Dagbók Hrefnu og Finns

US Visitors @ Grindavík / Aurora / Departure

2025-01-03Uncategorized Standard

[Photos taken 03 – 05 January 2025, posted online 01 August 2025. Been a quiet couple of weeks on vacation, minus a weekend trip to Vík with a group of lovely ladies.]

We recruited good friends into guiding us around the western part of the Reykjanes peninsula. The first stop was the mostly deserted town of Grindavík, then we went to look at some interesting coastline features, followed by walking to a hot spring area, before enjoying some wonderful refreshments at their home.

Their last whole day we went to Flyover Iceland, did a bit of shopping, lit some leftover-fireworks, and then went aurora-hunting again. Their last day was more shopping, before heading to the airport. We were sad to see them go, but should see them again soon, as there’s a full solar eclipse in Iceland on 12 August 2026, and they’ve already reserved beds with us!

Friday 03 January 2025

Ready to run at a moment’s notice if the evacuation alarms went off in Grindavík, while also looking at photos from the past few months of madness.

New Year’s Swim / Sopaipillas / Wool Stores

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[Photos taken 01 – 02 January 2025, posted online 24 July 2025. This past month has been ridiculously busy, so absolutely zero progress in blog-land. So weird to be revisiting January in July!]

Most everything was closed on 1 January, as it was New Year’s Day. However, one of our town’s swimming pools was open so that’s where we headed. It was -7 to -10C / 20 to 14F outside, and I was thoroughly misunderstood when I told our US visitors that yes, “there is an indoor pool”. Of course, nobody really actually stays indoors, it’s all about the outdoors hot-tubbing!

The evening was the big sopaipillas-dinner (our visitors had brought special ingredients!), but the following day was a slow one. Mostly everybody just lounged, although the moms did manage to head out and visit a couple of wool-stores.

Wednesday 01 January 2025

The solar storm was still going pretty strong, and this was the view outside our house that evening.

New Year’s Eve / Party / Bonfire / Aurora / Fireworks

2024-12-31Finnur's family, Friends, New Year's Eve, Us Standard

[Photos taken 31 December 2024 (into 01 January 2025), posted online 14 June 2025. We’re getting more really nice weather, it’s like a “summer”??]

New Year’s Eve is always a fun day. The day began with Anna making yet another batch of the ever popular “horns” for the potluck-party that evening. It’s a “newish” twist on tradition that Finnur’s sister now invites the family to celebrate the new year, and we got permission to invite our US visitors along.

Earlier that day I managed to convince two hyperactive souls to join me for some frisbee golf in the baby-sized forest up the hill (Guðmundarlundur). By the forest we ran into a lost shivering cold dog, which we pulled into our car. The magical powers of Facebook (advertising lost animals is about the only thing it’s actually good for) had the dog reunited with its owner in half an hour.

Our US visitors were very keen to see the northern lights, and had been following the expected conditions. The forecast for the evening was excellent, following a solar storm ejection two days prior, so they planned on driving out while the Icelandic “annual comedy hour” was in progress to go hunting for lights.

At the last minute, I decided to join them as a guide in the hunt so they didn’t get hopelessly lost, or drive too far afield to make it back for the insane fireworks at midnight. Let’s just say that we got very lucky in the aurora deparatment!

Happy 2025 Everybody!!

Tuesday 31 December 2024

US Visitors @ Summer House / Games / Fireworks

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[Photos taken 27 – 30 December 2024, posted online 07 June 2025. We’re on the other side of a stormy few days, and the nights have been cold. Some plants sustained damage, but most doing ok.]

We decided to move everybody up to the “summer house”, as we’d have more actual beds there for our US visitors. The conditions were mild enough for the “middle”-big car to make it up to the house.

As luck would have it, we discovered upon arrival that our “big” electric car was refusing to charge, which put a serious damper on any sight-seeing plans as the car had just enough charge to get back to town. In case it was just a case of cold, we got permission to park it inside a nearby barn to thaw overnight, but no luck.

After marathon game-sessions, and a snowball-y walk to the lake and back, we drove back to town a day early. That meant we could go watch the nearby “official” search-and-rescue squad fireworks show nearby. Our visitors then spent a day visiting museums, while the rest of us rested!

Friday 27 December 2024

Cheating a bit, this is a photo from the following day. We arrived when it was dark, so there was nothing much to photograph.

Christmas Eve+Day+2nd Day / Anna’s 21st Birthday / US Visitors!

2024-12-24Christmas, Friends, Us Standard

[Photos taken 24 – 26 December 2024, posted online 01 June 2025. Pouring rain today, and strong chilly winds predicted tomorrow after the absolute beauty of a May weatherwise. All the plants are fully green (way ahead of schedule), and here’s hoping they survive the next few days…]

Christmas Eve passed in a traditional manner… Finnur was in charge of the kitchen, while Emma and I went on a hike up to the overlook point, and mostly everybody stayed out of Finnur’s way.

Similarly, Christmas Day was as tradition dictates with Anna’s 21st birthday, her making “horns” and desserts for Finnur’s family gathering at his parents’ place, us going there, eating and playing the social-whist tournament (I won!!) before preparing for visitors at home.

The second day of Christmas (aka Boxing Day in the UK) saw our US visitors arrive bright and early. They got to sleep for a few hours, and then they got dragged to the outdoors swimming pool/hot-tub/slide-extravaganza up the hill. The five of us went to a lovely late-afternoon family-gathering on my side, before spending the evening playing games, and then some more games!

Christmas Eve – Tuesday 24 December 2024

Happy Yule! About the only time we deck the table for dinner.

Annual Ginger Bread House / 2PRs on 1-Rep-Max-Day

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[Photos taken 23 December 2024, posted online 24 May 2025. We’ve returned to more normal May weather after a bonkers run of 10 sunny days with ridiculously high temperatures. It’s bizarre to blog about December at this point.]

The annual ginger bread house making happened on Thorlak’s mass day. That day we also had a 1-rep-max day at the gym of the three big lifts, and I set two personal records (PRs)! There were no judges around, just a fun group of people having a blast, so it’s not official. (Note on lingo: UK English apparently uses PB rather than PR, for Personal Best, but that’s peanut butter in the US, and others write 1RM for One-Rep-Max!)

Monday 23 December 2024

The annual ginger bread house, to be displayed until 6 January, at which point it was smashed and eaten.

Annual Photoshoot / Snow Scraping / Gatherings

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[Photos taken 16 – 22 December 2024, posted online 27 April 2025. My main has been devouring Dungeon Crawler Carl books at an unhealthy rate, I need to get through them so I can start sleeping again…!]

It was time for the annual photoshoot, so I could complete the annual-family-photo-calendar, which I’ve stubbornly made for close to 20 years now. (I clearly suffer from some mental condition!)

Early in the week I got and accepted a job offer! I would be starting at Varist on 7 January 2025. Very exciting!

The week passed in a blur of activity. I did a lot of snow scraping as the local scraper kept leaving snow in unfortunate places. I prepped a new knitting project, attended a birthday party, met Finnur’s coworkers for dinner, there was tidying up for Christmas, and continued decorating. We also started prepping for house guests that would be arriving soon after Christmas.

Monday 16 December 2024

Our yule-card (of sorts). The whole of Iceland has stopped sending Christmas cards, and instead we post photos on Facebook with season’s greetings.

Dusky Skies / Hat-Knitting / Ice-Skating Show

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[Photos taken 07 – 15 December 2024, posted online 26 April 2025. The rain is making the plants happy after a long draught.]

The march towards Christmas continued, with the promise of longer days soon. Christmas decorations had popped up everywhere, and I started knitting a hat to stave off doom-scrolling.

A lot of time was spent gathering, wrapping, and delivering things. We had dinner with friends, celebrated a birthday, I helped a brother hang things, and drove mom to the airport. There was a musical recital, fun at the gym, a sewing club, a passport application, as well as a second job interview!

One is rarely as busy as when one is unemployed!

Saturday 07 December 2024

The sky still orange-y at 20 minutes before noon, as the birds waited for food.

Decorations / Date-Night / Instagramming

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[Photos taken 01 – 06 December 2024, posted online 24 April 2025. It’s officially “The First Day of Summer” today, and it’s a public holiday! Somewhat unusually, the weather is actually quite nice!]

We were unusually “on top of things”, as Christmas decorations actually went up on 1 December, as I was taught is “proper”. I finally figured out that in order to actually implement a date-night, it helps to already have a restaurant booking, and to schedule said booking on a Sunday night, rather than a Friday, when everybody is exhausted.

Christmas presents started trickling in from Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping. It felt like I lost two weeks of my life this time around to gathering presents and wrapping them.

Our cars continued having all sorts of weird issues, and I now know some of the guys at the shop by name. Bjarki played at the music school, perhaps for the last time? Time will tell.

Lastly, I hosted an Instagram account for a day, trying to shed light on my life as a “woman in tech”. I also got invited to a job interview, which went well.

Sunday 01 December 2024

It was the first of four advent Sundays, and we got the special candle-holder set up and decorated.

New Eruption / Elly@Theater / Brass Orchestra Concert

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[Photos taken 21 – 30 November 2024, posted online 30 March 2025. It’s confusing blogging so far backwards, just last night I forgot it was already 2025 after writing 2024 one too many times earlier that day!]

On 20 November 2024, the seventh eruption in the Reykjanes-Sundhnúka-volcanic-eruption-series began at 23:14 UTC (which is local time). The morning after I got a few photos of the plume.

That same day I had tickets to the theater, and then life just stumbled onwards in flashes of the same as usual. Christmas shopping loomed large in my mind as Black Friday/Cyber Monday arrived, but I managed to keep going to the gym. I finished the month of November at a brass orchestra concert, and by voting for a new government.