Wandering Thoughts

Men and Women

2008-08-07T12:51:00.002Z

I recently came across this little gender-based joke of prejudice:

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, and she does.

While I do agree, for the most part, with this statement, I would change it slightly:

A woman finds a man she doesn't loathe and then tries to change him into a man she can love driven by a desire to be happily married.

A man finds a woman he can love until the day he dies and then struggles to adapt to the changes in her as time goes on by constantly altering his core beliefs and principals, as well as his behavior in the futile pursuit of making her happy enough that she will stop changing at some point and settle into just being who he met and fell deeply in love with all those years ago.

This is a fundamental difference between men and women, I think. Women are constantly in a state of fluctuation but men are happiest in a state of not having to change. It makes me wonder if more women say that their teen years were good than men. I hated my teen years and the chief reason is that I felt that during that Hellish decade I was being forced to change to fit into one of the convenient pockets into which society likes to place us. I often tease my wife that she's not happy unless she's unhappy about something in our relationship. Most of the time, I'm joking.
I think this is related to that famous quality of women to forget nothing emotional and use it later...much later...in an argument to completely throw the man for a spin so that it is impossible to win. Women store away all the times they are offended or aggravated by something their man does and wait until "a good time to talk" comes along. Of course, that good time comes when I am tired and she is not and the lights have been shut off and we are lying in bed. Just as the first mists of the dream world are wafting into my mind I hear next to me, "There's something that I want to talk about with you." That's when I know I'm in trouble. Some time during the past few weeks or months I said or did something that I wasn't supposed to or didn't say or do something that I was supposed to and now I have to face the music. It aggravates me that it is usually played out this way because I really do love her and by doing this every 28 days or so, it helps her, but means I lose sleep and get aggravated and then have to change myself in order to have her love me for another 28 days.
Now, I'm half-joking about the 28 days. The half that's serious has noticed that this generally happens at the end of the month or the beginning - rarely in the middle...and we all know what that means. Sure, I know it's not politically correct to speak of PMS, but it IS scientifically correct. During those two weeks surrounding the release of an egg and the following flushing of the uterus the hormones in a woman's whole body (mind included) are very different from the other two weeks of the month. This difference effects the emotions and therefore thoughts of the woman. Men might be able to liken this to watching all 4 Rambo movies and then debating politics with someone from the opposite side of the spectrum or sitting in a strip club for 5 hours and then going to a dance hall for people under 25. Hormones have dramatic effects on our behavior and judgement.

Is the burkha also Christian?

2008-01-09T22:17:00.000Z

Yes, it's me again, stirring up the crap...

I was just watching my favorite bigot. I downloaded the third season of All in the Family and have watched the first four episodes. In the episode I was watching a few minutes ago "Gloria and Her Riddle" she quotes the Bible and the quote stopped me in my tracks. I haven't read the whole Bible yet, although I keep meaning to. Anyway, she quotes from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians and what she said inspired me to read the entire verse so as not to get just a little piece of it as phrases taken out of context can often be misleading. The section of the Bible that was quoted was written by the apostle Paul in order to speak out about morality in the context of Christian faith and to answer questions and solve problems based on misunderstanding of that morality. The Bible that I have is the Good News version. I'm not sure how different it is from the King James or any other translation. Mine is in English. The section in question is chapter 11 which talks about covering head in worship. Here, it clearly states that woman is subject to man and man subject to God. A woman disgraces her husband if she prays without her head covered.

So this got me to thinking whether the burkha that some branches of Islam deems necessary for women is really that much different. Once again, I wonder if Muslims are among the last of religious groups to actually practice their faith to the letter.

2007-12-18T21:09:00.000Z

I've just been watching a bit of Billy Connolly and once again, he's got me in stitches. That guy is one who will be remembered at least as long as I live.

"Suicide f*!%ing bombing, now there's a bright idea. Every time there's a bang the world's a wanker short!"

Chicken Pox

2007-12-04T13:35:00.001Z

The strange thing about chicken pox is that once the fever breaks and the itching stops, the rash is still red and angry looking despite the fact that the sufferer feels fine. Markús Litli is in good spirits today despite the red bumps all over his skin. Here he is apparently impersonating Tony Benet crooning to a Vegas audience.

Today's word: bezoar

2007-12-04T13:31:00.000Z

I just came across this word. It sounds like something I heard Prof. Snape refer to in one of the Harry Potter movies, but must be different. According to dictionary.com it is defined thus:

be·zoar
n. A hard indigestible mass of material, such as hair, vegetable fibers, or fruits, found in the stomachs or intestines of animals, especially ruminants, and humans. It was formerly considered to be an antidote to poisons and to possess magic properties.

Here's a photo from flickr

It's a strange thing and it represents one of the reason nail biters should always spit out the clippings they bite off.

and now...alphabet jokes

2007-11-30T15:36:00.000Z

Starring the English alphabet!

Q: What letter of the alphabet is an insect?
A: B. (bee)

Q: What letter is a part of the head?
A: I. (eye)

Q: What letter is a drink?
A: T. (tea)

Q: What letter is a body of water?
A: C. (sea)

Q: What letter is a pronoun like "you"?
A: I

Q: What letter is a vegetable?
A: P. (pea)

Q: What letter is an exclamation?
A: O. (oh!)

Q: What letter is a European bird?
A: J. (Jay)

Q: What letter is looking for causes ?
A: Y. (why)

Q: What four letters frighten a thief?
A: O.I.C.U. (Oh I see you!)

Q: What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment but not once in a thousand years?
A: M.

Q: Why is the letter "T" like an island ?
A: Because it is in the middle of waTer.

Q: In what way can the letter "A" help a deaf lady?
A: It can make "her" "hear".

Q: Which is the loudest vowel?
A: The letter "I". It is always in the midst of noise

Q: In what way are the letter "A" and "noon" alike?
A: Both of them are in the middle of the "day".

Q: Why is "U" the happiest letter?
A: Because it is in the middle of "fun".

Q: What word of only three syllables contains 26 letters?
A: Alphabet = (26 letters)

Q: What relatives are dependent on "you"?
A: Aunt, uncle, cousin. They all need "U".

Q: What is the end of everything?
A: The letter "g".

lightly snoring

2007-11-27T09:39:00.000Z

So here I am again, on my bed. I was just reading a bit and answering an email from my boss. Markús Ingi is snoring lightly beside me. He's got his first cold - a terrible thing for a thumb-sucker to suffer at night. He didn't sleep well. He woke up at about 10:30 last night and didn't want to stop crying. So, we had to wake him completely and calm him down and then he was up until after 12:00. We had a little party in the master bedroom. I was trying to convince the Dear Wife that the visualizations in my media player (winamp) are better than those in hers (windows media player) so we let Markús decide which was more interesting. There was music and laughing and much crawling about.
I do like having the little stinker. He's awfully cute and fat. I'm starting to think that maybe I give him too much to eat. When he looks down his primary chin almost disappears into the fat underneath. He's got baby fat dimples on his knees. But it's so nice to hug him this way.
Here's a recent photo:

Shall we try again?

2007-11-26T11:27:00.000Z

A couple of days ago, someone asked me why I had stopped blogging. the truth is that posting difficulties got too much on my nerves. I'm going to try again because there are things that I would like to comment on from time to time. In fact, just now I found something else that grinds my gears: Windows Vista.

Microsoft has always said that they don't care who has the code for their OS because they know that software works better with their products if it is built by Microsoft. But the truth was that many things produced by others worked better. So, rather than take the bullet and admit that healthy competition forces companies to produce things that work better, they release Windows Vista. In this new OS most non-Microsoft software doesn't work at all and that which does work has flaws. My research means that I have to read a lot of PDF files. I've always used Adobe Acrobat Reader (like most people who have had to read PDF's) and have always been completely happy with it. I recently got a wonderful, shiny new laptop from my darling wife as a birthday gift because my old Toshiba died. While I like this computer quite a lot - beautiful graphics, quick processor, light weight and all, it's got Vista. Acrobat works, but the text is in a font that is hard to read except at high (125%) magnification. Vista comes with the new Microsoft PDF reading program PDF Complete. This program demonstrates that developers do not always use the programs they are designing. It is obvious as soon as one starts trying to scroll around or use any of the functions that one has grown used to in Acrobat (a free software) that none of Microsoft's developers have ever used Acrobat. So, do I take advantage of the fun things one can do with Acrobat and sacrifice my vision and get headaches trying to read the distorted text? Or, do I sacrifice all of the convenience of Acrobat to have better vision and not as much of a headache?
Although there are some good features in Vista, I think that it was a major step backward for Microsoft.

Project

2007-05-29T14:17:00.002Z

My Masters degree continues. My average for this, my third unversity degree, is 8.14. That's not too shabby considering my past attempts at learning something. I guess that this marine biology crap really does agree with me. Today I've been going over the data I've managed to collect so far about the animal communities between 240 - 374 meters. interestingly, my hypothesis seems to hold true so far. There does seem to be a connection between the type of substrate and both abundance and diversity of animals on the bottom. If ican show this is true for many types of substrate then I can go on to suggest that the type of substrate can be used to estimate what kinds of animals are present and in what abundance anywhere around Iceland. That would be pretty cool. Here's a picture:
As you can see by the four curved lines, the number of species found increases faster and to a higher maximum on a stoney bottom than on a muddy bottom. This is not really much news in the scientific world, but for my prject I had to show that there is an association in order to continue to the step of showing what species are characteristic of each substrate type. This is a trick ecologists use for the purpose of surveying areas too huge to be surveyed directly. Hopefully I'll get a whole bunch more data this summer so that I can get a very clear picture of things.

News

2007-05-24T22:09:00.000Z

Nothing much to report recently...well except for a great visit to Prague where I met a whole bunch of great people and had a new potato soup - well, new to me, anyway! As I had heard, Prague is a great city for photography. I kept almost 500 of the photos that I shot - deleting the rest was not too difficult with so many to choose from! The architecture is wonderfully rich and fascinating - although coming from a country where the word decoration is not used in architectural design meetings maybe it was inevitable to be blown away by the variety and richness of the decorative motifs on the buildings everywhere. I get the feling that we were really downtown in Prague and I though I would have liked to get out of the touristy part of the city and see more of the countryside as well, there just wasn't time. The positive side of that is that I have reason to go back to the Czech Republic. Of all the places I've been, Prague is the first city I feel like I want to go back to right away.
The Comenius Project that was the reason for our trip to Prague will require Inga to go to Belgium in November. I really hope that I can save enough for me to accompany her then, too.

Now, I've spent the last week laying down new flooring in the Dear Girl's room. I think it looks pretty good. I'm not much of a parket-layer, but I can do okay when I put my mind to it (and when the Dear Wife gives me a kick in the ass to get me started!)

All of a sudden I just don't feel like writing anymore...

A lot of a little

2007-05-02T22:39:00.001Z

In case anyone still looks at this blog after such a long pause in published articles...

Markús Ingi Ericsson, the new baby, and the rest of the family are all doing well. I've been studying for the exam I have to take on the 7th of May. We got a passport for markús today. I'll have to try to take a photo of the picture of him that the customs people will see until 2012 when we renew it. The expression on his face is fantastic! Anyway, nothing else much is going on here in Vogar, the most beautiful town in Iceland - far more beautiful than Hafnarfjörður. Dagbjört and Inga are well on their way to planning the big Confirmation party. For anyone who isn't Icelandic, the Confirmation sacrament is extremely important to Icelandic culture. In fact, it's so important that kids undergo the ceremony (and the required party featuring overly extravagant gifts and too much food) that even people who don't believe in God themselves hold a non-religious confirmation ceremony hosted by the town they live in! I'm not joking - people really ARE that gift crazy. It's bad enough that Godless children lie in front of the altar swearing to worship Jesus Christ and do their best to follow his teachings for the sole purpose of getting a new tv, computer, and hundreds of thousands of krónur (that's lots of money, to all you Gringos). Now the parents who are willing to admit to the world that they don't believe in God and that their 13-14 year old children are too immature to have formed a true idea of religious faith have created a faithless ceremony in order that their greedy little stinkers don't feel left out simply because the true ceremony doesn't fit in their belief system (or lack thereof)! The whole thing makes me sick. It's worse than the shambles that Christmas has become. Jim Carey's Mr. Grinch points out the materialism and greed that consume western culture in November and December, and if he could see what is going on here in the Spring, he'd have an even worse taste in his mouth. Easter is another day that has completely lot its meaning. My kids got so much candy this year that they voluntarily gave much of it away. I got too much, myself and have decided to forego the large chocolate Easter egg next year. I know I'll be the only one in the family that does so, though.

I agree with my wife that the sacrament of Confirmation is a beautiful thing in and of itself. I also think that kids should be made to think about their faith. But like the rest of Christianity, it quickly loses its beauty when the meaning behind it is not taken to heart. I really don't like the idea of blowing so much money, time and effort celebrating a false idea. However, I am not going to raise a fuss about this. I know that there is nothing I can do about this. It's just another in the long list of things that make me feel ashamed of the world I inhabit. We spend way too much time thinking about stuff and money and not enough time thinking about bettering the quality of our lives.

playing

2007-04-11T13:43:00.000Z

For those of you who do not have kids or those who were raised to think that one should absolutely NEVER make fun of the baby, let me tell you - you're missing out! I have to say that teasing the little critter that is keeping you up at night (and pissing on you when you are trying to change the diaper and puking on the clothes you just took out of the drawer, etc.) can help to keep you sane. I know, one should not seek revenge, but having a good laugh at the expense of an innocent sure is fun!

as you may know

2007-03-27T00:53:00.000Z

As you probably know, our newest baby was born on Saturday. The labor was not quite as long and drawn out as they often are, although it seemed like this one may have been more painful. After about 4 hours of contraction pains at home and at relatively long interval, Inga's water broke. About 44 minutes later, the baby - wet and writhing - was lying on Inga's chest. It took me by surprise. I'm sure she had more understanding of what was going on - having the ability to feel where the baby was. He was 3.425 kg and 52 cm long. He is kinda cute...despite being a newborn. he seems to have character. But he is very hungry!

lack of experience

2007-03-05T14:51:00.000Z

My friend Halldór's mother died yesterday. He's about my age so his mother couldn't have been very old. She wasn´t sick and didn't get killed by anything obvious. She just didn't wake up. I can't imagine what this is like for him and his family. I have very little experience with dealing with the death of a loved one. I only hope that he and his family can find peace with this in time. I know that most people do eventually figure out a way to move on, but not having gone through it myself I think it must be incredibly difficult. I can't imagine how I will feel when I can no longer just call my dear mother-even though I know that I will have to experience that someday.

My condolences, Halldór.

eigum við að reyna aftur?

2007-02-27T22:39:00.000Z

Ég var að velda fyrir mér hvort að áhugi væri meðal lesanda fyrir partý í Vogana á laugardaginn næstkomandi. Hvað segið þið?

lowly worm

2007-02-27T22:03:00.000Z

Lowly Worm is a character in a Richard Scary book. He's called Ormur Einfæti in Icelandic. Today I feel a little bit like Lowly Worm. I've entered a number of photos into an on-line photography contest group and not a single one has won all day. Right now I'm looking at losing with a score of 20/0 votes. Hmph...

Some advice

2007-02-27T09:02:00.000Z

There is an important difference between coming to visit Iceland in winter or summer that most foreigners would have no idea about. That is, when one comes here in the wintertime one should avoid spending lots of time in Reykjavík. In the summer, this city is quite a nice place to be. There's always stuff to do and see and the weather is usually pretty nice (for at least part of the day). But in the winter the studded tires that so many people believe to be absolutely necessary or safe conduction of a vehicle gnaw at the pavement and send tiny particles of road up into the air. These particles join the cloud of brake pad dust (which has a high copper content) and road salt dust that are already forming a low cloud over the city. This smog gets worse and worse as the winter progresses. t's now being discussed more intensely in the Icelandic media because parents are concerned that the children that they send to playschool are not allowed outside during the day some days when the weather is beautiful because the particlate dust is so thick that it will have an adverse effect on the health of the little buggers. I remember going for a walk during my first winter here and being shocked by this.
I grew up in a small Massachusetts town where the air is clean and smog is something that one hears about but only sees elsewhere. I was used to walking a lot there and when I tried to continue that habit, I quickly realized that the combination of a stinging wind and an opaque cloud of road dust makes for a few days of sore eyes and cheeks and an annoying cough. I'm sure that this dust problem is present in other parts of the country to some degree, but it's viciously noticeable here in the capital.
So, if you're planning a trip to Iceland during the winter to avoid expensive air fare or to enjoy a dip in a disgusting dirty pool of hot water and sperm cells (the Blue Lagoon) make sure that you make your hotel reservations in a town outside of Reykjavík (like Ísafjörður or Húsavík).

My problem with a business suit...

2007-02-23T09:05:00.000Z

I took this from the geniuses at wulffmorgenthaler.com. I hope they don't mind.

sorry, this is depressing

2007-02-21T08:38:00.000Z

song title: “I Wanna Fuck You”

AKON (f/ Snoop Dogg) LYRICS

[Akon:] Convict...Music...and you know we a front.

[Chorus (Akon):]

I see you winding and grinding up on that pole,

I know you see me lookin' at you and you already know

I wanna fuck you, you already know

[Snoop Dogg:]

Money in the air as mo feel grab you by your coat tail take you to the motel, hoe sale,

don't tell, won't tell, baby said I don't talk Dogg but she told on me, oh well,

take a picture with me, what the flick gon' do, baby stick to me & ima stick on you,

if you pick me then ima pick on you, d-o-double g and I'm here to put this dick on you,

I'm stuck on pussy and yours is right, wrip riding them poles and them doors is tight

and ima get me a shot for the end of the night 'cause pussy is pussy and baby you're pussy for life.

[Chorus (Akon)]

[Akon:]

Shorty I can see you ain't lonely handful of niggas and they all got cheese,

so you looking at me now what's it gonna be just another tease far as I can see,

trying get you up out this club if it means spendin' a couple dubs,

throwing bout 30 stacks in the back make it rain like that cause I'm far from a scrub,

you know my pedigree, ex-deala use to move phetamines,

girl I spend money like it don't mean nothing and besides I got a thing for you.

[Chorus (Akon)]

[Snoop Dogg:]

Mobbin' through club in low pressing I'm sitting in the back in the smokers section (just smoking),

birds eye, I got a clear view, you cant see me but I can see you (baby I see you),

it's cool we jet the mood is set,

your pussy is wet you rubbing your back and touching your neck,

your body is movin' you humpin' and jumpin' your titties is bouncin' you smilin' and grinin' and looking at me.

[Akon:]

Girl and while you're looking at me I'm ready to hit the caddy right up on the patio move the patty to the caddy,

baby you got a phatty the type I like to marry wanting to just give you everything and that's kinda scary,

cause I'm loving the way you shake your ass, bouncin', got me tippin' my glass,

Normally don't get caught up to fast but I got a thing for you.

These are the lyrics for the latest example of something that shocks me and offends me. I found this song in my 13 year old daughter’s ipod this morning. The shocking thing is not that she wants to listen to it. The shocking thing is that she could get to it. What’s worse, it’s played on the radio. As far as I can tell the only thing that differentiates this from a porn flick is that it is only sound. Pornography is banned for anyone under 21 in most places I’ve ever seen it being sold. Why do we have this double standard about “music”? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when I listened to it and yet, when I mentioned my distress about the state of our society I got the typical response to my old fashioned way of thinking: “All her friends listen to it, too. Besides, she’s not listening to it for the lyrics”. But of the hundreds of thousands of hip hop songs produced every year how many of them have basically the same rhythm but do not feature such overt disregard for emotional connection and respect for other people?

The experience was not all bad, however, because I saw that although almost all of the other songs she has in there (and there are probably at least 100 of them) are about sex, none have the same kind of pornographic stance on the subject. This reaffirmed my belief that although I disagree with some of the philosophies she has as a teenage girl, she is well based at least in that she doesn’t get involved in a whole butt-load of crazy stuff like many of her peers. She doesn’t smoke, drink or do drugs. She knows she’s not ready for sex. She talks with her mother about just about everything. So, I can’t get angry with her for listening to a song like this. I just tell her to erase it and go about my day…or I try to do so.

The real problem I have, I realize, is that I still have the same black pessimism about the future of Western society that I had as an angry teenager. We’re burying ourselves in garbage at a seemingly increasing rate. We’re choking ourselves with poisonous fumes that then go on to heat the world thereby changing the climate we require to survive. We’re allowing ourselves to slowly be pushed into accepting more and more overt and emotionless sex and violence in our children’s lives. We’re falling down the increasing slope of consumerism. We’re forgetting to demand that people respect each other. We live in fear of others’ opinions of us based on our appearance.

I say we because for the most part I fall into this category, as well. I don’t blame anyone in particular. I blame us as a collective. We don’t stand up and say, enough is enough. We just say, well, at least (insert kid’s name here) is not into (insert undesirable activity here) like that other kid over there. Is that supposed to comfort me as I accept yet another small piece of innocence is ripped out of my child with rusty tongs? Yes, I am very glad that my daughter does not do drugs. I’m glad that we have so far won the battle to keep her innocent in regards to sex. It pleases me greatly that she was raised to think that smoking is disgusting and dangerous. She doesn’t want to drink alcohol. She doesn’t even like coffee. But I wonder why stop there?

Many of us are constantly raising the bar on ourselves, why not on the upbringing of our children? I mean, I finished school with a BA in speech communications. I didn’t feel content with that and decided to go back to school almost 10 years later. I finished a BSc in fisheries biology. Then I raised the bar again and challenged myself to continue. I want to do the same with my kids. I’m glad that we have made good progress with them so far, but I don’t want to stop just because they are not among the worst kids in town. I want to push them and challenge them to stand up for decent moral values even if it isn’t cool. I would absolutely love to hear my teenage daughter say to her friend that she doesn’t want to wear a thong because she thinks that’s too grown up for a 13 year old. But I would love even more to have her asking why thongs are made in her size in the first place. I would like for her to hear a song like that above and think, “this is not the sort of feeling I want to promote in the world”.

But I know I’m asking too much. I need to just shut my cake hole and go back to running up more credit card debt to buy new stuff I don’t need to replace the old stuff that still works but isn’t as cool as the newest model. I should just bury my head in the sand and take let life steamroll over me. I need to admit that I cannot control my own fate or influence society with my own values. I need to be a good little sheep.

wulffmorgenthaler.com

2007-02-20T23:41:00.000Z

the guys at wulffmorgenthaler.com summed it up best in one frame...again.

Called off

2007-02-18T16:22:00.000Z

Sorry to say that the party was called off. But I did venture out to get myself a little farther into debt. Our tv broke down and we had to to go out and buy a new one. Surprisingly, it was the Dear Wife and not I, who pushed for going the extra mile to bring home a 42" plasma screen. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely happy with our decision. it just surprised me that she-the sensible one of the two of us-who was willing to juggle spending on other things in order to plop down the big bucks for a huge and very cool tv.
Last night I couldn't sleep. This happens sometimes, that I close my eyes and lie down (not necesarily in that order) and sleep elludes me. I don't want to make the pregnant woman's night any more difficult so I get up and go downstairs. Last night, I couldn't resist tossing in the Followship of the Ring dvd. It was just like being in a theater except that the seats are more comfortable, the floor isn't sticky, there're no cell phones ringing or teenagers making all kinds of noise. Of course, I didn't have candy or popcorn, but I can sacrafice that for he comfort of my own house! So, now we have somewhere around 2400 hours left of tv life until this new beast give out and we have to go replace it.

Shindig

2007-02-13T12:10:00.000Z

Yup, it's time for me to host again. Saturday night, if you can come, stop by and say hi. And remember the words of Stevie Ray Vaughn, "If the house is rockin' don't bother knockin', just come on in."

humanity

2007-02-09T14:30:00.000Z

The word humane has very positive connotations. People refer to repression and torture as being inhumane practises of evil governments. But, after seeing at the way people treat animals I don't think we can use that word in a positive way. I know some people will, at this point, stop reading so as not to hear yet another tree-hugger talk/write about our relationship to the world around us. But I have just seen something that made me feel sick. First off, I have to say that I like to eat meat. I like to eat fish. I like chicken eggs for breakfast.
So, I am a hypocrite, to some degree. I know the torture that fish must go through before finally suffocating in the hold of a ship. I know about the small pens in which chickens and milking cows are kept all their life. But for some reason those things do not bother me all that much. I don't know why. It's irrational, but it's the truth of my hypocrisy and I will face the music in the next life.
Today I saw a video of the way dolphins are treated in a village in Japan. If you can stomach it, you can see it here: http://www.glumbert.com/media/dolphin but do think twice before watching it and I would not suggest showing it to young children. It got me to thinking that we really aren't that far from the beasts themselves sometimes. We do this kind of thing to each other from time to time, as well. I am absolutely sure that if crabs were our size we would not be able to swim in the ocean or go to the beach. they would rip us apart with the same kind of apathy shown by these Japanese people (I can't call them fishermen if they're not catching fish).

This was a bit of a shock. I suppose that killing something as big as a whale or dolphin is more of a gruesome than slaughtering thousands of tons of herring in a single net (which is what happens to the herring). But the act of such destruction seems to me to be the same no matter what organism is the subject of the attack. I don't really understand why it is, then that I am far more affected by the sight of dolphins flopping about bleeding to death when it doesn't bother me so much to watch a mackerel that I just caught flopping on the deck. It should be the same, but for some reason it's completely different. Why do you suppose that is?

Back to work...

Here I am

2007-02-08T09:23:00.000Z

I'm bouncing now between Reykjavík and Sandgerði. There is a research station in Sandgerði where the university has a bit of space that wasn't being used. That's closer to my house so I asked if I could work there instead. It's much better than moving the slide projector to and fro in the university building as classes start and I'm kicked out of the room where I set up. Right Now I'm in Reykjavík awaiting the start of a lecture about surveying. This is part of a course in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). So far it's fun and school is going pretty well for me still. I love my work and I love the freedom it provides me.

2007-01-23T15:17:00.000Z

Sad, really.
That something with no indication of life,
no soul,
no will,
can control something
as complex as the human being...

It looks innocent enough to me...

nerves

2007-01-23T15:11:00.000Z

Here I sit...waiting for my class to start. I have to hold a very short lecture today. Most of the time I think it's fun to do that. But even after getting a BA in it, I still get nervous before each lecture. My stomach is gittery. I think I might puke.
I'm well prepared. I have notes to hold my place when I start talking. And I'm going to speak English this time - I'm tired of Icelandic today. The rest of today will be an English day.

I did my first assignment in GIS today. For those who don't know, that's a computer environment to manage huge amounts of data in sucha way as to allow lots of different kinds of data to be pinpointed in geographic space. Anyway, it's not all that difficult. I know this was only he first assignment and that they get more complicated, but I think getting a decent grade will not be too hard.

Not much else right now...just waiting for my class to start...

My car, my friends

2007-01-17T17:14:00.000Z

Today was another day added to the list of days wasted on the car. Yesterday it decided that the best way to get my attention was to stop the shift-stick somewhere between park and reverse. This was turning the key in the ignition does nothing but produce a click, light up the dashboard lights, and start that annoying damn bell that is supposed to inspire me to belt myself to the seat. These things all lead to the suspicion that a dead battery is not the problem, as they all require a certain amount of energy from the power cells. Of course, the next thought I had was, hmm, didn’t I just change the skiptibarki (I’ve only learned the Icelandic name for that particular part) a year or two ago? That means that I knew from the start that this was probably not something usual.

In World War II, pilots and navy men complained of gremlins in their planes and boats. A gremlin is a little demon- or goblin-like creature that lives in a complicated machine and does nothing but make the machine not run properly. They talked about fixing one thing only to have something else begin to malfunction immediately. There are gremlins in my car. There’s no question about that.

As it turns out, the gremlins have destroyed a solenoid that acts a safety precaution. This solenoid drives a little piece of metal that stops the shift stick from being moved until the break is pressed. The theory is that children cannot press the break in and move the stick, so when the solenoid is working properly, only they cannot change gears. As with so many of the other things I’ve had to replace on my American version of a very popular car, I will probably have to order the solenoid from America myself to avoid the long wait that always accompanies placing an order for a spare part through the Subaru dealer.

All that said, I have to thank all of my friends and my dear wife for keeping me in a good mood despite the fact that I’ve now wasted about 10 full hours on that danged car. I have to thank Grímur, Olga, and Hrönn, especially for all of their help. I know it sounds like I am trying to make this a bigger deal than it needs to be. Maybe I am doing that, in fact, but that’s the way I am. I think it’s a big deal that my car breaks down so often. But I also think it’s a big deal that my friends and wife are so great when anything bad happens.

Booted

2007-01-12T16:16:00.000Z

Is nothing sacred?! Heh heh, a photo to show the first girlfriend when he brings her home...moowahahaha!

Real Beer

2007-01-10T22:07:00.000Z

I heard some good news for Americans yesterday. Apparently, some kind of deal was made between Anheiser Busch and the brewers of the real budweiser beer. You see, the good old American Budweiser-which is not worth the effort of opening the can-was named that after the founder of Anheiser Busch went to Europe to taste beers. He really liked the name and in 1919 decided to name his American bubbly sour water-sorry, I mean "beer"-Budweiser. Then he was clever enough to follow the American model and stamp a TM after the name on all his labels, thus outlawing anyone else's use of the name. This occurred much to the dismay of the Czechs from the town of Budweis who'd been calling their beer Budweiser for more than 500 years! Dirty bastard American businessman! Anyway, the two parties have been fighting back and forth ever since and the Czech Budweiser-which is a truly great beer-has been (to my knowledge) kept from the American people. Now that there has been some kind of deal the Czechs can sell their beer to Americans under some other name. This will probably back-fire considering that most Americans are still reeling from the lack fo beer with any flavor since the days of Prohibition. But I still have faith that the culture of beer drinkers in the states is flourishing. Afterall, America was made by Europeans coming acorss the ocean. The Irish brought their Guiness and Harp beers. the English have John Smiths. We'll just have to see what happens.
But to he American people, I say, "Bottoms up!"

Concentrate!

2007-01-08T16:09:00.000Z

Have you ever had a day when you couldn’t get your brain to do your bidding? This sort of thing happens to me often. Today is just such a day. I’m trying and trying to concentrate on my work. I have fascinating photos to analyze. I have a quiet room with very little interruption. But I cannot keep my mind focused on what I want to do. Take this blog entry, for instance. As I type, I’m thinking that I should really be looking at the screen on which the slide is projected so that I can continue to count up benthic species. But…
I guess that I just HAVE to force myself back to it.

Today's

2007-01-03T22:13:00.000Z

Follow the link to the best photo of the day:

THE LINK

I may pick a favorite everyday considering that I look at so many each day...

2007-01-03T10:03:00.000Z

I'm watching!

2007-01-02T23:04:00.000Z

2007-01-02T13:17:00.000Z

The first photo taken with my new 1.7x zoom extension...set on macro...

Icyland

2007-01-02T11:34:00.000Z

Iceland lived up to its name last night and this morning. Everything was slick with a glass-smooth layer of ice. It was great fun to watch the bus that was to drive me to Reykjavík (at the increased price of 900 krónur ($12.73)-an increase of 100 krónur over last week) slide across the street and onto the sidewalk as the driver tried to make the turn into the bus stop. I stepped on board and trusted to God that I would make it to school. Fortunately, the rest of the country is civilized enough to have seasoned he roads with a good amount of salt and once we were outside of my town (where not a single aura-that's a tenth of a króna for you gringos-is spent on road maintenance). I'm in school now and took a small breather from classification to post a bit.

And now a post that didn't work a few weeks ago...

One of the things that has a great influence on my perception of life in Iceland is winter. I come from northern Massachusetts and grew up loving the cold and shorter days of the winter time. Now I live in a place almost as cold as where I grew up (Boston has a lower average winter temperature than Reykjavík) but there is not as much snow. Actually, if I lived in the north of Iceland, I might actually be able to experience waking up one morning and having to dig my way out of the house…but I don’t. I live in the warmer lands of the south. You might think that living in a place where snow usually either melts quickly or blows past into conveniently placed drifts in predictable areas. Unfortunately, there was a secret danger lurking in the darkness of the Icelandic winter. That deceitful beast is called sidewalk ice. You see, although the roads do eventually become clear as more and more people drive on them (very little plowing actually goes on around here) the sidewalks are left to rot. My theory is that nobody cleans the sidewalk because nobody walks anywhere. I thought Americans were strange because they don’t walk if they are going more than 50 meters ( I say meteres for two reasons: 1. because Americans know that a meter is roughly the same as a yard, and 2. because I believe that everyone should switch to the metric system of measurement). But Icelanders drive EVERYWHERE. I’ve seen people come out of a store, get into the car, drive across the street and park to go into a different store. Aaanyway, the sidewalks don’t get cleaned off when it snows. That means that the snow left over turns to ice.
A couple of weeks ago, I went over to the marine research institute and when I was walking back to my car I slipped on this sidewalk ice and landed on top of my laptop. Fortunately, I’m so thin and light that I did not crush the poor thing. A couple of days later, I was walking through campus and I nearly feel flat on my behind again. Shortly thereafter, one of my weaknesses worked in my advantage. Although I do not count myself a typical man in many respects, I am just like everyone else in at least one thing: I do turn my head when a beautiful woman goes by. I’m happily married and all that…I’m not looking for anything other than the view itself. I suppose it’s like looking at a beautiful photo or painting, only a bit more perverse. But I was paid off for this weakness in that I realized the secret to not falling and cracking my skull open. Icelanders keep this secret like American families guard the chocolate chip cookie recipe. So, for you fortunates – my readers – I will be opening your eyes to the secret to walking on sidewalk ice without falling and crushing your lap top. The trick is to walk around with your bum cheeks pinched tightly together. This restricts your movement and keeps your center of balance centered so that you find that you will not slide. So, try it next when you walk across a sheet of ice covered by a thin film of rain. And when you succeed, do not thank me. Thank the Icelandic girl with the skin tight black pants and waist-length coat. She has no idea that she has saved my wrists, hips, knees and electrical equipment a great deal of pain and bruises.
Of course another benefit of this style of getting around is that you firm up the rear and look better in a bathing suit! But it's the survival of winter that makes this technique so valuable.

beta is apparently more than a fish and a Greek letter

2007-01-02T11:30:00.000Z

Are there any readers of my blog that can explain to me why I keep seeing things advertising a beta version? What does that mean exactly? Blogger was in beta and now they're all happy about not being beta anymore as though it's a great accomplishment or something. The only change I can see is that now I can (for the last three posts) post to my blog from home. Yahoo email also has a beta version. I've seen it in other software, as well. What does it mean?!

A few recent photo projects

2007-01-01T16:38:00.000Z

Oops

2007-01-01T16:23:00.000Z

I forgot to post the smaller version of that sunrays over the mountains photo instead of the full size...and I did a little tweaking of the color and lighting...

2007-01-01T16:08:00.000Z

We made the drive to the east coast for Christmas this year. Iceland is one of the most visually stunning of places and driving such a long distance is an exciting experience for the eyes-though the old back grumbles the whole way about the comfort of being at home. The in-laws were so glad of our company I feel that the trouble and discomfort of the journey were well worth it. This is just one of the cool things I laid eyes on during the trip east. The ride home was beautiful, too. I saw a grey heron-something I was not aware was part of Iceland's bird life.

A new Year...

2007-01-01T15:32:00.000Z

2006 is over.

Every year since I was 18 or so has been better than the one before it. 2006 was a good year. I made new friends, finished a second Bachelor's degree and started a MSc (a life-long dream for me). My relationship with my wife developed still further in a healthy direction. I took up serious photography again. I made plans for my immediate future. I travelledto new places. I saw the most beautiful brown trout of my life...though it got away. All this and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was a good year.
2007 has already presented some great stuff for me. Our second son will be born around March 23. I've got plans for some research opportunities. And, judging by the apple.com movie trailer site there is a lot of great entertainment headed our way this year. So, I'm feeling pretty good as the new year begins.

Thanks to all of you who helped to make 2006 a great year and I look forward to making new memories with you this year.

Excitement in the next room

2006-12-11T11:12:00.000Z

Right now, as I type, my advisor is sitting in the next room with one of the organizing researchers of a Norwegian deep sea biology cruise next summer. When my advsor stepped out to get something he needed, I took the opportunity to pop my head in and show interest in the project. I was given a full run-dwon of what they're planning and what thye found last year. There are, just north of Iceland, the only known shallow-water geothermal undersea vents in the world. They are going to be continuing their research on the known ones and looking for new ones in deeper water. I talked to him for a little while and then he said that there is definitely space for me on the boat and tht I should just give him my e-mail address so he can start keeping me up to date. he said that he already had my address somewhere (my advisor is always trying to mix me into his projects as well-as a good advisor should) but that he wanted to be sure to have it. Unfortunately, this voyage would mean that I would HAVE to fly to Norway to get aboard...tough life!

Don't forget...or get confused

2006-12-11T09:45:00.000Z

My flickr.com photo site is getting a lot of traffic. I think that setting that thing up was the best thing I did this Fall. I've always loved taking photos, but having a site that's so easy to use and full of all kinds of great little perks is fantastic. I've been taking a lot more potos. This year, I even had some Christmas gifts printed out with photos of mine in them. I'm definitely going to do that again. It was cheap and yet they look really great. The great thing about something like that is that I made them myself and put my life at risk to get the photos (well, okay, so maybe my life was not at risk, but there were some days when my hands were surely at a risk of frostbite!), and then I put all kinds of thought into setting up the layouts. If you get one, let me know what you think and if you want one next year.
I'll say in advance, that, due to bad planning, I won't be getting one out to my fan in Korea. Sorry, dude. I'll make sure to put you on my list for next year.

Oh, just in case

2006-12-11T09:43:00.000Z

Just in case anyone reading this doesn't know and has a desire to know...Inga's third pregnancy is going well. We're going to have another boy, thank God (just kidding about the "thank God" part-for although I do believe girls to be far more difficult I know I would not be a worse father to a girl than a boy).

Apparently

2006-12-11T09:38:00.000Z

It seems I may be able to save my grant! A kind young man over at the Marine research Institute is going to lend us some photos and specimens for classification so that i can have something to write in my progress report. The progress report is a paper about what's been going on in the project this year and is used as a means to judge whether the funding organization is going to give us more money next year. This is really exciting for me because I thought I was going to have to change gears and hop from deep sea benthic ecology to studying the shallow water biology and ecology of the edible crab Cancer pagurus. That project would have been fascinating and very enjoyable to complete. But I would rather hold myself to the project I started on in May. So, I guess two of my friends will have to suffer through taking the crab.

That's my good news.

Aurora Borealis

2006-12-11T09:36:00.000Z

Despite my somewhat childish hopes for a better life, my life is not perfect right now. The cause of my dissatisfaction at the moment is the continued lack of someone in my life who is willing to forego all worldly comfort to appreciate natural beauty with me. You see, I live now in an area of the world where the Aurora Borealis is almost a nightly occurrence. Right now, there are lights in the sky that defy imagination and inspire me with all kinds of feelings and thoughts. But, as has always been the case, I'm torn between being with my desire to be outside until the show's over (probably tomorrow morning) and returning to the human world that everyone I care about inhabits. Currently, the people who occupy the largest slices of my mind and heart are my wife and son and a couple of my friends. None of them would actually wake up or stay awake long enough to go out into a dark field with me right now (at 20 minutes to 1 AM) to lie in the cold just to watch some beautiful lights in the sky. This does not make me love them any less. I know that my wish to lie in the grass until frost forms on me so that I don't miss a moment of some flashing green and purple lights in the sky is a strange and possibly insane wish. But I can't help it.
This desire to take in Nature drives me in all kinds of things-not the least of which is photography. But I know that I could search through piles of millions of people without finding a single one that would be willing to sit until his/her hands are so cold they've stopped hurting just to watch a seal on a beach in February. I've never known anyone who has fallen asleep because 3 AM is just too late to be lying in the undergrowth looking up through the canopy to watch the stars march across the sky.
There is a hole in my experience caused by an aloneness in this pursuit of observation and I doubt that it will ever be filled. Once again, I must heed the call of my tired eyes and drag my attention back down to Earth. I know it will be absolutely wonderful to lie down next to my beautiful, sleeping, soft, warm, pregnant wife. I know that I will smile and sigh contentedly when I do so. but tearing myself away from the sky is a tough thing to do tonight.

long pause

2006-12-04T15:20:00.000Z

As Isaid in the last message, Blogger beta has not treated me well and the labyrinth that is Google Help is far beyond my gleaning a single grain of useful information. I'm trying this again-at the risk of frustration.

My masters project is a bit up in the air due to lack of the ability to use the damn submarine during the months since May. I may have to switch to research of a new-comer to Iceland's shores- the edible crab (töskukrabbi). But for now, I'm still trying to save our grant for the other project.
My home life is going very well. Inga's womb is swelling with my spawn. I'm hoping that all the kicking going on inside of her means that the kid will be tired after he's born from a 9 month expenditure of energy. But I know the odds of that are slim and he'll probably be one of those hyperactive little stinkers one sees on Super Nanny! But if so, he'd better watch out because his parents are ready for anything: mamma is a specialist in education and management of brats and papa has a swift temper.

I'm studying for my final today. I'll be done with yet another semester on December 18.

My crayfish are brooding like there's no tomorrow. If any of my dear readers wants an aquarium animal that's easy to take care of, fun to watch and doesn't require a lot of space...let me know and I can provide you with a few crayfish.

Last Friday I went to the annual employee/grad student Christmas dinner. It was a lot of fun. I'm not much for hangikjöt that tastes like a mouthful of smoke, but other than that the food was good.

That's about it, for now.

Trouble

2006-10-23T16:14:00.000Z

I've been having a lot of trouble posting lately. I switched to blogger in beta and since have not been able to post from home. I don't know why and I find the "help" links at the blogspot site far too time consuming and useless. Anyway, that's why the last two fantastic posts that I've written have not come up. If this post works, I will bring the other two posts into school with me the next time I come to try to post them here. I'm looking for another blog host and considering the option of starting my own website-I don't know which will be better for me. I'll let you know and post a link to the new blog whenever it becomes a reality.

Convoluted

2006-10-05T14:41:00.000Z

I’ve been feeling a bit down today. I don’t know why. Does anyone have any ideas? School is going okay. The submarine project is about to take off full speed. I’ve been having a lot of fun taking pictures lately. I’ve had a lot of fun conversations with friends and with Inga. I haven’t been getting into arguments with anyone recently. I just feel a bit depressed. This has been kind of under the surface for some weeks now and it’s starting to annoy me. I have no reason to feel anything but happiness. So what’s wrong?! The human mind is a twisted thing. I just don’t get it.

My Little Camera

2006-10-03T17:46:00.000Z

Lately I have been having very negative thoughts about my camera. I had been quite satisfied until recently. She works pretty well. She didn't get too broken when I knocked her off the nightstand in England. She has gone with me to lots of different places and allowed me to take a lot of pictures that I feel happy with. However, then I started trying to figure out how to manually adjust the shutter speed. I thought I'd tried everything with no success. That's why I started dreaming of the day when I could afford a much more expensive camera with even more maual control. Today, I figured out that the solution to my problem was not to dream of something I couldn't have but rather to check the camera again to try to find the setting. This is a very basic thing and most digital cameras will allow the user to control shutter speed. I found the setting in the most obvious of places and now I can see that ihave actually a very large range of shutter speeds. I don't know what I was thinking! I love my little camera again and beg her apology.

New Stuff

2006-10-03T11:42:00.000Z

The photosite that I set up last week has really taken over almost all of my free time. I have also been reading a lot more. I finished The Last Precinct by Patricia Cornwell. She's my favorite murder mystery writer because she writes about a character named Kay Scarpetta who is chief medical examiner for the state of Virginia. The character is a very strong persona that has been well developed. The stories are a lot like the tv series CSI which I also find fascinating. This type of murder mystery happens, for the most part, after the fact. That is, the main characters are forensic scientists who try to deduce from scientific evidence left at the scene what was done, how it was done and who did it. This book kept me engaged until the end by not revealing too much while it allowed quite a bit of speculation as to who and why.
I've just started Clive barker's book Sacrament which is about a wildlife photographer who falls into a coma and is travelling through the landscape of his memories. I've only just begun the real meat of the book so I can't tell you too much about it at the moment. But it is well written and quite engaging-as I've found all of his stories to be.
I recently watched the movie "Everything Is Illuminated". It's fantastic. It's a vicisouly creative and innovative film about a young man searching for the story of his family. It's narrated by a man who speaks English with some hilarious misusage misunderstanding of words. My mother was telling me recently that I should read the book or listen to the book on tape and if someone wants to give it to me for Christmas, I will.
The most important thing right now, though is the explosion of photographic expression that's blossomed in me. I've found that it's wonderfully gratifying to go out with the camera and walk around for hours on end. Of course, this means a certain decrease in the amount of good meals my family will eat, as I am the one who cooks most-according to the agreement I reached with the Dear Wife.
Marine ecology is going well. I've decided on a project for the class. I'm going to study the changes in density and size distribution of brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) on the mud flats in Mossfellsbær and see if those patterns are also observed in Vogar. It should be interesting.

frustration

2006-09-27T20:09:00.000Z

Argh...blogging is far from perfect. I've been trying all day long to post pictures and a blog entry with no success. I've noticed that this happens from time to time. It still bothers me. You get wht you pay for, i guess.

Public Opinion

2006-09-26T10:07:00.000Z

Two votes for a flickr site later, Our Hero decided to bow to peer pressure. He has finished the process of uploading the first three pictures. You can access them here.

Oh, and thanks for all the great birthday wishes and compliments on the party. It was such a success that I may even do it again sometime.

Photo site?

2006-09-25T11:45:00.000Z

Someone asked me today if I have a Flickr photosite. I don't because I post photos here and on my travel blog. But I thought maybe I should ask you, my readers, what your opinion is. Should I set up a flickr site that allows you to see more of the photographs that I take? I like posting some photos here to break up the monochromy of this blog. But I could just as easily set up a site devoted specifically to pictures. I like to be able to write long captions or even incorporate photos into blog entries. But maybe you would rather I post the photos elsewhere so you don't have to wade through my endless yammering just ot see some new pictures from Iceland or of my family. The BIONerdics have their own flickr site and for those of you who haven't seen it, it's worth a look...even if you don't know them. They take some great photos. You can see them by clicking here.

2006-09-22T09:47:00.000Z

Ingi and Hrönn. Nice photo, but I didn't take it.

Guðjón, but not My Guðjón

2006-09-22T09:41:00.000Z

This is one of my newish friends. His name is Guðjón-he's called Gaui (which is pronounced Goyi in Iceland). He's a mellow quiet guy, but boy can he look scary when he wants to do so! I did not take this picture, either.

Do You Notice the Aroma?

2006-09-22T09:35:00.000Z

Another day of perfect weather and no AUV with which to take the photographs I need for my project.
Last night the year’s first frost formed on the plants in my yard.  I’ve always liked frost.  I remember walking to school when I was a kid and stopping to stoop down to look at the amazing patterns that for in the ice crystals on leaves and blades of grass.  Later in the winter, I could just move aside the curtain in the tiny single-pained window at the head of my bed to see frost swirls and inflorescences on the glass.  Today I pointed it out to my son and I hope that he paid attention to it as he was walking to school with his mother.  I’m a real “take time to stop and smell the roses” kind of guy.  Life goes by at such a pace most of the time that we finish a week still thinking it’s Monday.  Weeks pile up in a blur as we race to finish assignments and cook and clean and do all the things we supposedly have to do.  Then, all of a sudden we’re getting ready for the New Year’s Eve.  And where did the time go?  So, I try to take notice of the passage of time.  I certainly don’t notice every minute.  I do waste a lot of time.  But I think more often than most people, I stop to notice something along the way.  That’s part of what my inspiration for photography.  It’s strange though, that as I write about this idea of paying attention and trying to immortalize things in memory and photographs I’m forced to remember that I have no photographs of my friends from the university I attended in the States.  My friend Paul-who is about the only one with whom I am still in contact-is one of those people.   I don’t know of a single photograph in my collection of him.
So, if I’m taking note of things around me, why not the people as well?  I have lots of memories of these people-the ones that really matter, anyway.  I remember countless hours of gaming with Paul and the others.  Those memories always put a smile on my face.  Those were really good times and I won’t forget them.  In the fantasy world in my mind, I still dream of meeting up with the whole crew-Joe, Bill, TJ and Paul-for one last gaming session sometime before we die…if we are, in fact, all still alive.  I once thought it would be fun to get together in our nursing home to relive some of the old day’s adventures and disturb all of the other old folks at the wrinkle farm.  But I know that won’t happen…and I’m not even sure that I would really want it to happen.
I’m facing another birthday.  I’ll be 34 on Sunday.  I think that’s great.  I joke about being old and whatnot but the truth is that aside from my back hurting all the time because I’m too lazy to exercise the way I should I don’t feel much different than I did ten years ago.  I still feel like I have a long future ahead of me.  I understand more now than I did then, but I really feel healthy and young.  I like my life and I think part of that content that I feel is because I stop to notice things that bring small pieces of happiness.  Like the aroma of roses and the smiles of friends.

2006-09-15T22:48:00.000Z

Man's Contribution

2006-09-15T22:44:00.000Z

Lichens-Moss-Wood

2006-09-15T22:41:00.001Z

Shipwreck

2006-09-15T22:39:00.000Z

Staðarborg

2006-09-15T17:17:00.000Z

Upsidedown Lollipop

2006-09-15T17:14:00.000Z

Change of Plans

2006-09-13T19:28:00.000Z

Unfortunately, the trip to Norway I had planned is going to have to be cancelled. My project-analyzing benthic communities using an AUV-requires good weather and the likelihood of getting good weather is constantly decreasing as winter draws near. So, in order to be sure not to miss opportunities to go out to sea early in October I have to cancel my planned attendance of a 10-day seminar in Norway. This is really a downer, but it’s a sacrifice I have to make to ensure that I’m doing my best to get the project under way.
Today I went with a friend out to look at the possibility of doing a smaller project analyzing the populations living in a mud flat near my home. It turns out that the mud is far more coarse than I thought and we’ll have to rethink our plan. But the good news is that we found two of the species that have been identifies as new to Iceland (although they are common in other areas of the ocean-isn’t global warming fun?). One is a polychaete worm-your basic seaworm-that builds a little (8-10”) tube by cementing grains of sand or sediment together. The other is a sand shrimp it’s a cute little bugger that sits in the sand at low tide and is easily filtered out with a fairly coarse filter.

Thoughts in a Bog of Planning and Expectations

2006-09-11T10:46:00.000Z

Have I been neglecting my adoring public?!  Don’t take it personally, I’ve just been thinking about other crap lately than writing.  One thing I’ve been doing lately is to try to find a boat and captain to take me and my submarine out onto the great green briny for a megabenthos photo shoot.  That entails calling all over the place to try to convince someone to sail 40 nautical miles southwest of Iceland for very little pay.  The real problem with this is that it would take probably a total of 12 hours to do what I need to do in perfect weather.  The weather lately is far from perfect.  I just had a peek at the forecast for today, tomorrow and Wednesday (the day we are trying to go out) and it does not look good.  Why does this part of the world have to be so danged windy?!  Wind means waves and waves mean we can’t go.  The captain I found was already somewhat taken aback when, after he’d agreed to do this for me, he looked at a map and saw how far out we need to go.  I’m at his mercy, now.  He’s the captain and says whether the weather is good enough for the voyage or not.
So, that’s one thing that’s been consuming my thoughts lately.  The other thing-a more major one, I guess, is that the wife is pregnant again.  Yup, I know, the last time, it ended unfortunately and I had to let everyone know.  But this time everything looks to be going smoothly.  We saw that the little critter has two arms and two legs and is the right length for this stage of development.  We’re going for a retard test on Thursday.  That is, they now scan the image with an ultrasound and then measure the thickness of the occipital portion of the skull to see if an amniocentesis is necessary.  The thicker the skull, the more likelihood of Down’s Syndrome or some other brain defect.  I must say that childbirth is a form of torture I would gladly live out the rest of my life without witnessing again.  But I guess the reward makes it worth it.  So, I’ll be in the delivery room again in the end of March to hope that it will all be over as soon as possible.  Then, the 18 years of heavy responsibility start.  That’s the part that I can deal with.

I went to my first political dinner two nights ago.  It was great fun.  Imagine, Our Hero, rubbing shoulders with the likes of the mayors of the local towns and sitting across the table from the congressman for our district!  Well, I guess it’s not so strange considering that the wife is on the board of selectmen.  I’d better get used to this; she really likes to get into politics with these guys.  We had a nice meal that started with skewers of lobster and scallops on a bed of risotto.  The main course was grilled lamb medallions with mashed sweet potatoes and five string beans (yeah, I counted!  I love string beans and was looking forward to a healthy portion, but instead I got five).  Dessert was a tooth-achingly sweet chocolate mousse tart with some kind of crunchy bottom on mango-ginger chutney with wild berry sauce.  Yellowtail cabernet sauvignon was free-flowing.  I turned down the cognac-which turned out to be a wise choice when I woke up the day after without any bodily reminders of the evening’s drink.  Though I like the taste of cognac, that Frog booze sits like two pounds of cement in the gut for a good 24 hours!
But, I digress.  I get to thinking of food and suddenly, my mouth controls my brain-and, therefore, my thoughts-and suddenly it’s like I’m writing a review for Food and Wine magazine or something.

Other than those two things-the impending baby and the AUV project-my thoughts have been wandering very little of late.
But I wonder, now that I’m thinking of something else, what’s the weather like in South Korea?  My friend Paul, the one who comments on this site, lives there and I wonder what life is like for him. He’s got a very cute daughter whom I’ve never met and a lovely wife who made me feel welcome from the first moment I met her.  They live there, in a city with a population larger than that of the country in which I live.  They eat really good food everyday (again with the food!).  They are surrounded by a language that is foreign to me.  They are exposed to a radically different experience of reality than I.  Fun to think about where people are and what they’re doing now.  It would be fun to be able to just fly off to visit on a whim.  But I think that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

TV

2006-08-25T09:05:00.000Z

American tv shows in Iceland amount to one or two sit. coms., a slew of cop/lawyer shows (Law and Order and its spin-offs and CSI), and "reality" tv (Bachelor/Bachelorette, Survivor, Amazing Race, the list goes on...endlessly!).  My viewing pleasure is satisfied by CSI: New York and Las Vegas (Horatio ruins the Miami installment-how can that guy still be getting parts?!), occasional Lost episodes, occasional Supernova episodes, and Sleeper Cell.
The best thing about the not-acted-not-scripted-not-not-news-or-talk tv shows is that the fact that they take up so much air time means that I end up watching a whole lot less tv.   Unfortunately, the void in my American mind that was once filled by greats such as The Dukes of Hazard, the A-Team, Greatest American Hero, Remington Steele, and All in the Family is now filled to brimming by the game Civilization 4.  Even though this blasted thing runs slower the farther one gets in the game, I sit entranced for hours.  Sometimes I feel ashamed when I’m pried out of the computer screen by my loving wife who’s been home for a few hours without me noticing.  But then I realize that she’s been home for a few hours and all she’s done is listen to the news and listen to talk-shows about people arguing about politics or some rights issue or the business world and  Isee that it would not have mattered if I had been attentive to her because she was doing something I don’t like so much.  I do enjoy the news.  Over here we don’t have the Fear Factor style of news reporting one gets from American “news” media-even CNN since 9/11.  No, we get robotic talking statuettes that would keep a straight face and a measured tone if Godzilla bit off the roof of the building from which they were reporting.  It’s somewhat refreshing.  We get the facts-with an occasional correction from past reporting-about what’s going on in Iceland as well as far and wide in the world.  We hear about which of the 6 guys guys who own everything in Iceland is in the dog house today and we get a tally of the Israelis and Palestinians killed today.  We get video or sound footage of Bush’s latest screw-up and the on-going debacle in Iraq.  Then we usually get some good news.  We hear about a guy swimming the English Channel to try to raise money to support a woman’s right to NOT be raped.  We hear about two kids who held a yard sale, made 50 bucks and then gave it to a charity.  Then we get the weather.  This is one of my favorite things in the news broadcast here.  The weather people are all VERY strange in some way.  There’s a woman who sounds like she’s trying to swallow her words before they come out of her mouth.  There’s the fat guy who believe that meteorology is the most fascinating and wonderful subject anyone has ever heard of.  But the best thing about the weather report at 7:00 pm (19.00) is that no matter who is doing the reporting, they start with, “The weather at 12:00 was…”  I laugh inside every single time I hear that.  Is this weather for those who slept all day and yet care enough about life to wonder how the weather they missed was?!  Who cares what the weather was like.  I hardly care, at 7:00 what the weather IS like.  In the evening, I’m looking for a forecast.  I want to know what to expect tomorrow and on the weekend.  Can I plan the fishing trip?  If so, do I need to bring a heavy coat or shorts?  Those are the questions that come to me when I think about the weather.  I can see how the weather is by looking outside.  I know what the weather was like at 12:00 because I was awake then.  Silly.  But hey, maybe it’s of interest to someone…I like to fish, some people collect stamps, maybe someone is interested in the weather that they already lived through.  Maybe that’s it…maybe they say the weather at noon so that one can think back fondly to a lovely luncheon meal in the warm sunshine at 66°N.  I’ve always wanted a weather reporter to come on the screen and say things like, “It’s crappy outside.  If you have to go out, wear a rain coat with a sweater under it,” or “The weather’s great, so get off your lazy bum and get some fresh air.  By the way, you won’t be needing a jacket.”  They get all wrapped up in exact description of temperature and humidity and all sorts of indices.  That’s not what we need.
Hmm, how did I get on the subject of weather reporting when I started this as a responses that I got for the not-acted-not-scripted-not-not-news-or-talk tv post from yesterday.  What I wanted to say to Júlía is that even though I despise the idea of a tv schedule filled with lots of versions of the same premise, I know that others like it and I don’t look down on them for it.  Accepting the fact that others have different opinions than one’s own is all part of living among 6,000,000,000 people.  I won’t criticize anyone for not sitting down with me and watching 16 continuous hours of documentaries on life in the sea as long as no body forces me to sit through more than a few minutes of America’s Next Top Model.  But I will kill anyone in order to avoid watching 16 continuous hours of The Bachelorette!

Rock Star Rupernova

2006-08-24T23:19:00.000Z

“Rock Star Rupernova”  has achieved the status of Most-Watched Television Show In Icelandic History.  Magni Ásgeirsson, an Icelandic singer competing with a bunch of Americans, an Aussie and an African, is the reason for this.  This is the first “reality tv” show I’ve watched and really enjoyed.  While I think they don’t have to drag it out so much (it was obvious that some of the contestants should have been dropped weeks ago) and all of the suspense that underwear model and bubblehead Brooke Banks tries to muster is completely lost on me, I enjoy the show and I like the concept.  But when I started writing an email about it, I realized that I should just blog what I have to say.
I just want to remind people that the stuff that passes for reality on tv is only reality in so much as the people are not acting scripted characters.  Take “Survivor” as an example.  If I were designing a show to be called Survivor it would be about survival.  I mean, it would be interesting to see a bunch of Americans sent out into the wilderness somewhere to really survive on their own without killing each other.  By survive, I mean, find food and build shelter while avoiding being eaten by jaguars or killed by angry natives trying to protect their land or infection of one of the myriad diseases we in the West have been protected from for generations through vaccination and medicines.  “The Apprentice” is not reality either.  You merely have to write a resumeé, and go for a couple of interviews to get hired by a big company.  “The Bachelor and Bachelorette” are shows that make me retch.  How is it that whoring yourself out has not only become acceptable, but makes you desirable?!  Who cares about which team can rebuild a decrepit house the fastest?  Sure, in “The Amazing Race” you can get around the world quickly on someone else’s dime, but why not have a show about reality where the contestants are spending their own money?  And the worst one is “Fear Factor”!  What is there to be afraid of?!  You’ve got safety ropes and air bags and emergency teams and professionals giving you advice, etc. or the scaring thing is eating something disgusting until you puke!  Boring!  That show would be a whole lot more interesting if there was actually an element of fear of mortal injury.  How about making the Fear Factor contestants swim through shark infested waters blindfolded carrying a paper bag full of pig blood or a running race through one of the outskirts of Baghdad wrapped in an American flag holding a sign that says “Thanks for the oil.  I’m glad your kid was burned to death!”  We’d see some real heated competition and fear there!
The real problem here is that, for the most part, people watch tv in order to escape reality!  I know there are a lot of news shows and documentaries and these are the real Reality tv.

Photos

2006-07-25T19:02:00.000Z

Pictures from my trip to England have been added to my travel blog.

Impetus to Freedom

2006-07-25T11:44:00.000Z

One of the reasons I like to keep this blog is that it’s a place for me to reflect on my life.  Some people I know think that I’m strange for wanting to publish my thoughts and feelings on the internet for anyone to read.  But in a way, it’s helpful to get occasional feedback from a variety of people.  This is one of those instances.  I want to write another posting about my realizations of the importance of two specific relationships from my past.  Contrary to what you may think when you read this type of post here in my little corner of the world I’m not writing this out of a longing for things to be as they were or for a replacement for what I have now.  I am completely happy in my life now as it is and I don’t regret much of anything in my past.
Most of the time, when I think of my life my friends come into my thoughts because, as I’ve said before, everyone I get close to manages to teach me something or shape me in some way.  Since I feel good about who I am now I think fondly of those who helped me get here.  I’ve written about friends that I’ve had and that’s not caused much scandal.  But today might prove otherwise; we shall see.
I got to thinking about two of the romantic relationships I’ve had the day before yesterday.  I committed the crime of watching what I consider to be a terribly romantic movie and that set my mind spinning.  The movie was “Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind” and starring in it are Jim Carey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, and Tom Wilkinson.  In case you haven’t seen it, the movie focuses on a painfully introverted lonely guy who meets an extremely extroverted seemingly self-confident woman (I’m sure that at least one of my readers can see where this is going at this point).  They get along well at first but eventually break up.  Then the title credits roll and the movie starts.  Joel (Jim Carey) is a lonely and quiet man just going about his day.  He’s on his way to work or wherever he goes everyday on the train when he’s suddenly gripped by the notion that he should go out to Montauk-the end of the line on the train. When he gets there he runs into a fascinating young woman with bright blue hair.  To make a long story short, after they break up, she has her memories of him selectively erased from her mind and then he does the same to her.  But while he’s going through the procedure he changes his mind and then there is a race through his mind where he is trying to hide her somewhere that the men doing the erasing cannot find her.  I know it sounds weird, but it really does work well in the movie.
But the movie was just impetus for my later musings.  The girl made me think of Laurie and Terry.  I’ll start with Terry because that’s a shorter story.  The woman in the movie was showing Joel how to break free from his own limitations and how to enjoy that freedom.  One of the reasons she made me think of Terry is simply that she dyed her hair such bright shades as Terry did from time to time.  But the relationship between the characters of the movie also made me think of Terry because by being with her, I learned how to take control of my own freedom.  For the most part, I overcame my tendency to hand over all control of my fate to someone else.  I had done that before her time and again and I lost a few friends because of it.  But the fact that in the end she turned out to be definitely not who I wanted to be with forced me to think more about myself.  I’m not saying that she was a bad person.  In fact, I liked her personality and such, but I didn’t feel that she was a person who I wanted to hold on to any longer.  When we broke up I felt a freedom that I had never previously known.
Here I have to turn my attention to Laurie.  Laurie is one of the most influential people in my history.  I met her at a time when I was living outside of my safe little hometown for the first time.  I was at Bridgewater State College-100 miles from mommy-and I had gone through one year of school.  I’d started to really come out of my shell and was looking for a guide to take my hand and pull me out the rest of the way.  Laurie turned out to be that guide.  I spoke to her first because of her purple hair-hence part of the parallel with the movie.  I saw her and I thought, “There’s someone I HAVE to talk to!”  Boy am I glad I did.  Even today she remains a good friend on whom I know I can trust to see me for who I am and to respect me.  She took me to Boston for my first trip trough the subway without any parental guidance.  She took me to an underground gothic dance club called Man Ray and to a funky restaurant called the Middle East (for some damn fine falafel!).  My relationship with her was intense from the start and we clicked together very well.  She showed me what freedom feels like and that it could be felt with another person.  She introduced me to all kinds of interesting people.  She opened doors in my mind that have never closed and are the basis for my perception of my personal freedom.  I learned through her that even though one is not completely balanced inside, freedom exists.  I’m still trying to learn that lesson.  I’ve always let my emotions get the better of me.  But in my relationship with her, it was possible to let it out and then laugh.  We talked a lot.  I remember one day in particular walking for hours in a park-I believe it was in Easton-talking about something that she’d experienced which had a dramatic emotional effect on her.  Before I met Laurie most of the girls I’d known were the safe variety.  They had never been utterly consumed by their emotions the way Laurie and I have.  Now, a decade later, when we talk it’s the same as it was then.
Right now, as I sit here typing, I know that on the other side of the country (on vacation, visiting her family) is the woman with whom I will live until I die.  Some people would say that such a thought violates this personal freedom that I’ve been ranting about for the last two pages.  But the freedom that comes from finding the person who will love and respect you and will allow you to be yourself is a far more wonderful freedom than I could imagine having alone.  For one thing, if not for my wife being so diligent to make money, I would not be in school.  I’m living out a life-long dream that I could never before afford.  Having a wife who respects my desires helps me to achieve what I want.  Furthermore, her willingness to work with me so we can both find happiness and success together releases me from restrictions in a way that makes my autonomy far more enjoyable.  So this freedom that Laurie awakened in me and Terry forced me to rely upon remains a constant driving force in what I do and how I live and I owe them a debt of gratitude for their part in forming who I am.

Things I Did in England

2006-07-21T18:27:00.000Z

The days of summer are speeding passed.  I just realized it’s Friday.  Today I cleaned up a bit and then I oiled the table I recently got.  It looks pretty good.
But the reason I decided to post today is that I wanted to write down some of my thoughts about England.  Outside the symposium, I also got to go to the Portsmouth ship yards for a tour of the Victory.  This famous ship was commanded by a man by the name of Nelson.  Under his command, this ship was responsible for the victory of the battle at Trafalgar against a combined French and Spanish fleet.  It was really quite a ship.  The story told of the battle and the death of Nelson are dramatic and best told by someone who knows the history better than I. There was only one sail remaining after the famous water battle and it lies now on display in the Victory Museum.  That evening, we had a lovely dinner on the HMS Warrior, the first iron hulled navy ship of her class.  She also combined steam power and sail power.  The chimneys for the steam could be hinged down onto the deck and the massive screw was pulled up into the captain’s quarters when sailing was desirable.
There were a few things I’d heard about England before I traveled there.  Two of them turned out to be just untrue:
          1. Not everyone in England has bad teeth.  Sure, some people do, but for the most
              part most of the people I came in contact with had pretty decent choppers.
          2. The women are ugly.  I found that many of the men are handsome and many of
              the women quite attractive.  Coupled with this is today’s fashion.  Many
              women in England show a lot of skin, I think.  But maybe that perception is
              skewed by the fact that it’s generally too cold to show any here.  The fashions
              for men are geared more toward simple comfort and practicality.  That, to me, is
              far more becoming for men than some tight uncomfortable synthetic fabric (as is
              the fashion here in Iceland) or a business suit.
There were other things that I found to be completely true:
          1. The English don’t complain.  Several times I ended up in a long line that was
               taking forever and nobody grumbled or voiced complaint.  In fact, when I was
               at the London Aquarium the emergency warning system went off and everyone
               had to file out of there.  Now, first, not even a little panic occurred-despite the
               bombings last year.  Secondly, since the aquarium is organized such that as you
               travel further into the museum you continue to spiral down underground the
               escape route was one long staircase after another.  Nobody complained-except
               the American military man who was there with his wife and kids.  The whole
               affair was over in a few minutes because everyone filed calmly out of the
               building.
          2. English food is terrible.  I tried the breakfast the first day of the symposium even
               though I could see right away that the scrambled eggs came out of a box of
               dried egg flakes.  As a rule, eggs should only be eaten when they are freshly
               cracked and come from the back end of a chicken.  I’ve tried guillemot
               (svartfugl) eggs and they are terrible!  Anyway, The eggs were better than the
               sausage.  I didn’t know it was possible to make sausage taste so bad.  I almost
               threw up upon touch it to my tongue.  The “bacon” was like shoe leather with
               bacon grease rubbed on it.  Oh, and of course, the toast was cold.  There were a
               few other times when I had to eat English food due to functions connected to the
               symposium.  None of it was any good.
However, I did have some great food as well.  The food on board the HMS Warrior was delicious.  All of the Indian food I had in England was quite tasty-especially the korma that was on the buffet at the restaurant Posh (Port Out Starboard Home).  But there was one dish that really blew me away.  One of the days that I was in London by myself I went up to Soho and wandered the streets looking for some grub.  At first, I found nothing but touristy sidewalk cafes.  I was looking for something especially good due to the fact that the stipend for food that was calculated before we went was higher than it should have been.  I happened upon a place called Zaytouna (at 45 Frith Street, in case you’re there and want a good meal).  This small Moroccan restaurant somehow filled me with promise of delicious food.  So I went in and opened the menu.  One dish immediately jumped out and said, “Order me!”  It was a dish of baked sea bass served with an aubergine salad.  Now, I’ve eaten a lot of fish in my days.  I’ve had some particularly memorable dishes (monkfish, sole, salmon, and a few others).  But the sea bass at this restaurant was definitely the best fish I’ve had.  The blend of spices awakened my taste buds before the fork had reached my mouth.  The aroma of the meal filled my head and made me imagine being in a sunny place overlooking the sea.  Maybe I’m going a bit over board.  But the meal could not have been better-unless my dear wife had been sitting across from me enjoying it with me.
I mentioned that I went to the London Aquarium.  Although it’s very small by American standards, it’s not a bad aquarium.  The habitats are well designed and maintained.  There is some innovation in the way some of them are presented and they have a touch tank with three species of skate.  I didn’t get to the marine invertebrate exhibit because of the forced evacuation of the museum, so I don’t know if they have another touch tank down there with other critters.  Another problem is that many of the labels on the tanks are not correct or incomplete.  One was labeled as having some kind of frogfish (only the biology nerds will know what that is!) but the only fish in the tank were two scorpion fish.  Other tanks had some of the fish listed properly but not all of the fish described.
Another trip brought me to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum through Hyde Park.  Of course, this trip allowed me the opportunity to listen to some of the speakers at Speaker’s Corner.  That was a treat.  One of them was a Muslim ranting about the sale of death by the West through the production and sale of guns to dictators.  Another was a guy with no grasp of reality in regards to the current state of equality of the sexes.  He was saying that women are inferior to men, blah blah blah.  Then, there was the guy with the horns.  He simply made no sense and the only thing that I could understand of all that I listened to is that he has converted 33 people to his new religion.  As I was leaving a fourth man stood up and started reading from the Book of Job.  I don’t know where he was going with that.  I wandered then across the dead grass toward the shade of the trees on the far side of the park.  I was headed toward the Natural History Museum.  But first I was looking for the bird sanctuary that is supposedly in the park.  I never found it.  But I did see a couple of guys practicing some form of martial art in the shade and a very very old man sitting on a bench just watching life go on around him.  When I got to the Serpentine-a body of water in Hyde Park-I watched the birds and the kids feeding the birds.  It reminded me of my son.  He, like most little kids, really enjoys coming into contact with animals.  I found British birds in London and Southampton to be elusive critters, of the most part and only managed to spot two species I haven’t seen before despite the fact that I could hear them.
In the museum, I had a lot of fun poking around at the exhibits.  It was terribly hot in there, but I managed to see just about all of the museum before I was too uncomfortable.  It was getting late and I hadn’t had anything to eat.  I went out and found some fast food and then headed over to the Science Museum.  I only had time for an Imax movie on sharks because I was flying out that evening and I was too tired from all the walking to wander the museum.
Then I headed home.

England

2006-07-18T18:35:00.000Z

Jörundur was right. He told me that if I attended the 11th Deep-sea Biology Symposium in Southampton, England I would be hooked on deep-sea biology. I found a very stimulating and entertaining crowd of scientists and students at the symposium. I heard fantastic lectures, mediocre lectures, and bad lectures. Many of the talks and posters were very interesting and informative. Some were about research that is similar to what I will be doing for the foreseeable future. I feel that I made first contact with many people whom I will see again and with whom I shall maintain correspondence. It was exciting to see professionals working their magic. There were so many there who know so much about the deep-sea and it was a real joy to see them giving advise and discussion current research as well as past experiences. There was a lot of discussion of innovations in technology that facilitate research that would never have been possible only a few decades ago. People came to this conference from all over the globe. I met Russians, Germans, Frenchmen, Taiwanese, Japanese, Italians, Greeks, Englishmen, Scotsmen, Americans, Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians, Brazilians, Norwegians, Belgians, Swedes, Danes, Portuguese, and, of course, Indians (I’m probably forgetting someone’s country). It was fantastic to be immersed in the atmosphere of varied culture and languages/accents. I enjoy the diversity of people as much as I do that of the natural world.
I know that many of my readers are not biologists, so I’m going to keep this brief. I just wanted to say thank you for the good times and great ideas if you attended the symposium with me. Photos from my week in England will be posted sometime soon on my travel blog.

My Little Sister

2006-07-05T23:06:00.000Z

My sister Melody and her boyfriend Sati have been on some great adventures over the last few years. But seeing the video journal they are depositing weekly on their site makes me think that I would really love to be with them. You can click here to see the journals. They're out in the southwest of the US going down into the smallest canyons they can find. If you're reading this, Mel and Sati (on one of your stops in a town), have a great trip!

The Annual Fishing Trip

2006-07-04T23:30:00.000Z

The annual fishing trip went pretty well.  We go every year to the same place because of the costs of renting the huts and buying permission to fish are so low.  This year, I won the trophy for longest fish.  Atli Víðar’s biggest brown trout was probably heavier than my longest fish and was quite a respectable catch but he doesn’t think that he should get the award for biggest fish considering that he’s maker and presenter of the award.
A few notes before I begin my fishing stories.  First, I want to say that Dagmar’s little prank on Kata was naughty.  She should be ashamed of herself and apologize to her daughter.  Second, I saw my first white tailed eagle.  It was quite a large and beautiful bird.  There was a pair of skuas chasing it when I saw it and then it flew off in the direction of some mountains.  Third, the weather was not so bad, although there were only a few times when the wind stopped.
I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, as always.  I love going out there where the only sounds are those of nature and the people with whom I travel.  I feel lucky to have found a family into which I fit relatively well.  My sisters- and brothers-in-law are fun to be with and their differences add spice to the conversations that flow throughout the day.  I haven’t seen some of the relatives much in the last two years because they live on he other side of the country and I haven’t been there for quite some time.  It was especially glad to see Pétur and Kristjana’s baby Olga Snærós.  She’s very cute and obviously has a lot of personality.
However, most of my time up there on the northern tip was spent walking around by myself and casting out into crystal clear water in the hopes of finding brown trout.  Many were found.  I went with Atli, Benna, and Atli Dagur on Thursday night from Akureyri up to Hraun and then straight out to the water.  We fished just about all night.  In the morning, there were four fish on my stringer (two of which will be eaten tonight) and Atli had managed to haul in three or four as well.  He fishes with worms and therefore catches a lot more char than I do with my spoon.  I think that Atli Dagur’s lack of patience stands in the way of his ability to catch fish.  But he’s still young.  Anyway, then se went up and slept for a few hours.  After that I went out again to try to catch some more.  I caught two small (roughly a pound each) brown trout in a pond where two years ago I caught a 6 pounder.  In that trip, Atli pulled in a nice 4 pounder.  Then it was back to the hut for some grub and a bit of shut-eye.  Then the rest of the army pulled in.  In all, we are 20 and when all are together in the hut, it’s pretty crowded.  Anyway, we talked for a little while then two sisters and their families went over to the other hut to sleep he night away.  I went out for a little more fishing and caught a few small ones before going to bed.  Saturday morning there was a short trip out to fish in the morning and then a birthday party for my son where favorite gifts were the toy light sabers that the two boys got.  After the party, I went out to try out the rubber raft Pétur brought.  I drifted across the pond and caught nothing.  Then I decided to try the pond on top of the mountain.  I fished pretty well there last year.  I think the very few people bother to go up there because it’s a long walk from all directions.  So, that means that the fish are free to grow as big as they can for as long as they want.  This time, the first of two arctic char that I caught up there was the longest fish caught by anyone on the trip.  I actually didn’t measure its length but it was just under 4 pounds and was pretty skinny.  I would say that it was about 22” long.  It put up a pretty good fight considering that it was a char-they don’t put up much of a fight.
The last night of the trip, we decided to hitch a ride with the son of the guy who owns the land up to a lake where we fished well last year.  On the way up he pointed out several ponds along the way where he said there were fish.  For some reason, one of them seemed to me to be most likely to hold large fish and I decided that I’d walk back so that I could hit it on the way the next morning.  As it turns out, fishing was terrible in the pond to which we went.  I began the walk back to the cabin at about 5:00 and within an hour I was standing at the shore of the pond I had decided to fish.  It seems that walking to the pond would take as long as hitching a ride.  Anyway, this pond was deep, but very small.  It suddenly didn’t hold much promise for me and I wasn’t really paying attention as I walked along the bank.  All of a sudden a large brown trout shot out from under the bank ahead of me and raced off into the weeds.  I stopped and started casting.  There were so many weeds that I had to hold the spoon on the surface to keep it above the undergrowth.  I was casting as I was continuing my walk around the pond.  When a second huge brown trout shot out from under the bank, I started really concentrating my casting on spots that looked likely.  After a couple of casts along he shore ahead of me, I sent the spinner out toward the opposite bank.  As soon as I started retrieving it I saw a churning in the water that looked like there was a scuba diver down there.  A wake a few inches high raced up behind my spinner and then the strongest hit I remember feeling confirmed what my eyes were telling me:  I had found the fish I’ve been looking for since that fateful day on Lake Champlain when Melody’s idea of “hit it on the head with the paddle” cost me the biggest fish I’d ever fished.  Anyway, back to Iceland...I fought this fish for about 15-20 minutes and it was finally getting tired enough that I was getting it closer to shore.  I was up to my knees in the very cold water so that I’d be more likely to get the net under at least part of its body.  But it had one trick left.  It dove straight down into the clay at the bottom and wrapped itself around a rock.  Every time I’ve seen a fish do this, the spinner has gotten tripped up on the stone or log or weeds or whatever and the fish gets away.  This was no exception.  Now, I know that you are thinking that this is just a typical fish that got away story, but I promise, this one is completely true.  That fish had a tail about 8” wide and was at least 10 pounds.  I believe that I was just out-matched with my light tackle.  I think I did everything as well as anyone could have with what I had with me.  But the fish beat me in this instance.  I stood in awe for a long time after the line snapped.  That fish was so impressive I was close to being glad that I had not killed it.  It was magnificent, for lack of a better word.  But, I vowed to myself that I would not fish another body of water up there until I landed that fish.  That will be a great day and there will be a picture of it posted here...look for it next July.

Life

2006-06-26T09:41:00.000Z

This was originally part of a different posting. I had thought of it as being two sides of the same coin: someone's death and my life. But since Paul, for whom I have tremendous respect-or something like that-commented that I should have posted twice, I thought it might be a good idea to just change it...
Today is the third most important day of my life so far. Today my Bachelor’s Degree in biology is officially over. I’ve been awaiting this day since I was about 13. You may be asking yourself why it took me so long and what was I doing in the meantime and all that. Well, there we get into some very unstable ground. It has to do with some idea of destiny and some idea of religion. Ever since I stopped wanting to die, I have taken life as it came. That is to say that I haven’t really worked very hard to push myself in any particular direction. It seems to me now, when I look back, that at every crucial point in the last 18 years something was telling me which direction I should turn. Here’s where I’m a bit unsure. Usually, I think of it as God’s guidance. Laugh if you will or mock me, but I have gone through several experiences where I am convinced there was another consciousness telling me (almost in words) what is the best option. This is a very comforting prospect to consider, let me tell you. One of the real purposes of religion is the elimination of the loneliness that can well up in one’s individual experience of the world. In the end, we are all alone and though many of our choices have effects on other people’s lives they have the greatest effect on us. So, if one can feel that there is a God out there who is willing to help if only one believes, why not believe? One of the strongest contacts I’ve felt with God occurred on Mt. Fuji. At that point in my life things were swirling around like in a hurricane. All the crap with my father had just happened; I was coming out of a bad relationship; I had no idea where I was going in life. Then I felt all of a sudden as though a presence had filled me and I felt a calm of spirit that I had not had in years. For the first time in decades I felt like everything was going to work out if only I would be patient and listen. I did so and things really have turned out well. This is the story of the tattoo on my lower back.
Sometimes it feels like fate or destiny. Sometimes-especially when there’s not a tough emotional decision to make-one path just feels right, as though the choice has already been made for me. Like when I made the switch from working at CB Fisk to working at Noack Organ. I just knew it was right to change and just because the money was so much better. I just had the feeling that I was supposed to go work for Fritz. Now I know that if I hadn’t done that I would never have gotten to where I sit today.
So, here I am. Years have gone by without my investment of very much ambition. I’ve gotten to where I’ve always wanted to be.

Death

2006-06-24T12:31:00.000Z

I haven’t written for a while because I didn’t really know what I should say. Well, that and I’ve been really enjoying a few days of extreme laziness in my summer vacation!
But one to a bit of a serious topic. Let’s discuss death for a moment. Recently, Inga’s grandmother died at the age of 95. I had only met her a few times in the nursing home where she spent the last years of her life. As I understand from Inga, she had bad days when her mental capacity was not up to snuff. But for the most part, her health problems were in other parts of her body than her head. In the end, she passed away in her sleep after a long life of stubborn fighting. I don’t know what to say about her because I didn’t know her. I hardly know anything about her life at all except that her son is my father-in-law, Atli Viðar Johanesson. He has the same last name as his mother, unlike most Icelanders. That’s because she was furious with the father of her son and decided to Christen him with her last name instead of using his father’s name as is the tradition over here. I think that’s a respectable thing to do. In fact, that’s one of the things that I have in common with her. My son’s last name is Ericsson rater than dos Santos because I don’t want to continue my father’s family name. Well, that and he is half Icelandic and I thought it would be better for him to have an Icelandic style name-although Eric is not an Icelandic name.
But her death reminded me that I don’t have much experience with death. Many of my relatives have died but most died long ago when I was too young or too screwed up for it to have much of an effect on me. I don’t even remember who it was that I saw dead last. It was probably my uncle Ernie. He was a really fun guy. Actually, all of my grandmother’s brothers were a lot of fun. I especially liked uncle Arthur. It’s interesting how death causes one to remember things that one has not thought of for years or decades. I remember as I write the way my uncle Arthur’s cologne smelled. But maybe it hasn’t had much effect on me because it’s never been anyone with whom I had any close relationship. I have to admit that for the first time, I didn’t really know what to do around my wife. She was obviously very strongly affected by the passing of her grandmother (as I will be when I experience it) but I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or if I should say anything. So I just sat there trying to be respectful and supportive. It was yet another of those experiences you can only have when you are connected by someone through the bond of caring that accompanies a commitment of long term love.

Right Back At'cha

2006-06-11T10:24:00.000Z

One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decidesto take a nap. Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides totake the boat out. She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads herbook.

Along comes a Game Warden in his boat. He pulls up alongside the woman andsays, "Good morning, Ma'am. What are you doing?"

"Reading a book," she replies, (thinking, "Isn't that obvious?")"You're in a Restricted Fishing Area," he informs her."I'm sorry, officer, but I'm not fishing. I'm reading."

"Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at anymoment. I'll have to take you in and write you up."

"If you do that, I'll have to charge you with sexual assault," says the woman.

"But I haven't even touched you," says the game warden."That's true, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment."

"Have a nice day ma'am," and he left.

My Reality or Yours

2006-06-07T04:55:00.000Z

Sometimes I wonder if I am crazy.  I don’t mean the type of crazy like when someone smiles at you and says, “You’re so crazy” because something you did was silly and spontaneous.  I mean the old fashioned kind of crazy. My head is sometimes a world unto itself, that’s what I mean.  Every now and then, something happens that gives me hope that I may not be alone in having a world of understanding that does not extend beyond my own skin.  Tonight is one of those nights.  Here’s what happened in two such personal realities in Vogar Iceland.
Here’s what happened in the 13 year old girl’s mind.  She barely woke enough to stumble into the bathroom in the middle of the night.  Pretty much asleep, she locked the door and apparently took the key out of the keyhole.  When she was done, she turned to door handle.  The door did not open.  Dreamy panic took over and she cooked up a phantom outside the bathroom trying to get in.  All of a sudden, there was a knock on the door.  The ghost was trying to communicate!  She tentatively knocked in response.  The voice of her mother’s husband came to ask her what she was doing.  “Trying to get out,” she explained.  The voice came again to point out that the door was locked and that’s why she couldn’t get out.
Now, here’s what happened in my reality.  I was awakened in the middle of the night by the sure sound of a kid who’s locked themselves in the bathroom and can’t get out.  Now, in my reality, the thought that my 6 year old son must be the one on the other side of the door, but just maybe it’s my 13 year old step-daughter.  So I gently knock on the door to find out who it is.  The reply comes as a gentle knock back and more rattling of the door handle.  So I ask the 13 year old in the bathroom what she is doing.  She says she’s trying to get out.  I peer into the keyhole (yes, old fashioned skeleton key locks on the doors in my house) and see that the key is not in the lock.  I twist the door handle and push.  Verdict: the door is locked.  In order to lock it, the key must be inside the room.  However, a couple of years ago, I was trying to figure out which of the 12 unmarked skeleton keys in the house go with which door.  In this quest, I turned one key in the lock and after locking the door the teeth part of the key broke right off in the lock, leaving me with a locked door with no method of unlocking it.  Finally, I had to go get the ladder, climb through a tiny window, pop the pins out of the hinges and finagle the door out of the frame.  Flash forward to about 3:15 AM June 7th, 2006 and we suddenly understand a smidgen of panic as the image of driving across town to pick up the ladder at my friends house to climb up through a tiny window armed with a hammer and a screwdriver while a 13 year old girl becomes increasingly more panicked pops into mind along with the dread that another key has given up the ghost.  Anyway, sense took over as it often does and the next thing out of my mouth was, “The door is locked”.  My ears detect the sound of a skeleton key being picked up off the linoleum floor and sliding into a key hole.  One turn and the door opens.  Out stepped the 13 year old and thinking the problem was solved I climbed back into bed.

Now, in this instance, there was not even a small degree of aggravation in my personal realty.  My wife, however, has her own personal reality to add to this story.  After I lay down to finish the night’s sleep, she got up and walked out of the room. I thought nothing of it until she returned and said that I need to be more sensitive of the dear girl’s feelings.  Taken aback, I asked what she meant.  Her reply was a description of how she believed I had been feeling since sometime early in the evening.  Her account was not much further from the truth of my emotional state this evening than my irrational dread of going out in the bad weather to get the ladder and all that or my daughter’s imaginary ghost.  But she believed and may still believe that her personal reality is the right one.

I wonder how many personal realities there are in the world.

2006-06-06T12:50:00.000Z

Mamma's little angel.

Sleep

2006-06-01T20:19:00.000Z

When I was about 17 I decided that I would never have children. Now I have one of my own and I’ve taken responsibility for a part of the upbringing of a second. I would not give them up for anything. But this was not my plan. They bring a lot of happiness and I feel that I’ve grown considerably because of having them in my life. It’s also very rewarding when I can interest one of them in something that I can teach them-I’m a terrible teacher. Right now we are babysitting my wife’s sister’s two children. They are beautiful and well behaved children. They have no outstanding flaws beyond the behavior of a normal child. But having two kids to keep an eye on makes me wonder why and how anyone would want to have two in quick succession. I take my hat off to all the people out there who have the energy to do this right (as my sister-in-law and her husband are clearly doing). I know I wouldn’t want the job full time. Like I said, these are good kids, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have two little difficult children at once. For example, there is a child at the playschool where Guðjón has been for the last 4 years who is a real terror. Ironically, his name is Engill (which is Icelandic for Angel). A couple of weeks ago I got Guðjón at school and saw that he had two bite marks-one bloody and one heavily bruised-on his forehead. These injuries were incurred during an attack by Engill. When I was getting him ready for bed that night I found four more bite marks-one on his arm and the others on his torso. One shakes his head upon finding such on a kid who doesn’t instigate fights. I wonder what the boy’s parents are like. I don’t know them. But I doubt that the troubles this little boy has stem solely from some behavioral problem in his head. The old nature v. nurture question rears its ugly head once again.
Right now both Hólmfríður and Björn Hermann are lying in bed. Björn is asleep and Hólmfríður is quietly tinkering with something-she is relaxing into a sleeping state of mind. For anyone who doesn’t have babies you should look forward to watching them sleep when you do have some of your own. Watching a child sleep is one of the most calming things in the world. Their little faces are unscarred by life and when they sleep peacefully they ooze tranquility and simple honest beauty. Just looking at a baby who is sleeping happily makes me feel like there really is peace on Earth.

Positive Teeth

2006-06-01T00:05:00.000Z

Ball's Eye View

2006-05-31T23:59:00.000Z

Playing

2006-05-31T23:56:00.000Z

Is it a waterfall?

Painted by Camera

2006-05-31T23:51:00.000Z

interesting that one can turn a photograph into a painting by simply sharpening the image...

Unusual Point of View

2006-05-31T23:34:00.000Z

Metal shapes from the playground.

Self Potrait

2006-05-31T17:25:00.000Z

I just wanted to show what happens when I start playing with a photo-editting program. I never know when to stop. A more original version is located below.

2006-05-31T17:04:00.000Z

Self protrait with a telephoto lense. This is shot from about 30m and editted að little bit with Picasa2.

Justification and Art

2006-05-31T13:45:00.000Z

After some 15 years of construction, the natural sciences building at the University of Iceland was opened 2 years ago.  We moved in and instantly saw that the building was not designed for usage but for appearance.  There are 5 room that are suitable for lectures (although 2 will only accommodate about 25 students).  There is also one room filled by a massive discussion table that the architect will not allow us to replace with something we can use.  There are 6 exterior doors in the building.  Three are kept locked for security reasons, apparently, and we were this past Spring allowed to apply for key cards to be able to use them.  One is an emergency exit but seems to be always locked.  The other two are the main entrances and they are located on each end of the 200m long building. These doors blow open whenever the wind is strong enough to bend grass...which happens weekly.  So, half the time, there is only one entryway into the building that is not locked.  Good design!  When the school agreed to the drawings there was no computer lab in the drawings.  There was no library, for that matter.  Now there are several hundred students going to school there daily as well as all the professors and a handful of building staff.  For all of these people there are fewer than 70 places to sit in the building outside of lecture halls, the improvised library (which was stuck in a little corner of the building above the cafeteria), and the laboratories.  The majority of the building is wasted space opening from the first floor up to above the third floor.  The balconies bounce when someone walks passed.  The slanted curving glass wall/ceiling cost more than all of the books in the building.  Continuing education students are crammed into corners struggling for the space they need to accomplish their studies.
But the building is considered cool to look at by a majority of those in control.  That is, those who don’t use the building.  From the first time I got in there my impression has been that the building would make a pretty good art gallery or museum.  Or maybe an office building.  That impression was proven yesterday when i walked in and saw that an art exhibit is being installed there.  The following are some pictures of some of the pieces and some of my comments about them.
The show is going up so that Halldór Ásgrímsson can stand around and have his picture taken while he and his oafish followers and suck-ups are seen “patronizing the arts” as though they give a Tinker’s cuss about creativity or cultural development. One thing’s for sure, I won’t show up there for that scene.  I had thought that by moving to Iceland I was moving away from a nation who votes for leaders based on popularity contests instead of actual thought and consideration of the issues.  The last elections proved me very wrong.  But Iceland is still not controlled by unjustifiable fear the way the US is, so we still come out on top even if our politics are based on the same brainless mudslinging!

2006-05-31T13:29:00.000Z

These two run-of-the-mill life-sized figures are actualy pretty accurate illustrations of the students as they walk into the building and wonder why anyone would hire the architect who was devoid of practical thinking enough to draw such a disaster as the building is. They walk in and are struck instantly by the thought, is this really the school?!

But I'm sure that the so-called elite of Iceland (the Prime Minister and his cronies) who come to the opening of this exhibit of the ordinary will have no trouble trying to sound educated as they walk in and drag up words like: unique, powerful, stark emptiness, bold, tension and many other copy and paste art critique words to describe the low-talent "art" and the building itsself.

2006-05-31T13:25:00.000Z

This one is remeniscent of a strobila. For those of you with no background in marine invertebrate biology (aumingja þú!) a strobila is a form of jellyfish larva that fastens itself to the bottom and then reproduces several juvenile jellyfish by transverse fission. For a beautiful depiction of this, you can watch the "Blue Planet" series by David Attenborough. I know it's 16 hours or something, but it's definitely worth it.
I actually like this sculpture.

2006-05-31T13:22:00.000Z

This piece of community college Sculpture 101 drivel is very similar to the building in which it sits: it's a little bit interesting at first until you spend a little bit of time looking at it and see that it's the result of absolutely no creative thinking. They probably call this Balance or Suspense or somehing. This would have been a little bit interesting about 20 years ago before a thousand other people had done pretty much the same thing. Ho hum!

2006-05-31T10:49:00.000Z

My favorite of the show. The green in the heads is a sheet of glass that runs from front to back allowing light to be led through just like a fiber optics cable.

2006-05-31T10:14:00.000Z

Yup, slightly interesting.

2006-05-31T10:04:00.000Z

Detail of the painting below...

2006-05-31T09:58:00.000Z

I've decided I like this painting. Does it look like a big piece of camouflage cloth? Yes. But the colors work well together and the texture is pretty cool: blobs of paint were allowed to dry lying flat so each of the dark green and yellow-green blobs is wrinkly in the same way. Above is a detail of the blobs (I began this post before I thought of posting the other so you're going to have to just deal with the fact that they're out of order!)

2006-05-31T09:12:00.000Z

The largest piece that had been set up by yesterday (the show opens tomorrow). This one is about 10' long and 8' tall. It's plain matte black metal like the other three metals above. I think the size of this one makes it work, but I've seen so many sculptures that are similar in some way to this one that I can't help but think that it's getting a bit tiresome.

No Thought

2006-05-28T18:12:00.000Z

Three strong women sit in my living room.  One is my wife and the other two are her friends.  The three of them ran for seats on he Board of Selectmen.  Elections for these positions were held in all counties in Iceland yesterday.  The result here was that the other party achieved its goal.  That goal, of course, being that their smear campaign against two people in our party caused many people to vote against the party to which we (my wife and I) belong.  We had a lot more supporters than the vote showed.  I don’t mean that there was cheating going on or anything.  But the truth is (or at least seems to me) that most people who voted for the other party (E-List) did so out of a personal dislike of the current chairman of the Board of Selectmen or the current mayor.  The mayor had announced long before the election that she’d be quitting after the election.  The other target for the mud-slinging of the other side was dropped from 1st to 4th seat on the board.
Now that you know a little bit about what happened can you help me understand how it happened?  I know for a fact that our town has been one of the fastest growing towns in the country for at least 5 years.  I know that not only have thousands of square meters of town space recently been zoned for an expansion of the industrial area of town but plans are underway for the addition of the third new neighborhood to go up since I moved here three and a half years ago.  Included in that neighborhood will be a second school and playschool.  Since we moved here the school has been doubled in size.  Just before we came the playschool was doubled in size.  There are now three brand new apartment buildings and two motels in own.  The gym and swimming pool are among the best in the area and last year a new addition was put on as a social center for kids where dances and such are held.  So, what I cannot understand is why so many people saw fit to vote against two people who’s time in control of the town was ending and thereby toss out, also all the people who worked with them and had some experience and understanding.  This election was steered by personal grudges and not by sound politician decisions.  I cannot understand that kind of thinking.
I never had any dealings with the town government and therefore had no grudge. I made up my mind about the party by getting to know what they had done and what they were planning.  That, to me, is the way one should decided who should be running the show in the town where one lives.  Choosing simply based upon a personality clash is just childish and I think the majority who voted against my party should be ashamed of themselves for not thinking at all about the future of our town.

Snæfellsnes

2006-05-24T21:53:00.000Z

Boy I really do enjoy the ease with which one can change a photograph in a computer. Just by making a few quick adjustments in Picasa I changed this from a mediocre, overexposed sunset photograph into a much more eye-pleasing shot that feels a lot more alive. This would have taken hours in a darkroom!

Funny Face

2006-05-24T21:24:00.000Z

The Boy sometimes decides it's more fun to play than eat his fish! Little stinker.

Good Upbringing

2006-05-24T21:18:00.000Z

I don't see why anyone would ever have an excuse to say that my children do not have good table manners! Heh heh, it's a good thing the dear girl does not look at my bog or she might pour bleach in my crayfish tank for posting this photo.

Sentimentality

2006-05-24T13:40:00.000Z

Most of the time, sentimentality does not take hold of my actions.   I was wondering today if this is one trait that is connected to gender.   So, I put the question to you, the reader.   A woman I know still has a poster that she had hanging in her bedroom as a little girl.   When I say a poster, this is one of those very cute drawn pictures that is specifically for very small children.  You know, the fat little kid in the middle is surrounded by little smiling mice with clothes on and butterflies.  This is not the kind of poster that an adult wants to hang on the wall.  So, she keeps it.   It’s rolled up in the closet.  She’s not really keeping it in the hopes that another child is in the future.  She keeps it out of sentimentality.   Now, don’t get me wrong; I see nothing wrong with her keeping this poster.  I’m not being critical here.  I’m merely observing something with which I cannot identify.  What I mean is that keeping something from my childhood simply because it was once precious to me seems like nostalgia.  I cannot understand why one would hold on to something like that.  It could very well be that I became cold or jaded as I grew.  It could be that I’ve had such emotional trouble dealing with the contrast between reality and my concept of what reality should be that I’ve always taken steps to remove my emotions from experience.  When I really think about it, I hardly even remember my childhood, never mind toys I had or wall decorations.
This is probably a flaw in me and not something by which to judge others.  I understand that she wants the poster but I cannot understand why.  I have seen this in other women.  But I don’t recall seeing this sort of behavior in a man.  So, I wonder if men experience thoughts of the past differently or if the difference is just in my head.
I’ve so often heard about people’s skeletons in the closet and I can’t imagine how terrible something would have to be that I could not deal with it and put it in the past.  I guess that I do that with the good stuff, too.  But my experience of my own past is more centered around things I have done than things that I have owned.  I talk often about my trips to Costa Rica and Japan and other places that have somehow had an effect on my development into the man I am.  I think about my friends across the oceans of the world sometimes and sometimes I think of specific events involving them.  Mostly, when I think of people, though, my desire for their company does not come from anything that has happened in years gone by but the desire to experience an unknown future event with them.
I have my photo albums and my digital photographs and as I flip them I see immediately that I do not know how to take pictures of people because I’ve never done so.  I remember when I got my 35mm (I’d say my first 35mm camera, but it’s the only one I’ve ever owned) and I started getting into photographing things I saw.  I would take pictures of anything except people, buildings and telephone/electric wires.  I have missed a lot of stunning landscapes because of my refusal to take pictures of man-made objects that were not ruins in some form.  I think that this is part of my way of remembering experiences.  I remember the setting and the feeling of being there.  Even now, I don’t get all excited about photographing cities and buildings.  But I’ve started photographing people.  I can thank my family for that, mostly.  I actually enjoy taking pictures of my boy and my wife.  My step-daughter is a different story, though.  There again, my aversion to unnaturalness gets in the way.  I want to get photographs of her when she does not know I have the camera.  I don’t like posed pictures and she does her best to pose for the camera.  I’m not talking about making funny faces or doing something.  I mean that she puts on this mouth-only smile that screams out that someone is taking a picture.  That is the only instance of this smile.  I think she is a very beautiful girl and taking pictures of her would be a real joy if she didn’t pose.  However, I shall have to get used to that (hey, first usage of the word ‘shall’ on this blog-I must be listening too much to the BBC!) because she really believes that she looks better not being herself.  One of my favorite human subjects is my nephew Björn Hermann.  He has such a well-proportioned and beautiful face.  He is also very expressive and one feels as though he wears his thoughts on the outside.  He’s also still completely natural-not posing in any way.  He’s not camera shy as I was and many other kids are.
But how in God’s name did I digress so far from my point about sentimentality?!  Oh yeah, I’ve never taken pictures of people not because the mean nothing to me, but because the experiences I had with them are, for the most part, unphotographable if one wishes to capture the real essence of the moment.  I cannot imagine what makes someone sentimental about an inanimate object from their past for which they have no other use than storage somewhere.  Even with things I can only think of keeping them in the hope that I will use them again.  In the most basic form, one could say that I think of people the same way.  I know that people change through time and maybe that’s why I know that it’s pointless to dwell in the past.  Things will never be exactly the same way they were years ago.  Everything changes, inside my head and out, as time marches on.  That’s not a complaint but rather a simple fact.  I accept the change and welcome it, even, in most cases.  The unsurity of the future is exciting and encouraging; why would I want to hold on to the past?

Red-necked Phalarope

2006-05-23T18:40:00.000Z

On Saturday I was looking for a bird called a red-necked phalarope. I was walking a transect in a marsh in the south of the country. I was supposed to count every bird within 50 m on either side of the line I was walking. At the same time I was babysitting two babies. One was my 5 year old son. The other was a 26 year old Frenchman. It’s amazing that he made it through an entire semester of ornithology-in which a large portion of the emphasis of the class was laid on identification of species-without learning a single damn bird! But I digress from the point of this missive to my adoring public. The point is that during that walk, the bird I was most hoping to see (the red-necked phalarope) didn’t show its face. However, today when I drove into Keflavík to buy some paint and fish food I happened to bring along my binoculars. I was fortunate I did because in the little pond across from the Bonus grocery store I found a flock of these beautiful tiny birds. In all I counted 32 but later when I was driving home, I saw that more had arrived in the interum. Before today I had only seen 3 of these cute little critters. I guess it paid off to be prepared.