áhugaverð langloka

Ég rakst á þennan tengil á bloggi Steinunnar Ólínu og set hann inn hér líka. Skemmtileg lesning í skammdeginu og allt annar vinkill á Björgólfsfeðga en ég hef séð annars staðar.

Award points, finally good for something!

I totally lost it in the toy store today and bought some awesome Christmas gifts for the twins, i.e. my niece and nephew.

After which I started thinking about, hey, how the h3ll am I gonna get these things to Iceland? They're big, and oddly shaped, and the poor postman would maybe poke his eye out (what does that tell you about my choice of a gift for two 5-year olds?? I shudder to think...).

So, I checked my award points balance on Icelandair and lo and behold, I have 50763 points, 12 thousand of which expire on December 31st of this year. As it were, it's exactly 50,000 points to fly from USA1 (where I live) to Iceland! So, although I realize there probably aren't many seats left and I'm at a conference until December 20th, I sent in a request for award flight booking. Who knows, I might get lucky and get to give Lilja and Tómas their gifts in person!

Oh, and feel free to scold me for not checking the award point status before. I knew it was getting close to a ticket, I just didn't realize HOW close.

And if the flight falls through, I can at least use the 12,000 points set to expire at the local Hertz car rental, cruising around for a day. Or donate them all to the Children's Travel Fund. But I really do hope I'll just get on that plane!

T-day

Holy cow, I had SUCH a good time at the Thanksgiving dinner last night! What a fantastic holiday!

Turkey time!

Well, there won't be a turkey for me since my Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow is hosted by and primarily attended by vegetarians and/or non-'Mercans who don't particularly like turkey anyway. In anticipation of a day off I went to the library and stocked up on Icelandic novels to read during the holiday: Karítas án titils and Rokland from the modern lit section and Atómstöðin and Guðsgjafarþula from the Laxness section. Good thing they don't want the books back for half a year here!

Also, you might want to check out the Gotan project.

Dásamlegt!

This is an absolute möst sí, especially if you're an Icelander! Thanks, dad, for the link!

That time of year

Fast food nation

The PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) publishes an interesting article today about the fast food industry in the USA. The article is Open Access, meaning that one doesn't have to have a subscription to the journal to access it. Take a look here.

In Pittsburgh, and I've become a

Technomad.

Talk tomorrow. Today's been dedicated to both travel and reading up on the literature. I found out, among other things, that the Tuffen, JGR 2007, paper is absolutely brilliant. And "my" volcano fits the proposed model. Awesome!

Can't tell you how happy I am with the president elect. Yippi!!!

Big day today