I’ve been filled with unusual amounts of can-do these past couple of days, knocking (small but pesky) things off the to-do list left and right. Among stuff done was: outside yuletide lights turned off and stowed away inside in honor of the ever increasing daylight, garage tidied (mostly just actually shelved the yuletide stuff), blackoutRead more
[Written 27 February 2014] Emma’ still not walking but she’s standing up more and staying up for longer bits of time. And it’s adooorable! 🙂Read more
This is just a quick placeholder to note that today we returned back from our first winter break skip trip north to Akureyri. We had a great time, and look forward to more skiing in the future! 🙂Read more
[Written 19 February 2014]
FFF #6 almost didn’t happen because it was such a busy weekend with the double birthday celebration etc. etc.
But, I’d been meaning to check out the gallery showing of The Visitors (YouTube, NYTimes) by Ragnar Kjartansson (and friends), having heard good things about it, and the kids were whining, so I decided to make a break for it.
I’m very glad that I did because this was so fun, lovely, technically impressive, and charming. Oh, Ragnar, why must you be so darn charming?! 🙂
Now, because this is Icleand, and Iceland has a tiny population, it should surprise nobody that Ragnar (anno 1976) and I attended the same high school/junior college. Now, I didn’t know him per se, but I certainly knew of him, and knew people that knew him.
It’s funny how some people are just incredibly noticeable right from an early age.
I haven’t really followed his work closely, but from what I’ve glimpsed over the years, one recurring theme in his works (which straddle the range from music to painting to installations to performance art) is repetition. (See painting the same guy in the same room in the same outfit once per day for six months, getting opera singers to repeat a famous operatic moment again and again for 12 hours – YouTube link).
This work had a lot of inbuilt repetition too, but not so that it felt gimmicky.
Basically, you walk into a large very dark room, where there are 9 large illuminated screens, set up such that some obscure others from view. On each screen is a musician/singer with headphones and they’re all performing/singing the same song, but each of them is in a separate room, so they’re united, but apart. (28 images total, 1 video)
A large dark room, with a surprising amount of people! (No, they’re not dancing, it’s just an animated gif!)
Due to the smallness of our abode (in particular the dining/living room combo), we decided to split Emma’s already small birthday celebration into two parts.
On Saturday afternoon we had Finnur’s family over, and mine came over for lunch on Sunday. (30 images total)
Finnur’s Family – Saturday 15 February 2014
Emma with her new walker, and a present ripe for opening.
Just took Emma to her well-child visit and, uh, she’s growing like a weed height-wise, but has hardly gained any weight since two months ago…
This is what she looks like on the WHO anthro program: (4 images total)
She’s 81 cm tall (just shy of 32 inches), which is equivalent to an average 18 month old child.
Well, whadda-you-know… Emma Ósk is 1 years old today!!
There was no actual celebrating today though, but she did get a present from us. Proper celebrating will happen next weekend with our respective near-families (we’re trying to keep the celebrations ‘small’, just like the person in question!).
The day pretty much went like any other Wednesday, but I did take a few pics (14 images total)
Ms. Emma getting her present from us this afternoon.
This weekend’s Fake-Football-Fanclub outing (#5!) got postponed from the originally scheduled time on Saturday because we decided on a whim to have Finnur take the big kids to a technology-show in downtown Harpa instead.
Come Sunday, I was suffering from acute cabin fever, so when the opportunity presented itself, I just headed out to do my thaaang, even though it was late in the day.
On the schedule was checking out the second part of the show “From a Different Angle…” (Betur sjá augu…), see FFF #3 for the first part. The second part of the show was much smaller than the first part, and somewhat less interesting. That may just be because I have a preference for photos of people though. 🙂 (48 images total)
Driving to downtown Reykjavík at 4 pm.
My brother Pétur and family gave us three tickets/giftcards to see Mary Poppins at the theater for Christmas!
Super-luckily for us, Signý (Pétur’s fiancee), works in the ticket office of the theater, so when I asked her to find us ticket at a particular showtime (which was filling up fast), she emailed back a couple of hours later informing me that a new show had just been added (the third last of a year-long run), and that we had been the first to get seats to it!
Sometimes having “connections” is particularly sweet! 🙂
Lo and behold, soon the day of the show was upon us, so to the theater we went! (4 images total)
Bjarki with the stage backdrop behind him from our excellent seats!
Finnur’s electric bike developed some connectivity problems (probably because it’s been shaken to death by all the ice on the roads), and he ended up borrowing his parents’ car to go to work.
We had to pick him up again at the end of the day, but we arrived before he did so I got a few photos of the three grandkids that were there. (3 images total)
Kids flanked by their grandparents.