Thanksgiving and a conference

So, it's been a while. No blogging for almost a week, and the only reason I'm blogging right now is that my elevation model of the Big Island of Hawai'i is large enough that projecting it into new coordinates takes forever (16% done) and I have some breathing space in the meantime. Doing a semester's worth of research and image processing in a week and not even knowing if I'll be able to put together a poster for the AGU conference in San Francisco next week is certainly not recommendable (34% done).

Anyway. Stop the whining. (37% done) Thanksgiving was a resounding success in my quarters. Shan and I invited some people over to our house, including Shan's mom (who lives in Delaware and flew in from Philadelphia on Wednesday) (46% done), Markus and Doro (who just moved from Iceland to Red Hook, Duchess County, NY, a place even more god's forsaken than Hella and Hvolsvollur combined), Darren and Terry from the aerospace gang, Armann and Asa, (59% done) Jose (or Joey, a first year geology grad student from Puerto Rico who was seeing his first snow ever around that time), and the newest family in the group, Veronica, Ryan and their baby boy Brady (74% done) and his aunt (Ryan's sister) Cherry, who lives in Hollywood and regularly brushes shoulders with the rich and famous.

Note how I said "some" in the preceding paragraph, referring to the number of people we invited to our house. Now, keep in mind that our apartment is the size of a shoe box (and the kitchen is the size of a CD cover) and you'll realize that we were stretching the (90% done) limit of what our apartment can accomodate without exploding. The party wasn't supposed to exceed 8 people... but actually, I'm glad it did. We all had such a good time, everyone left totally stuffed and (I guess) very grateful for having such nice friends as me and Shan ;) The turkeys (yes, we made two) were delicious and the absolute winner of the evening, I have to say, was the pumpking mushroom soup that Shan cooked out of the collective memory of himself and his mom.

Uups, 100% done. Talk to you later, if only to tell you about the fantastic sage stuffing and the wonderful blackberry-infused gravy. It's good to have alliances in cold Iceland when cooking Thanksgiving dinner in the Empire State!

Gladiator

You scored as Maximus. After his family was murdered by the evil emperor Commodus, the great Roman general Maximus went into hiding to avoid Commodus's assassins. He became a gladiator, hoping to dominate the colosseum in order to one day get the chance of killing Commodus. Maximus is valiant, courageous, and dedicated. He wants nothing more than the chance to avenge his family, but his temper often gets the better of him. Maximus 67% Indiana Jones 63% Batman, the Dark Knight 58% El Zorro 58% William Wallace 58% The Amazing Spider-Man 54% Lara Croft 50% The Terminator 46% Neo, the "One" 38% James Bond, Agent 007 38% Captain Jack Sparrow 33% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

Does this mean I'm as hot as Russell Crowe??

Celebrations

Well, there was more to yesterday's celebrations than a cinnamon bun.

You see, after work my darling co-habitator invited me for a romantic dinner at one of the town's nicest restaurants, The Willow. It was excellent, and the red wine was probably the best I've ever had. Since the restaurant didn't have any decadent chocolate dessert on offer, we went for an ice cream sundae at Ithaca's own Purity ice cream shop afterwards. It was getting late by that time so we just managed to get the sundaes before being kicked out by the staff, eager to go partying. Us two old farts took that as a sign that it was time to go home, and we rounded off the evening with a movie, slouching on the couch. An altogether seriously nice evening.

Tonight, Shan is headed for another night on the town. Our friend Alex is celebrating his thirtieth birthday in NYC and given the fun we all had when Eric celebrated his thirtieth a few weeks ago, I'm sure this will be a night to remember. I am staying in Ithaca, though, making up for some of the time that I spent away from my desk when I went to Iceland for grandma's funeral. Fun fun fun!

Yay!!

Now, of course I should be spending those precious minutes it takes to write this post on doing homework, which is due in exactly 70 minutes. But this is too important:

The paper on Helgafell, my first real paper, got accepted for publication. !!!!!!!!!.

I think I'll have to live up to my promises in a comment on a previous post and go to CTB and get a cinnamon bun to celebrate.

Íslandsvinir á Grænuborg, dropadeild:

Af mbl.is:

„... Ber þar helst að nefna Quentin Tarantino sem skemmti sér vel hér á landi í tæpa viku. Fullyrti hann að þetta væri langskemmtilegasta hátíð sem hann hefur nokkru sinni heimsótt..."

Þetta finnst mér sko fyndið. Og þetta líka:

"Gaman er frá því að segja að allir erlendu gestir hátíðarinnar voru yfir sig hrifnir af landi og þjóð..."

Ég meina, hefur nokkurn tímann komið til Íslands sú manneskja sem ekki var yfir sig hrifin af landi og þjóð?


P.S. Takk fyrir ábendinguna, Hildigunnur. Dropadeild er miklu flottara ;)

Done!

Yay! The revision of my paper had quite a difficult birth here in Magnus's office this afternoon, but it finally made it through. All greek symbols that aren't supposed to be there have been reverted to TNR, all the greek symbols that WERE supposed to be there but weren't have been reclaimed, all the figures that were too big and/or truncated have been fixed, everything has been uploaded, a pdf has been built for my approval (three times...) and now I have finally approved of it (after not approving of it two times and having to re-upload a bunch of crap).

This had to be an occasion to celebrate. If not with a kleina, soggy with cold coffee, as I have been doing until now, then for sure at dad and Sigga's house for dinner and then later to Oliver to see some long-lost friends. Yay!!!

Yesterday

My grandma's funeral yesterday was so beautiful. My long-time friend Hallveig sang and that's when I started crying so much that I became one unruly mess and needed to lean over to my mum to get a kleenex to wipe my face. The ceremony in the cemetary was beautiful too, but cold and snowy. The family had arranged for a wake to be held at a hotel in town, it was so good to see how everyone was on their best behaviour (my family, like every other family that I know of, people sometimes hold grudges) and it was really good to see all my relatives from my mother's side in one room, for the first time in many years. If only the occasion had been more joyful.

Pistillinn hans Guðmundar Andra

á blaðsíðu 16 í Fréttablaðinu í dag er nokkuð góður.

Life in the hectic lane

Well, time for a little update. I am going to Iceland tomorrow on the evening flight from Boston, landing in Keflavík in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Am looking forward to seeing my family and friends, I have to say.

Things have been kind of hectic here due to this sudden trip. Right now I am working hard to get as much work as possible out of the way before I leave, since I won't be able to do much while in Iceland. I do have a meeting with Magnús lined up on Friday, though, we're going to smooth out the last flaws in our revised paper and get it in to the publisher. I will be very glad when that is done. As in, VERY glad.

Shan and I spent hours in the mall yesterday getting Christmas presents for everyone in Iceland and Denmark. As usually, I totally lost it in the children's section and wanted to buy the entire store for my nephews and his. He had to drag me out, I'm afraid :) Am very glad that the X-mas shopping has now been taken care of (as opposed to it being done two days before X-mas as usually). Think I might make a habit out of this.

Also gained a new holiday this year, when I celebrated Halloween in my own home for the first time. One of my students, appaled to hear that I'd never carved a pumpkin, gave me a big one, with instructions and all! Shan and I carved it on Monday night, the result can be seen here.