Category: Life

Greetings from sunny and warm California. We’re enjoying actual summer, as contrasted with Scotland, which has continued having, at intervals, miserable rain.

Both of us are trying to make up for having taken time off first in Iceland and then during our ill-fated visit to Puerto Rico, so much of what we’re doing is sitting before the computers, fielding interruptions, and working. It’s actually been good – work is the one thing we can count on having, and its parameters haven’t much changed. T. is subbing shorter pieces to magazines with long wait times, so she can have forgotten about them and be surprised months from now; D. continues to make strides in finishing a major project with his coworkers in Scotland by September. T.’s editor has finally returned from vacation and has gotten her revved up for the next novel revision – T’s first stab at writing a mystery. The revision notes say “darker and grittier,” so T’s reading mysteries and watching Hitchcock. And scaring herself.

We’ve been finding the joy in our days, as we’ve been reminded to do. There is satisfaction in the smooth-skinned nectarines, bursting with sweetness – and juice, of the sort that runs down chins and wrists. There is happiness in the eating of mounds of blueberries (suddenly inexpensive, and yummy with yogurt!), baking bread, making handmade, homemade pizza, whipping up vegan chocolate and coconut pies, and more. We’re very much looking forward to settling into a kitchen of our own and doing more experiments with seitan and sausage-making. We rediscover joy, daily, and anticipate its increase. Soon. Soon. Soon. It’s a drumbeat in our heads.

A few times a week one of us will mention how much we miss Scotland. Much of that is because we were “home” there – we had a domicile, community, familiarity, and (at least before having to move) routine. We’re still coming to grips with the amusement and the irony of being called jet-setters – we feel more like we’ve just been bounced all over – jet-setting sounds at least a bit more controlled. But – this time in our lives has been just a little reminder that we don’t control anything. It appears that soon this little epoch – and this little lesson – is coming to a close. Soon. Soon. Soon. It’s a pulse that keeps us going.

The main reason it’s important that we know where we’re going soon – aside from how crazy-making it is to be not in our own place – is that we’ll soon need to begin planning for a return visit to Scotland. Once we’ve settled on the where of rebuilding our lives and community, we’ll be able to determine the when of spending a month or so back with our folks Glasgow. We’d prefer to visit when it’s not snowing, of course, but as we’re going to be planning partially around chorus stuff and partially around D’s work, and Glesga has had nothing but rain and increasing cold… well, we’ll see what happens.

Dear friends in Scotland, it’s 93°F / 33°C outside, and sunny, with a light 20% humidity. We think there may have been a tiny bit of rain last week, during the night, but we’re not completely convinced about that – it could have been a sprinkler malfunction. But – we digress. Finally our ducks are lining up, and will eventually be in a row (for all the good that does ducks). The countdown will soon commence for another launch… soon.

Continuing to plan,

-D & T

Well, friends, we’ve been in California for a few weeks now, but it’s already time to move on to the next adventure. Our “household goods” (i.e., our books, clothes, and kitchen items) should arrive in San Juan, Puerto Rico within the next couple of weeks, and we will arrive in San Juan in just a few short days. We’re hoping that one of the houses we’ve found via online searching will work out, but we’ve booked a week into a hotel just in case we can’t find anything suitable right away.

We’re hoping to find something a bit out-of-the-way, in the mountains where it’s about 5° cooler, but we’ll see how it goes. We have been living out of the same four suitcases for about two months now, and really want to settle into somewhere nice and quiet, and to have some different clothes from which to choose. Of course, neither one of us has anything like the type of clothes needed for the climate in Puerto Rico, so we’ll be a bit out of sorts until we can manage to go shopping – which we can’t do quite yet, because the suitcases are about maxed out in terms of weight already, to the point where we’ve had to weigh each one and redistribute the load.

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After nearly a month of enjoying California, we Hobbits will be Abroad, once again. Many of you have promised to visit. We’re wondering who will be the first to make it to the warmth of Puerto Rico.

-D & T

I go. You go. They go.

Coming and going. The revolving doors of the world are turning still. The week we got home, we discovered that a dear friend had failed to mention the return of her cancer, and had left this world the day we came into town. Today we’ve heard an old acquaintance has died in a rafting accident.

Coming and going.

It’s a little hard to wrap our heads around, and being in this forward motion all the time has robbed us of stopping as we ought, to celebrate the lives of friends and loved ones. And yet, forever moving has also, in a way, created an easy lie to tell oneself; as we move on, everything is as we left it, when it vanishes in our rear view mirror. Everyone is somewhere… and now, somewhere else. Perhaps we’ll just run into them later, at another time…

Coming and going, saying hello, and now, goodbye.

Life has hit Fast Forward, as we’ve been informed that our possessions have somehow reached the port in PR without us. Quelle surprise! — or, as we should say now, ¡Qué sorpresa! The communication we expected to alert us to the ship’s departure from Rotterdam never materialized, and so we’ve been caught a bit off-guard. Now before us are getting to our next destination (check) finding a place to land (pending) and finding the means to get us to our various landing places (also pending). It was good to stop traveling for a moment, anyway, to give T’s lung inflammation and heavy cough a chance to sort themselves out — the hives, at last, have retreated, as has most of the dazed-and-confused vacant stares from jetlag. Dazed and confused stares for other reasons remain. It’s all the coming and going.

It was good to pause briefly mid-move in order to see friends. We’ve enjoyed reconnecting. However, we have found the truth of the matter is that it’s not possible to see everyone. We figured this out on our second visit home, when we had guests visiting until past eleven, and our flight left at four a.m., and we didn’t have the heart to say, “GET OUT, we have to pack! We have to sleep!” (Trust us, we’ve gotten the heart since then.) Self-preservation, better late than never, has finally kicked in, and despite dearly wanting to see everyone, and get in touch, (we owe several folk emails, and quite a few acquaintances, friends, and family we owe a meal or a chat) we know better: it’s not going to happen. We’ve wanted to spend more time with you, but between the illness (T.’s superpower right now is apparently Snot Creation) and the general busyness (Oh, yes, we’re still working during the week; D. on contracts, T. on yet another huge editorial project), we haven’t managed it. Please know it is our stated intention to be in the state more often, and we’re sure we’ll catch up to you around the holidays.

That seems an awful thing to say, with the number of people we love being lost – but the truth is this: we love you now. We love you whether or not we have face time with you. You can stay in this world or leave it, knowing that. Even if we don’t see each other again for awhile, we thought of you while we were here, and in our hyperbusy lives, we are working to prune things away to create more time.

It’s magical thinking, maybe, that there’s something we can do to produce more of something both finite and infinite, but I think, if we’re quick, we can find it – a moment for our hands to touch, clasp, and squeeze, as we go through the revolving doors called Life.

Coming and going. To everything, there is a season, after all, so perhaps now is our season to fly by quickly, and hurry on to our next destination. You are in our hearts, and we hope we’ll see you as we pass.

You probably have them, too — the sort of friend who always has an appropriate song for every occasion. T. is usually that for other people, but we have friends who can manage to find a show tune or a horrible 80’s ballad (our dear Mr. S.), cantata or hymn selection to suit every mood. This week it was our friend Laura, a Minnesota poet and teacher, who provided the lyrical goodness to our mood.

We’d been discussing the fact that almost every move in a person’s life provides to them opportunities – often unlooked for, and sometimes overlooked – to restructure, reorient and reinvent themselves. The truth of the tautology “wherever you go, there you are” is proven by the fact that while people can change, they usually …don’t. And yet, when we make an effort to live deliberately, we know that we need to take advantage of every opportunity to get our brains unstuck from a rut, and our habits out of a groove. And so, the angst and the struggle of moving is put to good use.

We have bought toys – not electronic ones, necessarily, but real ones, cheap ones, like jacks and marbles and magnets. We’ve drawn and painted and knitted and (badly) crocheted. We believe in the transformative power of play, and hope to always include it in our lives. “We’ve had our second childhood,” T. joked. “It’s time for a second adolescence.” It was said in jest, but what does that even mean? What do we want out of our lives this move? There’s always a new direction in which a person can be pointed.

The word comes from the Latin adolescere and the literal meaning is “to grow up.” Taking that “adolescence” statement seriously, during the growing-up transition, a child grows into their body, and begins to expand their mind. Their emotional development exceeds the simplistic action-response loop it goes through in childhood, and the child evolves as a person. Sounds like a worthy goal, no?

We’ve paid attention to our bodies before – but it’s all too easy to get into the rut of merely worrying about aches and pains and expanding waistlines, and otherwise ignoring a machine which is made to give us much more than we ask from it. Our bodies don’t fail us until they absolutely have to — and serve us incredibly well. What can we do to better them?

Our emotional and mental development never really stop – we are big old geeks, and always smile at the snarky “Every day’s a school day” phrase we often heard from friends in Glasgow. It’s generally sarcastically meant, but it’s true – you do learn something new every day, and why not? We hope to continue to do so forever. We also hope to live out the phrase, “life is too short to be petty.” We realize that pettiness is kind of a personal besetting sin, and we’d really like to learn (and relearn) to just … let things…go. Our new favorite phrase, instead of being disagreeable and defensive is, “You think so?” We’ll let you know how that one goes.

And this is the song which brought goes with our thoughts of the moment – by a group called Five for Fighting (yes, there’s a meaning behind that name). The song is called World, and a hat tip to Laura again for sharing it:

World

Got a package full of wishes
A time machine, a magic wand
A globe made out of gold
No instructions or commandments
Laws of gravity or indecisions to uphold

Printed on the box I see
Acme’s built a world-to-be
Take a chance, grab a piece
Help me to believe it

What kind of world do you want?
Think anything
Let’s start at the start
Build a masterpiece
Be careful what you wish for
History starts   now

Should there be people or peoples
Money, funny pedestals
for fools who never pay
Raise your army, choose your steeple
Don’t be shy, the satellites
can look the other way

Lose the earthquakes, keep the faults
Fill the oceans without the salt
Let every man own his own hand

What kind of world do you want?
Think anything
Let’s start at the start
Build a masterpiece
Be careful what you wish for
History starts now

Sunlight’s on the bridge
Sunlight’s on the way
Tomorrow’s calling
There’s more to this than love

What kind of world do you want
What kind of world do you want
What kind of world do you want
Think anything

Let’s start at the start
Build a masterpiece
History starts now
Be careful what you wish for
Start now

–“World”, click for the song itself; lyrics by John Ondrasik, Five for Fighting.

This is it, – the boxes are unpacked, the new name is on the mailbox. Who are you going to be? What are you going to change? What can you make of this next epoch in your life? Even if you haven’t moved, the sun comes up on a fresh new day, every. single. morning. Choose. Make it good: History starts… now.

We’re enjoying the warm weather and the nature, here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We hear owls at night (D. thinks he might wander about to see if he can locate their nest), doves at odd times throughout the day, crickets at night, and California quail – or a partridge to you folk in Glesga. Isn’t it GORGEOUS? They’re such sociable wee birds, and it was happily sitting in the tree, trying to find a date for the night (afternoon? hour?) and politely stopped trolling briefly to pose for a picture. You can watch video of them and listen to their song here.

It’s been incredibly sunny this week (to our dark-adapted eyes), and has been in the 80’s edging towards the 90’s (26°C to 32°C). Right now it’s past 8 in the evening and is 73°F / 23°C. We know if we were in the UK we’d be just a tiny bit envious of these temps… sorry, guys. Come visit us in PR, all right?

*yawn* We’re still really not over being jet-lagged, which is a shock to us: in the past we’ve managed without jet-lag quite well. This time, though, even though we fought off the dehydration of flying, we haven’t yet recovered from the several days of Icelandic sunshine which didn’t let us rest adequately. It’s a little annoying, but we’re early to bed and early to rise at this point. T. hasn’t succumbed to an afternoon nap yet, but she has been talked into reading whilst lying down in bed, which to her is near enough to napping to be scandalous. Truly, our bodies were put through the wringer this past winter, and we’ve just been pushing forward, full steam ahead… and it seems that we’ve hit a wall. That’s what vacation does for you, sometimes. Grabs you in an undertow of sleep, and doesn’t let you up ’til you’re fully rested. When we’re feeling indolent and guilty we remind ourselves – we need the sleep.

We’ve begun the house hunting, and are constantly amazed at just how inexpensive things are in Puerto Rico. We haven’t settled on anything yet, but have put out several inquiries and are hopeful that something will turn up in very short order.

The majority of our possessions are still in transit somewhere: they’ve made it out of the UK and are to be received by a US company at some point (we don’t know when). We’re hopeful that we’ll get an estimate as to their delivery time soon, so that we can book our flights and head off. The alternative is to just take off without knowing when our things will arrive, and live from these same 4 suitcases until they show up. You can imagine how thrilled we aren’t at the prospect, but it may turn out to be what we have to do…

T.’s hives are slowly but surely fading, but we’re keeping her activities low-key (limiting sun, face creams, etc.) in hopes not to encourage them to flare up again – they’re apparently systemic/stress-related! After The Great Watermelon-Avocado Gorge of 2012, we’ve slowed down on our fruit and vegetable consumption just a tiny bit – having fruit for one meal per day, and salad for another for three days running, is possibly just a tiny bit extreme – not to mention a little surprising to our intestinal tracts. Also: it’s not quite watermelon season yet, and we’re really wanting to wait for the good ones to arrive, as we’ve eaten several “meh” ones. We know the drill: food in SEASON. We’ll have to wait, but it’s so wonderful to have an inexpensive variety of fruit and veg at all!

As always, we’ll keep you all updated as to what we’re up to. At the moment, though, we’re not up to anything particularly exciting: we’re both working our regular schedules in between having visitors drop by, getting the laundry done, and marveling at the warm weather.

-D & T

The words and phrases vary – jet set, big-time travelers, world-travelers, living the high-life, globe-trotters – but most all of them have been said to us, in one combination or another. The tones have ranged from wistful to envious to resentful as the wishes have been voiced, “I wish I could go there / do that / live there.”

Dear Friends, you can go there / do that / live there! It’s EASY! Here’s how:

• Step One: Rid yourself of your house. You can either sell it outright, rent it out, or allow the bank to repossess it — it’s what all the cool kids are doing now.
• Step Two: Rid yourself of your cars, and most of your possessions. Garage sale, flea market, Freecycle: go!
• Step Three: Earn an advanced degree, and get some serious student loan debt going.
• Step Four: Be unable to find work in your home state in your degree field, or be unable to find work in academia in any other state which provides benefits, but many will be eager to hire you as an adjunct, for an hourly rate which you might have earned your first year in college.
• Step Five: Decide to live as inexpensively as you can, work where you can, and do the best you can to both make ends meet, and be happy. This last point is key – do your best, make ends meet, be glad. It’s what a lot of people are doing these days.

Friends, it’s just as simple as that!

Okay, no it’s not. Simple, that is. It’s complicated, as is all of life.

See, here’s the thing: a blog is only so much of one’s life. There is only so much of a personal journey that is open to public consumption. Much of the struggle and angst and despair that goes on in the background, you have no idea about… so the enviously tossed-off phrase, “Wow, you guys are just jet-setters now!” — is not only inaccurate, but allows you to believe something about us which allows you to feel free to hate us just that tiny bit, because we’re so lucky, we should be impervious to hurt. Or whatever.

That’s actually the same kind of thought-process it takes for an individual businessman to eventually embezzle millions from a corporation – “Meh, they have so much, they won’t notice.” Just a little contempt, because someone else is so lucky. Sure, we are awfully blessed, but a.) you don’t know at what cost, and b.) whatever the cost is, we’re paying it, and no one else.

This is not to say that we can control how people feel – nor do we want to! We all observe and pass judgment on all kinds of things in our own heads. Having lately been on the receiving end of a lot of assumption, though, we’re merely suggesting that things are not always as they appear… It’s a good realization for us, and will enable us to think twice before we speak.

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One of the nicest things, these warm summer mornings, is to waken before the sunrises, and just… listen.

The crickets chirp, intermittently; a musical cadence that first lulls us to sleep, then accompanies us into wakefulness. There’s the liquid warbling of some bird or other, around about four a.m. — followed by the high-pitched screech of a hunting owl, the alarmed squeak of its prey, and then, as the light bleeds into gray, a staccato high-pitched trill, as another bird stuns insects into submission through the power of its call. The grass rustles, the trees susurrate in the breeze, and the young fawns pick their way delicately across the lawn, following their doe.

For now, no one is beating a lawn into submission with a mower, no one is blowing leaves, sweeping sidewalks, and not even the sprinklers have yet sputtered to life. In the earliest hours of the day, suburbia belongs to the birds and the beetles.

It is simply lovely.

It’s been so nice to just be here – because our family wanders in and out at odd hours. Auntie Bean stops by with Meyer Lemons from her tree, and bits of casseroles, and news. T’s older sister drops by before work – often to cadge a bite of breakfast or something for lunch. Her little brother roller blades over to mow the lawn, and make himself generally amusing and useful. Her father wanders by, waves, and wanders off again. Her eldest sister and mother phone every afternoon, “just to check in.” It’s a privilege to be close enough to do all of these things, and it makes us glad that we’ll be here much more often.

The week will get busy soon – very busy, with work meetings for both D and T, errands and small tasks which will consume the hours – but we’re surrounded by the good from all directions – from the first birdsong in the morning, to the last tight squeeze from a haven’t-seen-you-in-five-years-how-are-you!? visitor at night.

Home. A malleable concept just now, which morphs into meaning so many different things.

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The Great PR House Hunt will on soon! Stay tuned…

-D & T

“Jet set” is a 1950’s phrase which sprang up with the advent of mass air travel – only the wealthy flew more than once in a blue moon, because the price was prohibitive, but also because only the wealthy had places to go which weren’t more reasonably reached by car or bus. Car and bus would not really get us either to Scotland or PR, at least not all the way.

Our last day in Reykjavik we opted for an early lunch at Café Babalú in recognition that we’d be in the airport and in the air and didn’t really want to have to break out our packed lunch / dinner until we had to. After we’d wandered a bit, and enjoyed the eclectic atmosphere of Babalú, we made our way back to Eiriksson to sit in the sun for awhile … and were greeted by a beautiful 22° halo around the sun. We sat and watched tourists for awhile and enjoyed knowing that we had only to drag our bags up from the office to be on our way.

Reflecting upon this trip, we’ve decided that Summer in Iceland is much less of the Iceland we love. The midnight sun is fascinating, but it’s also very tiring, meaning that we didn’t get the much-needed rest we had planned on, in taking three days to decompress. Also, the sheer number of people visiting — and some of the noise late at night/early in the morning that we didn’t get to enjoy the solitude we crave. On our next visit, we will make certain that there’s a decent amount of snow and rain and darkness, to keep the tourists down a bit and to help it be the land of mystery we’ve enjoyed. (Yes, there’s a tourist season somewhere for everyone…)

If you love sunshine, have endless energy, and like crowds, visit in the summer. If you seek solitude and more individual interactions, save your visits for the rest of the year.

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On the way to the airport, D. attempted to catch some views of some of the more isolated homesteads between Reykjavik and Keflavik. Some are well-kept and look like the people just wanted to live a bit off of the beaten track. Others, though, speak of long-term neglect, and make us wonder whether someone just couldn’t have salvaged something before the place went to ruin. The way the houses in many cases just seem to sink back into the land reminded us of parts of Alaska and the high mountain areas in Northern Italy, on the Austrian border. It’s something to do with farmsteads, maybe — perhaps they’re only used for a time deliberately? Who knows.

Also along the way, though, we spotted many places where people had piled rocks into simple pillars, or into difficult balancing acts. We also spotted several places where there were rocks which had been set up to resemble people, apparently. These aren’t small rocks, so we figure that they must have had to use heavy machinery or a lot of coordinated muscle power to get them into place. We wonder, will someone in the future study these things and determine that they were of some particular significance, much as we study such things from ancient peoples and ascribe meaning? Or will they (rightly?) determine that someone was simply bored and had time on their hands, so decided to make use of the locally-abundant resource of lava rocks?

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For the Iceland-SF leg of our Reykjavik exit, we were overtired from the endless sun and unable to sleep or rest. Twitchy and needing distraction, we slogged through movies — Eragon (we barely made it through, it was so awful), Sherlock Holmes (we thought it was sort of like James Bond meets Victorian Europe, it wasn’t faithful to Holmes at all, but had nice clothes), and finally wrapped up by watching Astropia – a quirky, random pick that we just thought looked weird enough to qualify as Entetainingly Bad SFF. Astropia is an Icelandic film, subtitled in English, and is a love note to gamers. We truly enjoyed it, and suggest that you watch it (available at the link) if you’re at all geeky or into comic books, role playing, gaming or even if you’re just interested in spending an oddly endearing hour and a half.

After three movies and numerous trips to annoy the stewardesses by asking for water (one gets used to them being sullen, and does it anyway) we finally arrived in Seattle. Customs there– which we had dreaded — was a breeze, and the agent who scanned our bags and then pawed through them (“your cheese showed up as liquid on the scan, so I’m going to scan them again separately”) even asked if he could repack for us! (We declined.) The Seattle Airport is organized and quiet – at least where we were – and was a nice place to have our packed dinner (rye crackers, cheese, hummous, veggies).

After hours of sitting around in SeaTac the airline announced that they were offering an upgrade to first class for $50, in order to accommodate the full flight and the stand-by people they’d oversold to — tsk, tsk, Alaska Air! — and we gratefully accepted. It wasn’t exactly luxury, in a small plane, but having a seat where we weren’t pressed sweatily against others for an additional two hours made a difference in our sanity, making it well worth the money. Neither of us had sat in first class before, and have since decided that the biggest difference is that the flight staff NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE. ” Can I get you something else?” is the question of the day, and unfortunately, as the stewardess couldn’t speed up time, we merely wanted to be left alone! By 1 a.m., it was finally over — we were picked up, driven to our temporary home, and settled, had dug through our (4 identical) suitcases to find our evening toiletries, peeled ourselves out of our gross traveling clothes, showered, and crashed into bed.

It’s good to be here, though we’re still vastly low-energy, T.’s face is covered in hives (we’re still not sure what that is about) and we spend time sitting around marveling at the abundance of sunshine and summer fruit, staring, and smiling in a vague fashion at the parade of relatives wandering through hugging us and asking us if we want another bite of artichoke or watermelon (Yes, please, and thank-you.). Thanks to REALLY hydrating, we are adjusted to Pacific Time mostly, and will each be back working electronically tomorrow — T. has novels to craft and revisions to finish, and D’s sure his boss would like to hear from him sooner rather than later. Until next time…

-D & T

Sun! Glorious sun! Which means we’re not going to the Blue Lagoon after all, as the sun brings out the bar crowd. We liked the Lagoon better during the dark/cold days when there was no outdoor bar, and everyone hunkered in the hot water, separated visually by streaming sulfur clouds. We all looked like those Japanese monkeys, but it was peaceful. If you go, do wear a swimming cap, or coat your hair in shea butter – otherwise, you will not be able to let go, float, relax, or get a brush through your hair at a later date. Further, don’t wear flip flops in, as you do lose them – the water is utterly opaque. And thus ends that Public Service Announcement.

We’re a mite disappointed at the flat, calm sea today when we have no time for whale watching, but we hope our new Polish buddy gets a chance to go out, and we’re glad that for his sake it’s stopped raining – he came for the long sun. And the bars. Let’s hope he’s finding what he’s looking for.

(Meanwhile, this blog post is being written by someone who needs to be showering, doing dishes, scrubbing the bathroom, and packing plane snacks, but who is blogging instead… Y’know what’s weird? We fly out at 6 pm GMT and arrive in Seattle… at 6 pm, PST. An eight hour flight, in the blink of an eye. Kinda.)

Well, emails from Glasgow recently contained the indignity of today: The Olympic Torch is this very evening going to Glasgow… and going DOWN WOODLANDS ROAD. WHERE WE USED TO LIVE with the craptastic boiler and the people wee-ing/puking on the back steps. And PAST THE UNIVERSITY GATES. WHERE WE USED TO GO. And ALL OVER THE WEST END. Our old grounds, where we used to stomp. Or whatever one does in one’s stomping grounds. Of course everything exciting happens WHEN WE’RE NO LONGER THERE. Of course. Our dear Mr. S. is supposed to be taking pictures for us with his umpteen hundred fancy cameras, but it just won’t be the same. Hiss. Boo.

All right. The tub scrubbing really does need to happen. Nothing much more to say, anyway – just giving ourselves one more excuse to share pictures on the blog.

See you later – or, rather, see you soon!

Today has been a bit more random than yesterday, as it involved a scramble to locate the swimming suits. This is distinctly not fun when you have so much luggage and D. has this tendency to say things while packing like, “we need something to pad the network storage box” and there goes some small article of clothing. He recognizes this … and we survive it not being fun (after all, we really really would not like to lose all of the photography from the last 5 years, etc.). But this morning was a distinct scramble, even after locating the swimsuits, as it also saw us both having to quickly prep for our trip to the Blue Lagoon. We gulped down some leftover latkes as soon as we had both put in our contacts (a necessary item – wearing eyeglasses in the Blue Lagoon seems distinctly not fun), hustled ourselves up the block to Hotel Leifur Eiriksson … and stopped in at Cafe Loki for a slice of cake and a latte, while waiting for the tour bus. Breakfast of champions: cold latkes followed later by cake and a soy latte (both of which were awesome).

We arrived at the Blue Lagoon at just before noon and didn’t get out until 2:20 – just in time to shower, dress, and head out to the bus at 3:15. We got back to Leifur Eiriksson by 5:20, D. went to the store to pick up some ingredients for our travel snacks (Mr. B., you will be getting some melon-mint gum … and also some salty licorice gum. Be warned. Be afraid…) while T. dashed back to the apartment in driving rain to arrive 1 minute shy of her writing group’s start.

So, a day well spent, if quite a bit filled with odd observations about fellow travelers and spa-goers. We are well and truly content with the Blue Lagoon … so much so that we’ll be returning there tomorrow. This means, of course, that we will not make it up to the top of Hallgrímskirkja this time around.

There are so many places to visit here, and things to see. Every Icelander with whom we’ve spoken has asked whether we’ve been to somewhere or other, telling us that we really can’t leave without seeing it, and what a shame it is that we’re only staying such a short time. Well, we tell them, we’ll be back: we plan to stop here for a few days here and there, as we intend to keep flying Icelandair on our travels to and from Scotland.

Our next visit will be at a time that they are heading towards darkness, and we have been promised snow (really: it’s a very awesome experience to be sitting in an outdoor sauna while it’s snowing). We don’t know exactly when that will be, as we have yet to hear from our choir director about dates for concerts, and are trying to schedule our returns to Scotland with those in mind. Perhaps next time we’ll make it to see the view from the top of the church, or to see the other interestingly double-steepled church which seems to be forever lurking as we’re headed elsewhere.

Tonight, we pack and clean and prepare airplane snacks, as they don’t feed you on Icelandair. Then D. may work on getting some pictures up before we try to get some sleep (it really is difficult, this being-light-all-night), to awake and lug our belongings down the stairs – all forty-five of them, erg! – , into a taxi, and onto a bus. We’ll then soak in happy bliss until we scramble to get on the 2:15 bus to the airport.

We will miss Reykjavik, and wish that we had all sorts of time and money to simply live here. The people are friendly beyond belief, and will happily chat with you for as long as you’re willing to chat. The scenery is dramatic, the architecture is beyond quirky, and the Icelandic culture is truly unique. We feel really blessed to be able to visit, and we’re glad we could drag you along.

We may post again before we leave, but the likelihood is that we’ll simply resume posts sometime on the weekend, when we’ll be in California. Until then, please enjoy a slideshow of our Iceland photos, both from a year and a half ago and from this trip. The show includes video, so be prepared if you watch it (and simply laugh that they dubbed over the Kim Possible cartoon).

-D & T