Glæsilegt!!

Það er gaman að lifa þegar góðir hlutir gerast. Og ekki skemmir fyrir að hlutaðeigandi skuli loksins taka hintinu.

Sælir náttúruunnendur!

úr pósthólfinu mínu í dag:

"Náttúruvaktin beinir þeim tillmælum til allra náttúruunnenda að þeir fjölmenni við Ráðhús Reykjavíkur klukkan 14 á morgun, þriðjudag, þegar Ólafur F. Magnússon borgarfulltrúi leggur fram tillögu sína í borgarstjórn um verndun Þjórsárvera. Á sama tíma verður stuðningsstaða við Ráðhúsið til sýna tillögunni samstöðu og hvetja borgarfulltrúa til að virða þá ómetanlegu gersemi sem Þjórsárver eru með því að greiða tillögunni atkvæði sitt.

Nú er lag, möguleiki á að þrýsta á verndun Þjórsárvera og stækkun friðlandsins. Mætum og hvetjum stjórn borgarinnar til að nýta eignaraðild sína í Landsvirkjun til verndar Þjórsárverum og varðveita þannig þjóðargersemi, svæði sem á ekki sinn líka um veröld víða, um ókomna tíð.



Lifi Þjórsárver

Náttúruvaktin"

Boatbuilding and other pastimes

Finally, finally (i.e. loksins, loksins!)! At the suggestion of my lovely cohabitator we are ganging up with some friend with the aim of - ratatata - building our own boat!! A sketch is shown here. Isn't it a splendid boat? Smár en knár, that's the motto here.

The annual Snee Graduate Research Symposium was held today. That's when we students get to put together a 10-minute talk about our research, or attempts at research, and present it to anyone who wants to listen. We also feed all those in attendance, and that's why I missed all the talks in the morning (I started making the soup I had volunteered to make at midnight, reasoning that putting it off until the morning and therefore having to wake up at 7 am was an absolute impossibility for me. Thus I didn't get much sleep until 5:30, when the soup was ready and I could jump out of bed to toss the pot into the fridge. Which meant that I slept like a baby until 10:30 am. I deeply apologize.) Anyways, I gave my talk and I hear that I did pretty well. Which of course makes me happy, because I think that it's fun. It may be nerve-wrecking, but it's also a lot of fun.

Looks like my Hawaii-fieldwork might get pushed back about a month. That's good.

Ok, I couldn't contain myself:

Your Social Dysfunction: Schizotypal You display social deficits and oddities of thinking. Your perception and communication are similar to those of a schizophrenic.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

Yo man!

I can't believe it's been over a week - yes, over a WEEK - since I last posted anything to this site. I guess I could have posted the results of the test I took the other day (which social dysfunction are you) but they didn't exactly lend themselves to be published. My poor shrink, if he only knew...

As usually, I could be very busy but I'm withstanding the temptation. A grad student symposium is coming up this Friday and I'll be giving a talk. Not a single slide is ready, not even the title slide. Usually I'm pretty good at making title slides and sometimes I get them done as much as 3 days in advance. Alas, not this time. My next field season in Hawaii is also coming up and I haven't even bought the plane ticket yet. Let alone started acid-washing the sample bottles, since the bottles are still in the warehouse from where I have to buy them. Efforts are under way, though, to vacuum out the other sample bottles, so I haven't been completely idle. If, that is, sending an email and then browsing online scientific supplies stores counts as not being completely idle.

A major event happened in my home the other day. Shan, my lovely cohabitator, bought a guitar, just like he has wanted to do for years. It's a beautiful guitar. I have to say that our home has become significantly more cultural since the advent of the instrument and I'm enjoying every evening serenade I get.

Well, I'll save you more gibberish until next time. Lifið heil!

Happy New Year!

What a fabulously fantastic vacation! Shan and I took off after Christmas and returned, tired and happy and sore-legged (at least me), on New Years Eve. Mad River Glen, Burlington, Lake Champlain, Montreal, Mont Tremblant. Fantastique.

Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree... wie treu sind deine Glocken

Our Christmas tree, named Barry after a late friend of Shan's family, has been decorated:




Wouldn't you agree that Barry is the most splendid Christmas tree north of the Rio Grande?

Finally - no more finals

Jamms and jess kless, there will be no more finals this year. Aren't we all glad? Especially considering that there are only so many... so few days left of the year. I, for one, am.

But let's not talk to much about the finals. They are finally over and let's leave it at that.

Christmas is coming and this year it's coming with a vengeance. The other day, Shan and I and our friend Darren went Christmas tree shopping, looking for a small, well behaved conifer that would fit unobtrusively on the 1.5 square-foot table in our living room (in our apartment which is the size of a shoe-box, remember?). We drove away with a 10 foot (3ja metra) humongous tree that required the rearrangement of furniture in the livingroom (and we almost had to move in with the neighbours). The new family member (for the tree does remind me of some big, burly great granduncle I never had) now towers over the home and I have to say I like its presence a lot. Every time we come home these days it's like walking straight into a forest. That's good! I have to say that even if I didn't understand Shan's choice of tree one hundred percent at the time it was bought, I am most happy with his choice now.

The snow has arrived too and not a minute too early for my taste. The first few flakes fell around Thanksgiving, just in time to allow everyone travelling over that big travelling weekend to get caught somewhere on their way, either in a snow drift or behind an obnoxiously slow driver. That snow all melted away, though, and it wasn't until the morning of my flight to San Francisco that we got some more (which made me all but miss my flight out to the West Coast). By the time I got back to the East the snow was disappearing, but in the past week we have gotten about 5-10 inches more (that's 10-25 cm, for the Europeans in the crowd). This morning we then woke to a fanczy schmanzy Winter Wonderland and I nearly hopped my own height with joy. Because.... because.... because....

WE ARE GOING SKIING!!!!!!

Yay! (This is where all sensibility is thrown to the wind..). I got myself new skis early this summer, fantastic twin-tip Kahru telly-skis... and the über-fantastic Hammerhead-bindings (which Shan had the foresight to order for me - I can't think that far ahead) arrived last Monday and they have been mounted and we have the ski passes and YAY!!!! we are going skiing tomorrow!!! What more can a woman ask for?!?!?!

Klukk - fyrir langalöngu

1. Sjö hlutir sem ég ætla að gera áður en ég dey:

Fara aftur til Suðurskautslandsins
Eignast nokkra gríslinga
Fá mér doktorsgráðu
Fara til Papúa Nýju Gíneu og sjá Finisterre-fjöllin á Huonskaga
Sigla norður fyrir Ameríku gegnum Beringssund til Kyrrahafsins
Skrifa bók (bækur?)
Verða alveg rosalega góð að telemarka

2. Sjö hlutir sem ég get:

Endurtekið sömu sögurnar við mismunandi tækifæri alveg út í það óendanlega
Orðið alveg ofsalega pirruð út í virkjanasinna, hreintrúaða og nýfrjálshyggjusinna
Sagt ykkur hvar námuverkamennirnir í Longyearbyen spiluðu póker hérna í den
Múnað ísbjörn og komist upp með það
Montað mig af að hafa kunnað textana við öll helstu ABBA-lögin áður en ég byrjaði að læra ensku
Telemarkað
Talað á Karl-Blómkvist dulmáli

3. Sjö hlutir sem ég get ekki:

unnið jafnt og þétt
munað hverjum ég var búin að segja hvað
sparað peninga
komið hlutunum í verk nema þeir hafi átt að klárast í gær.
hreyft á mér eyrun, þaðan af síður nasavængina. Það er samt í vinnslu.
borðað smokkfisk
staðist freistinguna þegar Ópal-snafs er í boði

4. Sjö hlutir sem heilla mig við hitt kynið:

Húmor
Einlægni
Skapgóður
Barngóður
Finnst gaman að ferðast
Finnst gaman að læra erlend tungumál
Vill vinna að góðgerðarmálum


5. Sjö frægir sem heilla (ég fylgi fordæmi Eyju hér og nenni ekkert að vera að setja saman einhvern kjútíbjútí-lista):

Shan Modiuddin (hann verður áreiðanlega frægur einhvern daginn)
Bono (sem er víst búinn að keppa um athygli kærastunnar við hann Shan síðan sá síðarnefndi var 10 ára)
Edward Abbey

tjahh...


6. Sjö orð eða setningar sem ég segi oft:

Já Magnús, greinin er alveg að verða tilbúin
No, I haven't finished the grading yet
I'm tired
Ástin mín
Djöfulsins helvíts próf
Excuse me?
Ha?


7. Sjö hlutir sem ég sé einmitt núna:

haugar af vísindagreinum
frauðplastbakki með köldum kínverskum mat af Friðar-veitingahúsinu
þrír jarðfræðingar (í baksýnisspeglinum)
Einstein með pípu
myndir af afkvæmum vina minna
jökulurðir syðst á Kringilsárrana og Snæfell í baksýn
allar jarðfræðibækurnar sem ég á




Það eru allir löngu búnir með þetta, þannig að ég ætla ekki að klukka neinn. Og hana nú!

Oh my god...

Settu nafnið þitt í kommentakerfið og.....

1. Ég segi þér eitthvað handahófskennt um þig
2. Ég segi þér hvaða lag/mynd minnir mig á þig
3. Ég segi þér hvaða bragð minnir mig á þig
4. Ég segi þér eitthvað sem meikar bara sens fyrir mig og þig
5. Ég segi þér fyrstu ljósu minninguna mína af þér
6. Ég segi þér á hvaða dýr þú minnir mig á
7. Ég spyr þig að einhverju sem ég hef velt lengi fyrir mér um þig
8. Ef þú lest þetta þá verðuru að setja þetta á bloggið þitt..


P.S. Hafið í huga að ég er í prófum og öll afþreying er því vel þegin. Já, bókstaflega nauðsynleg.

After the AGU

Well well, time for a little update. Since the last post I have spent gazillion hours in front of the computer screen, had a mild nervous breakdown over the printing of my poster, been rescued by Vala in Pasadena, traveled to San Francisco, met a whole bunch of Icelanders, presented, overdosed on science, eaten loads of Asian food, burnt my shirt and made it back to Ithaca. Not bad, huh?

So, the conference went well. My poster session was on Wednesday and I did get some nice feedback on my work. I really had fun presenting my poster, not because the science is so fantastic (which it isn't) but because I never get a chance to talk about it here at Cornell, where the absence of any kind of group meetings or student seminars in my field is absolute and unrelenting.

While in San Francisco I read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. What a wonderful piece of literature. Recommended. And The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Mark Haddon, which I bought in Atlanta on the way back to Ithaca, is very promising indeed.

But idle reading will be relegated to the back burner for the next few days. Finals are coming up. Finals spinals. I hate finals. Did I mention that I hate finals? Hate finals, as in HATE finals. I hate finals. I also hate classes, I hate homework, I hate prelims. If there were any justice in this world, these would be my final finals, final classes. But they won't be and that makes me feel like biting my head off.

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.