[Photos taken 10 – 15 June 2023, posted online 14 March 2024, from a cafe in Brussels that has a smoke detector that is almost out of battery. Peep!!]
Upon returning home from California, the grass had grown to time-to-mow-length, there was a birthday, more work to do in the garden, bread-baking, insensibly fed ducks, purchased kayaks, and e-biking along the rocky coast.
[Photos taken 06-09 June 2023, posted online 10 March 2024. Still no eruption.]
While planning my California trip, I allocated one day to shopping, a walk, and a downtown-dinner. The day after I managed to invite myself to visit a person I’d been regularly remote-meeting with for work that whole spring, and then it was time to fly back home!
[Photos taken 04 – 05 June 2023, posted online 3 March 2024. We’re waiting for the next burp, err… eruption. There was a small magma-run yesterday, but it stopped before peeking out of the ground…]
My whirlwind-visit to the San Francisco Bay Area continued with a reunion of the Stanford lunch group (or whatever to call it?). The following day was dedicated to attending the memorial of Prof Len Tyler, and then literal walks down memory lanes as I walked all over the Stanford campus, curios to see what was new and what was the same.
[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!
[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.
[Photos taken 11 – 19 May 2023, posted online 13 January 2024. It’s foggy outside!!?!]
The weather took a turn for the not-great, but I still decided to go e-biking in the wind and rain.
[Photos taken 01 – 10 May 2023, posted online 07 January 2024. Solid ice on the streets, but multiple days predicted of above freezing temps so it might wash away.]
The staff association coffers at my company were full to the brim after the non-action in covid-times, and so it was decided to have the company annual ball in Copenhagen, Denmark! It was an absolute blast, and will probably never be repeated.
[Photos taken 15 – 30 April 2023, posted online 27 December 2023. The calm between the storms, as Christmas is done, and New Year’s Eve looms. No work until the new year.]
The last confirmation party came and went, with a bit of photography on my part. Then I caved in at a sale, upgraded my e-bike to something properly powerful, and signed for with an e-biking group. The biking schedule was pretty packed, and there were three outings in a short span of time.
Various spring tasks continued, I visited a school with Bjarki, we had dinner with friends, and one of the cousins got a year older!
[Photos taken 09 – 14 April 2023, posted online 24 December 2023. Perhaps it’s fitting that one festival is being blogged on another one?]
Easter day was a classic one. The kids got their chocolate eggs at home, and then we headed over to Finnur’s parents’ place for Easter eats, and social whist.
[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,
