17th June - Icelands Independence Day

Today, the 17th of June, Iceland celebrates it's independence day - independence from Danish Rule in 1944, see we used the fact that they were then under German occupation to say na na na na na... we are going to rule ourselves now. Well, what a great job we have done so far.

Nevertheless, today was a good day in Sauðárkrókur.. Across the road the Madams had their little shop open where folk could come and sell their home made goods (too pricey for me - but rather lovely), they all dress in pseudo traditional dress.

Kaffi Krók had it´s official opening and the madams helped out by baking the cakes and breads that made up the coffee buffet - all you can eat for isk 1.500. Twas rather tasty and nice to sit out the front of KK pity though that the interio decor is not in keeping with the style of the house, hence no photos from inside.

Some of the madams hanging outside the front of KK waiting for customers ????

Another event of the day, my darling brother came and replaced another window in the house

The view is so much nicer now I think...

Another painting job this weekend...

More family

Today we were at my cousin Jóhannas daughter's place celebrating her graduation yesterday. She is now a proud bearer of the title Bachelor of Science in Business... Well done Steina! I really admire her as she has two kids and a full time job at Delloite and has been doing this degree part time for what I think she believes has been forever! Ofcourse delicious foods were to be had and as a bonus I created a decorating committee for the upcoming wedding, Steina, Þórdís and Guðný will be responsible for the decor at Mælifell for the coffee and cake reception - all very traditional with a nature theme, ie lots of Icelandic wild stuff... No major flower arrangements with imported roses and the like, just the farmers rose from ma´s garden, violets, daisies and mosses, birch and other nice things from nature. I love my family - always ready to pitch in!

This is the crowd enjoying the sunshine - pity there was a bit of a north wind.

Lots of young cousins - all boys, except ofcourse Victoria!

Nothing like a bit of tractor action.

Family, baby birds and painting windows

My nephew Kristinn has arrived from Australia, it´s really great having him here and as he is an avid photographer - it is great that the weather is performing - although the wind could turn itself off...

Am currently painting the window that was installed last week, will post photos once I have completed the job, two coats so far - but I think that a third will do the trick.

Also, I found a baby duck down near the foreshore, far away from the rocks and no parent birds in sight, I wasn´t sure what to do so brought it home. Mum then promptly sent me back to the foreshore with it - know that it would be doubtful that we could keep it alive and that it would have a better chance of survival with other ducks

Then we received a visitor from Canada, we share the same great grandmother, so there was a bit of a family gathering with her - Svava, her husband Gerry, my first cousin Sirrí her mum (mum´s sister - Maja) and another cousin that also shares the same great grandmother and lives here in the fjord - her name is Sirrí also (Sirrí like Sigga is a diminutive of Sigríður - our common great grandmother was also called Sigríður - Sigríður is a very common name!!) and Sirrís husband Jón.

Svava, mum and Jón - Sirrís husband

Maja, Sirrí, Gerry and Maggi

Jón and Sirrí. We had a great meal of salmon fillets, baked in the oven with a majones, dijon mustard, dill sauce thingy... yumm.

sea swimming in the nth atlantic.. surely only seals do this??

Tonight on our walk we encountered the new sailing club in action. Well kayakers.. so out they were with canoe and kayak, looking good, a brilliant non breezy evening - still temp around 10°c then they decided that a swim in the ocean would be appropriate...

A tad cold, but hey, young hearty folk like these..
Actually I was tempted to join them - just to check it out. Mind you as I was thinking this my hands were so cold... one day I will give it a go

No clever quote today

I am sooo excited, my brother - the hero of the day has put in one of my new windows. Ofcourse the window first replaced was the one damaged by an icicle this last winter...
Here is the hole in the wall:

Nice view into the dining area and kitchen

This is what the inside of my walls looks like. My house was originally built in 1898, since then three different exterior claddings have been added - one on top of the other. Luckily there is not too much rot, so I can breath easy about the structural integrity of the outer and inner shell.

A view out to the garden...

Window in and doing some adjustments

The man at work. He did all this in one day. Which was just as well, cos there still is a rather cool breeze blowing from the north.

And now for the main event - mums place is finished - doesn´t it look great!

He has done such a great job. Don´t know what we would do without him (pay heaps and heaps of money for unreliable trades folk no doubt!)

There is no cure for laziness but a large family helps. ~Herbert Prochnov

I looked everywhere for a quote about a big brother - seems that none exist.. Strange that, lots about younger brothers, sisters the lot, but not big bro. Anyway my big brother is a great guy - he is here at the moment putting new frontage on mum's place. He had already changed the windows a few years back and now for the finale. So here are a few photos from this weekends work effort (he also had help from my nephew - his son - Maggi - the best TA ever)
but before we get picture from the house here are some from our walk to Glerhallavík (Glass cave bay)

the walk out there is quite difficult in that it is very rocky - basically the shore line along a coast that has high muddy cliffs full of rocks ready to fall down on you

At the end there is this wonderful little water fall

and this great little bay. The reason why it is called Glass cave bay is because of the quartz rocks that are in the shore, apparently they are covered in basalt but because they are rolled around in the shore the bassalt comes of and what you have are lovely little white rocks

if you increase the size you can see three big examples...

The bay is just near Reykir, which is near the island of Drangey.

Now for some shots from the house:

Day one, side bit done

half the front finished


Tonight, almost all done, they have done a brilliant job.

PS I mowed the lawn for the third time this summer! also cleared out one room in the cellar. - Depending on the ambient temp - it will be where I start my attempt at home made wines.... hey its a depression.

I always thought a yard was three feet, then I started mowing the lawn. ~C.E. Cowman

Last weekend was the first mowing weekend of summer, this weekend will be the second mow.... My grass grows far too quickly.
We also used the grill for the first time this year - twice in fact. I love summer in Iceland, the problem is that summer (or rather spring) doesn´t love me - now it is itchy eyes and clogged up nasal passages ah the joy of hay fever. Once I laughed at people with hay fever - now i commiserate.
As you are probably all aware - if not I will tell you - Iceland came in second place at the Eurovision thingy. Yep - so the song from the last post was no 2, whilst in no 1 was the Norwegian entry, "Fairytale" which was written and sung by a lovely young lad with Belarusian origins. He really did deserve to win and he won big time - I think that the points score for Norway was double if not trebble our second place score. It was neck and neck for a while between the 2 to 4 place getters - Azerbajan, Turkey and the UK. twas a good Euro year this year I think.
Mum planted some lillies for me last year and they survived the winter and are blooming

Just so pretty.
Now I know that you are dieing to see the finished product down at the harbour - its great you can walk a fair way to the end of the quay - a bit wobbly - not probably the best place for me to walk at night after a few reds, but so far no falling has occurred.

Isn´t it great... now for some night shots - taken at around eleven pm

So pretty... need I say how much I love this place... well time to put the dog out of her misery and take her for a walk.

“99 percent of the people you ask about it will profess to hate it, but they all love it really.”

Photo courtesy of the official website... www.eurovision.tv (and it is the Iceland entry... so cool, so blue.. so yeh...)

Ah yes, it´s Eurovision first semi final night or whatever they call it - hence the blogging... am watching this, cringing and feeling that my mind needs to be occupied in some way while my ears listen to the various entries... Ah, like the 99% that profess to hate it - I love it... Our entry this year is Jóhanna or Yohanna as she is spelling it (to ensure that it is pronounced correctly), she´s already done her bit and did pretty well. (well I think so).





"I'm probably going to be calm when I walk to the stage, I always am. I'm not using any particular routines before the performance. Usually, my body becomes very tired, I don't know if it's a way to relax. It was great to get spontaneous applauses from the audience during the rehearsal, I felt it on stage." A quote from the official website from Yohanna



http://www.citebase.org/abstract?id=oai:arXiv.org:physics/0505071
just shows that some people take this extremely seriously - they even do research...
ah what fun... especially listening to our Russian hosts ... but who to vote for...

A dog, I have always said, is prose; a cat is a poem. ~Jean Burden

Don´t you just love how the cat is trying to be stealthfull... (spelling??)

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow. ~Proverb

Yes well.... some of these photos will say something else... beginning of May and it snows!

Then the sun came out again and one could resume gardening chores. Freyja and I received a visit in the garden from a neighbourhood cat... Neither was very impressed with the other. I will put a separate post with the cat chase.

To keep folks updated this is the house that will be housing the majority of guests for the wedding...

It´s the red house - we will have the middle and the top floors - have still got to go and check it out - it´s probably not the Hilton, but I figure it will be ok for a short stay... and hey - it´s not that far to the church, so no excuse for stragglers. My place for folks that don´t know is about 2 minutes walk to the left from where this photo is taken....

It´s gonna be sooo good.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. ~Henry Brooks Adams

I was inspired by Jomamma to talk about my teachers... also a recent post from Olga reminded me of how much a teacher can affect your view of certain subjects.
So here goes the teachers that I remember
Grade 1 Gosnells primary school - Ms Stibby (mum and I called her Mrs Skippy for the first 6 months - forgive us - we didn’t speak English and Skip was on the TV every day.) She was great
Grade 2 Gosnells... have no idea... just remember that 3 eights are 24... we all had to get up in front of the class and recite tables and we each had a multiple to recite... not sure I learnt what came after me - was more worried that the kids before me remembered their lines...
Grade 3 Maddington Primary School... Mrs Clews for half the year then Mrs Telfor (I think that was her name)
Grade 4 Maddington Mrs Clews - she was brilliant - such a nice understanding and caring person
Grade 5 Mr Biggs... from Sri Lanka - or was it Malay - can’t remember - just know that he told us the best stories after afternoon recess. All about jungle adventures and ghost stories... Half the time we were shitting ourselves, once literally one boy pissed his pants... he was too excited by the story to put his hand up to ask to go to the loo.
Grade 6 Mr Bailey - he read the hobbit to us and taught us to sing some Carpenters song - snowbird?... anyway he was brilliant, I loved reading and he encouraged me so much. He was also working part time for the ABC and used us as a test group for things that they were thinking of doing for primary students. In his class I had to sit next to the "special" needs boys - i.e. in special need for a kick in the balls... anyway...(I think these thoughts on why I was seated next to certain people in primary school needs a different post).
Grade 7 First Mrs Ellis, she went on maternity leave... she was sooooo lovely - a carer, totally nice... then came Mrs Damen... the name says it all. She was kicked out of the Catholic school down the road as she had become born again... (I think it was for another reason). With her came my arch nemesis Tony Pisano. Under her we took tests every week to see our class standing. At the end of every week we then had to move desks according to where we were in the "smarts" hierarchy. Needless to say I never reached the top row... was always at the end of the second one - just but not quite there - no tell a lie was there for one week. Any who, in her class I learnt to cheat - i.e. get the cards for this weeks math and the answer card at the same time - whoopee got them right but did I learn - nah.. God I hated her so much. In her class Leon Blurton was sat next to me on one side (the only exception to the smarts rule) Leon was a really nice kid - an Aboriginal whom I had known since grade 3 - we got on ok and so it didn’t worry me too much... Tony on the other hand was on the other side of me most weeks, only because he always cheated off me in tests!!!! (sidebar - he got put in the big house a few years back for fraud - cheated his clients when he was pretending to financially advise them - he also married the only person who I have ever been deliberately mean to - think mean girls times a few).
As you can see I was traumatised by this half year in year 7.

Years 8 - 12 Thornlie Senior High School. Now we get teachers for math, English, social sciences, science, sport, home ec, art - or in my case French.... (Why???? I still don’t understand).I will just highlight the ones that stood out in each year
Year 8maths - Mr Rissman... short American with great blackboard writing skills... pity he actually couldn’t reach the top of the board. From memory a fair maths teacherSocial Studies - Mr Reid - redhead. Nice guy - I love geography, history and all that crap so this was a favourite subject and I was a teachers pet
English....
Science...
Year 9Maths
Mr Maths White, moustache... smoked and was a good teacher...
Science - Mr White - came to us from somewhere in Africa, told us about the elephant foot coffee table he had (totally not right these days)... smoked a pipe - was fairly short and a brilliant teacher
Social Sciences... either Mr Reid again or Mr Ponambolum... (This is written in phonetic spelling - I honestly can not remember how to spell it - he was from Sri Lanka) again - I loved the subject they could do no wrong.English...... (Obviously not my favourite subject)
Year 10
Maths... Mrs Hatch - with the highest pitched voice I have ever had to endure
English... Mrs Edwards... no comment
Science...
Social Studies... Mr P????
I coasted in year 10...
Year 11 and 12
Mrs Maynard - maths teacher extraordinaire - she was so nice... followed by Mr ... can’t remember - but had a dodgy leg and was most amusing.
Chemistry Mr Graham... loved year 11 hated year 12 organic chemistry
Physics, Mr B... Biggins, Bean... oh he was so weak looking and so totally uninspiring (I also did not understand....)
I think a Mr Decker may also have been involved in these two years... I was just soo out of my depth... Calculate the time taken for a block of ice at -3°c to melt in a bowl of water 10°c .... volume blah blah blah...
Geography - Mr Hanrahan - looked like a freaky musketeer (of the French variety - all the hair and the mo) a very very good teacher

Have to mention my French teachers Ms Teo and Ms McPherson, such sweeties - I can not understand how they had the patience with moi...

I look back and think they were all in their own way quite wonderful... apart from Damen, Hatch... and Mrs Whitan... English teacher from hell in year 12... she was from India... had a classic Indian accent - loved the good/good looking people in the class, had little time for me - I got sweet revenge though in the TAE final exam (that meant 100% of your final grade) was written totally for me.. I had such a blast in that exam - I can even say that I had a wonderful 3 hours of exam time... and aced it... (she had never given me more than 5 out of 10 for every assignment she marked - I stopped handing them in after a while).... just as well that in those days what you actually did all year had no effect on your grade average for uni entrance...oh dear.. What a long post - but what a trip down memory lane.

Flickr had new photos from here... in case you care to see more photos of the same stuff

Oh yeh in other news.

Skagafjorður now has a sailing club - I went to their inaugural meeting last night - it is called Siglingaklúburin Drangey. Maybe one day I will learn to sail..... and perhaps spell.

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least. ~Robert Byrne

Sauðárkrókur at around 10pm

So today is the first day of summer according to the Icelandic calendar - which means a day off from work... very nice.

When I woke up this morning the sun was shining and the sky was a clear blue, as the day progressed the clouds rolled in and now there is a fairly cool breeze outside.

So, the first day of summer is a pretty big thing here. Everyone you meet you wish a happy summer and thanks for the winter... love that. Also the scouts have a bit of a parade to the church and have a special scouting service. (I was asleep... bad me).

Here in town the local women (most of whom teach or are assistants at the primary school) decided to have a bit of a market in the "black house" , selling knit wear, jewellery and giving away coffee and pikelets - the museum next door was also opened to let folk check out the exhibitions. To make it a little more interesting they asked the local motorcyclists to come and join them (as you can imagine - motorcycling is only done in the summer months here). They had a really good turnout.

Also today, the local co-op - KS celebrated it´s 120th birthday and opened the new workshop that is just down the road (and subject of a lot of my photos when I am walking the dog). It was a really good day and by the looks of how many cars were there I would say that probably 70% of the locality showed up for the entertainment, speeches, cake, kók og prins that were on offer.

Now am off to dinner at Olafshús with Maggi, Sigga, Helgi and mum (today is maggi´s parents 38th wedding aniversary... )

A perfect day - work tomorrow - but only for one day and the tax returns seem to be coming along... I love my life.

Have I told you - the dog's on heat... talk about pmt....

and that the cat is scarily crazy sometimes... just ask Maja, Olga, Kristinn and Anna.....

and the quote is because general elections are on Saturday - and I still haven´t decided who is getting my vote - this is a first!

The umpire... is like the geyser in the bathroom; we cannot do without it, yet we notice it only when it is out of order. ~Neville Cardus

Time for the weekly post sans photos...

Today was spent learning how to be a judge/umpire for an athletics event that will be here on the first weekend of August. UMFÍ is the Icelandic young peoples sporting organisation and because a town that was supposed to host had to bail (probably due to recession and not having the money to build the track etc)... so Skagafjordur offered to be host this year. One of my cousins is the head honcho in the athletics side of sports here in the fjord and has called upon me and Maggi to be the main computer entry people during meets here. Anywho, now he has decided that I really need to know the rules.... So on a beautiful spring day - I was indoors learning the legal weight and length of a javelin spear... hmmm more useless information - however, bright side - orange pieces of pie in triv may now be more accessable (so long as the question relates to track and field...)

I pinched the pic after the post... suitable or what..

http://www.lapsura.com/drawings/archives/images/trivial-pursuit.jpg

to give correct reference to where the image came from...

Poems and songs with pipes and drums A thousand welcomes when anyone comes... Author unknown

the reason for the trip to London... power drumming from Ross and Nick

this is nicko doing his thing....

and here are Snowman doing their thing...

Another reason for going to London was to try and find the right retro wedding dress for Olga.. The perfect dress is a simple ivory dress with a rounded collar - not high with a waist and in fabric that "stands" for itself - ie no frilly crap.. anyone with any ideas.. have now checked out ebay and also dress patterns.. I kind of like this one

but I know that this is not what she wants... too much perhaps...