow-shoveling, as well as three whole days spent at a hotel on a whole-company event. There was also a bit of gymming, jogging, and dancing, where I completely busted a calf muscle. Ouch.
Sunday 14 January 2024
Ginger Bread House / Yule 2023 / Anna’s 20th Birthday!
[Photos taken 23 – 30 December 2023, posted online 20 June 2024. I now have a 67 year old mom!?!]
This yule went pretty much by the book. No surprises.
We managed to organize ourselves enough to make the annual ginger-bread-house, and some cookies. Then it was on to Christmas itself, which we celebrated on Christmas Eve as is the Icelandic custom, hosting my mom and one of my brothers. We spent Christmas Day at Finnur’s parents’ place, eating and playing social whist. That was also the day that Anna turned 20 years old!
My work gave us the days between Christmas and New Year’s off, so the days were calm and restorative. We ended the week by going with friends to the “summer” house, as the temperatures plunged outside.
Saturday 23 December 2023
Last Three E-Biking Rides & Regular Life Reboot
[Photos taken 19 – 31 August 2023, posted online 02 June 2024. Iceland has elected a new president! (The Wikipedia article is in flux, but it will hopefully settle down soon). It’s a mostly ceremonial position, the only real power is vetoing legislation, which almost never happens. Thankfully nobody is alleging election fraud and the baton will pass peacefully.]
The guided e-biking group began riding again for the fall. I would manage to go on three rides before an ache in my left shoulder disqualified me for the rest of the season.
Bjarki got his practice driving license, and frequently asked us to go out on drives with him. I tried to remain calm. We all returned to school and work, and I managed to also keep going to the gym.
Small home improvement projects got implemented, and the summer house also got some love and attention. I even managed to read a book outside in the backyard, gasp!
Saturday 19 August 2023
Thorlákshöfn Horse Rental, Summer Housing & Finnur’s 49th Birthday!
[Photos taken 27 – 31 July 2023, posted online 04 May 2024. We’re starting to see a little bit of greenery erupting from the ground, shrubbery, and trees!]
We managed to find a break in Anna’s work schedule to go horse-back riding by Thorlákshöfn. Then we spent a night with friends at a nearby summer house, before heading to our own summer house, and celebrating Finnur’s 49th birthday!
The weather cooperated and we went kayaking, before returning to town, and getting started for real on the garbage bin shed. I may also have gone gymming… Thus endeth July of 2023.
Thursday 27 July 2023
July Warmth = Jog, Tub, Sunsets & Horse Camp
[Photos taken 02 – 07 July 2023, posted online 14 April 2024. I have resigned from my current job! Still have a few more weeks to go until leaving for good. Hard to leave excellent coworkers, but brain wants a change.]
July rolled around, and with it some lovely weather-days. I went out for a jog, and even cleaned the hot tub in the backyard, which rarely gets used. The sunsets were of the “are-you-kidding-me”-type evening after evening, we starting subscribing to fruit deliveries, the earth rumbled, and Emma finished yet another horse-camp session.
Sunday 02 July 2023
Outdoorsy-Days of June, Gym & Graduation
[Photos taken 16 – 24 June 2023, posted online 15 March 2024. Still in Brussels, still no eruption in Iceland.]
I guess our lives have settled into a deep groove at this point. With the long, lovely days of June came the usual: e-biking, weeding, summer-housing, gymming, horse-camp, and attending a university graduation party!
Friday 16 June 2023
California Revisited
[Photos taken 01 – 03 June 2023, posted online 17 February 2024. There’s been another eruption since my last post! This one took out the hot water pipe to the Reykjanes peninsula, but it was fixed by building a road on top of days-old lava, and reconnecting a new pipe on top of it!]
June was a busy month. It began with Bjarki departing on a multi-day trip with his graduating-class to celebrate the end of their journey together. Trips like these came about to stop 10th-graders going on drunken binges downtown to celebrate finishing their compulsory education!
Then I was off on a whirlwind-trip to California to attend a memorial ceremony for Professor Len Tyler, who’d passed away a few months earlier. It so happened that I also managed to wrangle together a meetup with lots of old friends, as well as inviting myself onto the campus of a company that I’d had remote meetings with for months. The biggest drawback was that I missed Bjarki’s graduation ceremony, but the boy did good, and passed all his classes!
Thursday 01 June 2023
Chef-lings, Graduation-Season, & Outdoors-ing
[Photos taken 20 – 31 May 2023, posted online 14 20 January 2024. An eruption started early this morning last Sunday just outside the town of Grindavík. Three houses were burned down as lava entered the town itself. The protective wall successfully diverted most of the lava past the town, look for insane footage of the machines being rescued off of the wall as lava surrounds it, and then later in the day closing a wall-gap where the main road was. The ground is all cracked as parts of the town sunk by 1 m, and it’s very dangerous being in town. One road worker died as the ground collapsed under his feet a few days before the eruption. The town remains evacuated, and will be for the foreseeable future.]
Finnur transitioned from a soccer-group-trip to Scotland to working from London the following week, getting the royal treatment at my dad’s & Shirley’s! Meanwhile, I assigned-dinner making to the kids, one dinner each, as Mon/Wed/Fri afternoon gym-class cuts into dinner-prep time.
We all survived the lack of true-chef, and then transitioned over to attending junior-college graduation parties. All this was mixed in with some outdoors-ing.
Saturday 20 May 2023
Confirmation Season Continues
[Photos taken 01 – 08 April 2023, posted online 16 21 December 2023. The start of this blog post was written in a cafe in Dublin, Ireland!]
The confirmation season continued in full swing, as Easter vacation began. We attended two confirmation parties,
Saturday 01 April 2023
Waterfalls, School Visits & Confirmation Parties
[Photos taken 18 – 31 March 2023, posted online 02 December 2023. Frozen days ahead of us, but little snow predicted, hardly any snow this season so far.]
We actually went on an outing to the lavafield-waterfalls (Hraunfossar) from the summer house with friends who like sight-seeing. The rest of the month passed in a blur of confirmation-related events, junior college school visits with Bjarki, hosting dad & Shirley for an evening, Anna’s school project, and gymming.
Saturday 18 March 2023
