Biking to Work in Sub-optimal Weather
[This occurred on 10 Dec 2014, but is being blogged on 22 Feb 2015. Iceland is still getting storms.]
Finnur still quietly grinds his teeth at these images. I posted them on Facebook back in December, because I’d biked to work (on our motor-assist-bike) during a blizzard, and made it there in one piece. It made me look like quite the biking hero, but in reality, it wiped out my biking-stamina, and I think I’ve only biked into work twice since that day until today. It didn’t help that the trip took about half an hour, which is a bit much compared to the five minutes it takes to drive there. Also, the weather has been unpredictable and stormy all since December. Boo!
From Facebook:
So, I biked to work this morning in this lovely blizzard. It was part foolhardy, part fun, part nervewracking, but I made it in the end. Yes, Dear Husband offered to bike instead but it’s my week to bike, so I said no because I need to meet a quota of working hours, and chauffeuring the kids around shortens the work day significantly. Also, it turned out that if he had indeed biked, he probably would have gotten into trouble because the wind-direction would have been head-on for him, whereas it was all side-wind for me. Good times!
As much fun as this was, I’m still lobbying to buy a second car though. Half an hour of biking to work one way isn’t helping with the goal of accruing work hours!
So, on to my biker-hero images. (5 images and 1 video total)
Quick stop under the Smaralind parking lot.
Christmas Photo Time
[Photos taken on 06 DECEMBER 2014, put online on 16 FEBRUARY 2015. Mwahahaha!]
I stubbornly still take annual Christmas/Yuletide/Solstice/Holiday card photos. At this point it seems pretty quaint, but I like it, so there!
This year I took about 250 photos, and below are a selection of them. It’s basically all Anna, Bjarki and some Emma, with me and Finnur thrown in for good measure here and there.
Emma was REALLY opposed to the whole exercise, and in the end, no one picture won out, so we sent out a collage this year.
Enjoy the mayhem. (29 images total)
Anna smiling.
Weekend-Visitors from the UK
[This happened between Saturday 06 December to 08 December 2014. Blogged on 20 February 2015. Yahoo!!]
Grandpa Gunnar and Shirley decided they needed a bit of snow and cold temps in their life, and popped on over from the UK to stay with us for a couple of days. (25 images total)
Saturday 06 Dec: Our visitors made it!
Advent-time at Work
[Happened 02-13 December 2015, but is being blogged on 17 February 2015. Insert comment here.]
The first weeks of December saw lots of yuletide going-ons at my workplace. Older employees took this in stride, but for someone who last worked at a place where there was no such thing (just a lot of exhaustion and exam-time jitters), this was extremely novel and nice. (16 images total)
Tuesday 02 Dec: It’s customary to bring a cake if it’s your birthday, and as it happened a birthday collided with an ex-coworker also stopping by with a cake, which gave us this fantastic opportunity to recreated the famous Titanic scene. Yeah.
Kiddos at Home
[These photos were TAKEN on Sunday 30 November 2014, but posted on 01 February 2015. Time flies!]
It was about time to take the annual Yuletide Photo of the kids, so I started gathering the home-studio stuff into Emma’s room to prepare.
Yet again I was trying a new setup, which I wasn’t sure would work so well (two umbrellas with flashes, and then a third flash on the camera itself), so I needed to try it out on some victims.
Finnur was out doing manly things, so I tried recruiting Anna to pose, but she escaped to her friend’s house. That left me with Bjarki and Emma, both of whom weren’t really in a very cooperative mood.
But yeah, here are some photos of the kids, at the end of November. (26 images total)
Anna busy not looking at the camera.
FFF #2.5 – Advent Concert of Hafnarfjörður’s Brass Band
[This happened on a lovely Saturday afternoon on 29 NOVEMBER 2014, but was only written up just now, on 11 JANUARY 2015. Better late than never, eh?]
Fake-Football-Fanclub activity experienced a four-weekend-hiatus in November, mostly because Dear Husband (aka Finnur) was off in California for 3 weekends, which was followed by a crazy weekend where we attended two Thanksgiving parties!! (Where I took no photos, so I wouldn’t have to blog about it. Tsk, tsk!)
But, a good thing is hard to kill, so I decided leave Finnur to deal with the kiddos in order to attend the annual advent concert of the Hafnarfjörður Brass Band (Lúðrasveit Hafnarfjarðar) at the photogenic Víðistaða-Church. Our good friend, Adda, is a band member, and … uh, Adda, don’t I still owe you for the ticket?!?!?!? (Small writing hiatus while I go pay Adda for the ticket. Oops!)
Afterwards, I followed Adda and her extended family to her abode, where we ate ice cream. Mmmm… (10 images and 1 video total)
The Nutcracker and Unhappy Eating at Harpa
[This HAPPENED on 22 November 2014, but is being blogged on 01 February 2015. Late never better?]
A portion of one of my two sewing clubs decided to go to see the St. Petersburg Festibal Ballet perform the Nutcracker at Harpa. Since we’d somehow managed to never see the Nutcracker, I decided to bring the big kids just for them to experience something out of the ordinary.
The ballet was very ballet-y, and it really drove home how much ‘entertainment’ has changed over the course of the last century. But it was cool to watch people do stuff I neither want to nor can do, and discover where certain musical pieces are from. Anna stayed interested throughout the show, but Bjarki was getting pretty bored by the second half. Oh well. (4 images total)
Bjarki doing his best to feign interest at intermission.
Prices of Clothes in Iceland
[Photo taken on 21 November 2014, bloggen on 01 February 2015. Argh.] Iceland has many pros and cons. One of the bigger cons is the ridiculous price of clothes. Case in point: I was browsing through Debenhams, and found a top I liked. The price: ISK 6990 or GBP 36.2 or USD 56.8. The reasonRead more
Bingo With Bjarki’s Class
[This HAPPENED on Tuesday 18 November 2014, but is being blogged on 01 February 2015. Yeah! ]
Bjarki’s classroom coordinators organized a bingo one late afternoon after school. Everybody brought something edible to share, and one small present.
The bingo was organized in such a way that all the kids got a present, and those who won multiple times got a clementine for each subsequent win.
It took a while for Bjarki to win, but once he did, the event became a lot more fun. (6 images total)
Kiddos eating from the shared food table.
Bjarki Attends the Advent Gerpla Gym Meet
[This HAPPENED on 16 November 2014, but is being blogged on 01 February 2015. Because I can.]
Bjarki’s still attending twice weekly gymnastics practice, and their ‘advent’ meet was in the middle of November. There’s a video below of Bjarki doing the exercises. (3 images and 1 video playlist)
Getting their ‘report cards’ and medals at the end of the day.