On our first Monday in California, Finnur took an early bus up to the city (San Francisco proper – where most of his team is now located) while I drove to Menlo Park to meet a friend for breakfast, with a quick non-stop visit to Stanford because I was early.
Driving on the aptly named Palm Drive towards the main Stanford quad.
Next up on the friends-travaganza were Deirdre and Matt, whose son, Owen, was born last December and we therefore hadn’t seen in real life. We arrived around lunch-time, and hung out for the entire afternoon, California-style! 🙂
Obligatory sofa-picture of Deirdre and Owen, now 5 months old. 🙂
We planned our California trip on very short notice, and picked dates mostly with regards to airfare prices. As it happened, Augusto and Sarah had long since booked a camp-site for our first California weekend, so they took off less than 24 hours after we’d landed. This worked out fine though because we were VERY jetlagged and had trouble being coherent much past 8 pm for the first few days. We were mostly coherent in the daytime though, so we used the opportunity to visit some good friends. First up: Katie and Dirk and Sean and Lulu. 🙂
Sean and Bjarki exchanging water-gun shots in the driveway.
Probably comparing gun-sizes, as men are wont to do.
We landed at San Jose airport late Thursday evening, after a quick stopover in Seattle. We are incredibly fortunate in that we still have many friends in the Bay Area, and were super-fortunate in that Sarah and Augusto agreed to house us for the duration of our stay. Thankfully, Augusto also agreed to pick us up at the airport, which was very much appreciated after a looong journey! 🙂
Our first morning in California: Giving Clarissa a present, a classic Icelandic children's book. 🙂 She was much more interested in the wrapping paper though… 🙂
The older kids playing in the driveway. And wearing t-shirts outside! 🙂
Finnur’s job requires him to travel to our old stomping ground in California twice a year, usually in May (for the lovely weather) and November (for Christmas shopping). This year I found myself feeling terribly homesick for Whole Foods, warm sunny camp playgrounds, and old friends – so I ever-so-gently twisted Finnur’s arm into agreeing toRead more
It’s been a torturous couple of weeks, with exam-making and then exam-grading, but I’M DONE! YAY! (Sadly, I’m only DONE for another month before I’ll be hit with a couple of make-up exams for those that failed the initial finals. I’m in denial until June begins. But by mid-June, I should be REALLY REALLY DONE!)Read more
Today this posting appeared on the government job-board (sorry, Icelandic only as far as I can tell). Yes, it is my current job. Which I have sort of resigned from – ‘sort of’ because I’m officially taking a year-long leave of absence for now because they’d (almost certainly) like me back if I change myRead more
I hate making exams. I hate making exams. I hate making exams. I hate making exams. … Yes, grraoooaaarrrgh, it’s Exam Season. Again. I’ve retreated to working from home because I can’t risk running into students while I’m making an exam because I’d just tell them all about it. I can’t lie. But that stillRead more
Jóhanna (Nökkvi’s fiancée, aka my soon-to-be sister-in-law) is graduating from the Icelandic Academy of the Arts this spring. To show off their students’ works, the school puts on a large graduation show at the Reykjavik Art Museum, which opened today. More/bigger images here.
Jóhanna by her very large painting titled "Ég geri hvað sem er" or "I do anything".
Only in Iceland? Here Jóhanna and her parents are with the First Lady of Iceland, Ms. Dorrit Moussaieff!
On my second day in Copenhagen I woke up at 8am (grrr… only 6 hours of sleep) and went to meet the good people of NORDUnet as well as the other representatives from the five Nordic countries to help plan this year’s conference. After the meeting ended that day, I headed back to my hotel for 20 minutes of horizontal time, before heading back out again to meet the planning committee at a fancy restaurant where we had a great dinner. On my way to the dinner I happened to walk through a portion of Kastellet, which was very pretty. Here are all the pictures, a selection of which is below.
At the Central Train Station at 09:30. I really liked the achways, but had a hard time getting a good picture of them.