Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall. ~Larry Wilde, The Merry Book of Christmas

The Christmas tree lights were turned on on Saturday, the weather was crap - windy and snowing and cold, however the turnout this year was the biggest I have ever seen here. I think just about all town folk were here to get into the Christmas spirit. All the shops in the old town were open for business and were offering hot chocolate and cookies and at the museum the women from the afterschool care and kindergarten teachers had hot lamb soup and a market in the old black house (used to be used as the bootle depot). Sirrí thinks that about 400 people had come through there.

Another attraction was the polar bear that was shot in summer... He is rather cute, quite big with sharp teeth...

a small video of when the yuletide lads arrived

At Christmas play and make good cheer, For Christmas comes but once a year~Thomas Tusser

I don´t know if this will work..... Freyja playing with her Santa hat - or rather it was probably Olga's/Kristinn's/Anna's santa hat..

Perhaps the best Yuletide decoration is being wreathed in smiles. ~Author Unknown

Just a few shots from today..

Storm outside and lights from the chrissy tree

One little princess, who can't understand why I did not want to spend half an hour outside doing walkies...

Chrissy decs on board

Sex on television can't hurt you unless you fall off. ~Author Unknown

The big storm hit, and the chef from the restaurant came over to tell me that mums tv aerial was probably about to dislodge itself from her house. Called the local electrical/tv/aerial people to see if they could help.. . All the ladders were out, so they didn´t know what they could do. Later I noticed the aerial was hanging by one nail so mum called the rescue squad.... and they came....

yes its snowing and there was a howling wind.... I don´t know if this is a part of their usual thing or whether it being a relative answered the phone triggered the response....

these wonderful people are relatives... as are most folk here.. the guy on the right is Valdi P son of Pési frændi (mum's side) and the girl on the left is Runa Birna daughter of cousin Jóhanna (dad's side)... have I told you how much I love this town!.. anyway aerial is no longer in danger of destroying upper window and mum will soon be connected to tv via the telephone line.. no more aerial required.

Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts. ~Author Unknown

I am working from home today as the storm was enough to deter me from attempting the trip to Holar. As a result I have both the work pc and the home pc on the go. I can not seem to connect the work pc to the wireless network here at home so I am connected to work via the home pc and doing the work on the work pc with a memory stick for transferring data between the two. On this memory stick were a heap of photos that I had on the work pc... One of which is the photo that I posted. This is the family at Christmas 1967, just before we went to Australia.

Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions. ~A.A. Latimer

This beautiful creature is the latest edition to my extended family, my brother Hilmar sent me the pic last week and I thought I should share it with one and all. Hope he doesn´t mind!!


Borrowed the above picture from Skagafjordur.com as I forgot to take a photo of it on the weekend. As you can see it is starting to take shape.


Currently trying to do a forecast for the 5 year plan for my current place of work. It's probably the 5th 5 year plan I have done... so you would think I would be getting good at it or could use some of the old plans to get the new one done quickly, but oh no, plans change so the figures change and in the end I have no idea. Boring I know but I had to get this off my chest.....

In other news we are expecting a big snow storm tomorrow, - am thinking of taking work home with me in case I get snowbound in SKrok tomorrow as this budget thing has to be finished by Friday...

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. ~Chinese Proverb

Night is settling in in Iceland. The full moon the other night brought some relief added with a little snow, since then, the snow has melted and so the darkness is quite overwhelming.

Ice is forming on all the puddles and so the going is sometimes quite hard, especially if there is a thin layer of snow on top of the ice...

There is a new quay being built just down from my place, which means that walks with Freyja are now longer - we get to walk out on the quay and bark at the ducks, this is a view back to the lit pathway up to the cemetary.

In other news... we still get a couple of hours of daylight a day so I went and took some photos of places that I now only see in the dark. Working out of town means that I only see my locale in daylight on weekends. Here we can see some of the work that has begun at Kaffi Krók, a new foundation for the northern end. The concrete is being set under winter concrete bags.

This is a view from the new quay over to the new KS garage, and such is the weather at the moment - very grey.

a quick shot of how far out they have come - apparently the entrance to the harbour will be only around 80m.

The weekend has been quite busy, Friday night a few folk over for pizza, Saturday night Skúli´s big 50th birthday bash, today the elderly folks choir combined with the kammerkór - the choir I went to the Faroes with. Actually really quite good fun. Then tonight we went and picked up the cross stitch that I have spent more than half a life time finishing... It was one of those things that I would start and leave and start and leave and getting it framed has taken a decade, 9 years of me not taking it to a framer and 1 year spent at the framers..... It is really quite hideous, but there is a lot of blood sweat and tears in this, I think I got the pattern when I was 14 (got it from mum... she was going to do it when she was young), then the threads when I was 18 and the first stitch was made when I was 21. I finished it sometime in the 90´s - and here it is...

Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing. ~Paul Valery

A rather monumental week for S'krók. Kaffi Krók, Michelsens, Sýslumannshúsið was torn down. I had the day off due to the fact that i decided breakfast was not going to remain in my stomach, so when the dog demanded an outing I took the camera and documented the destruction.

It is not really visible here but they did try and keep the southern end in tact - removing the northern addition (left on the photo), this is because the southern end (on the right) was to be preserved or at least tried to be reserved.

the northern end... me trying to see if gunnþóras doors were still there (they are of cultural significance - believe me.. finger paint on doors.. yes it is something to preserve).. anywhoo, i saw no doors just the artwork on the walls.

this morning.. it was all gone.. . not good...

I should explain, the southern end if kept a little in tact was under preservation law and so in rebuilding would not need to comply with EU regulations and funds would have been forthcoming for rebuilding in the original style, now that nothing is left, there are not as many options for outside funding. My opinion is that the house was a mess and some contingency plans should have been done months ago, but hey, who am I?

Going to work, fog was settling in to all low lying areas.. we had a sunny day at holar but apparently the fog was quite thick in S´Krók

the video of the dog, that has taken for ever to load - which eventually did not load is not worth watching, unless you like to see a dog chase an empty bottle of coke around a house and also only if you want to see the amount of dog hair on the floor... I wish I was more like maja and enjoyed the vacuum cleaner... sadly like my dog I hate the sound of suction.