Today EPI and I are celebrating our second wedding anniversary. Huzzah!

Two years since we walked down the isle in the Toronto City Hall, which – truth be told – was more like the corridor to the bathroom in a Vegas chapel than the route to the altar. Not that it mattered. We were just as psyched.

EPI and I met about 12 years ago, when I’d been back in Iceland for about a year. He started working at the company where I was working and we had an instant rapport. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, but definitely like at first sight. EPI was one of the funniest people I’d ever met, plus he was really nice, and soon it seemed like coffee breaks just weren’t the same if he wasn’t around. Our friendship slowly developed into something deeper and before we both knew it we were crazy about each other.

It was pretty complicated, though, at first. EPI was going through a separation and had three beautiful daughters that he was very close to and which he adored. Meanwhile, I had a string of failed relationships behind me and wasn’t very good with the trust thing. Plus there were all these other people involved, and tattered emotions all over the place. There were lots of times when I honestly thought we were not going to make it, and many times when we tried to walk away. But it was one of those things. There was no walking away. We had this intense bond, and in the end we realized there was really no choice. We had to make it work.

And we have! I sometimes can’t believe how beautifully it’s all worked out, considering. I mean, having a relationship is hard enough [sometimes I just don’t know how people have relationships at all! …], to say nothing of the tender and complicated emotions when there are children brought into the mix … in all honesty, I used to think it was impossible. There are so many things that can go wrong, at every stage in the game, so many pitfalls, it can be like walking in a landmine zone. Truly, I often think it’s a miracle for two people to actually make a relationship work. Either that, or a fluke.

Mind you, we have - and had - a lot of good things going for us – our wonderful daughters, for one, who are all blessed with very generous, positive, sensible and sweet dispositions. I know from my own experience how easy it is to become bitter and resentful and feel victimized and all the rest of it in a broken-family situation, and miraculously they have not gone down that road, which is such a blessing – for everyone concerned. Instead they are embracing life and have their own aspirations and interests. They’re making their own lives work.

Anyway, two [or 12!] years on it just keeps getting better. EPI is still my favourite company in the whole world and after all those ups and downs we’ve now reached a plateau where, yes, sometimes there are challenges, but mostly there are just picnics.

GORGEOUS SUNNY DAY TODAY
Clear and brilliant blue sky, not a cloud visible at the moment, temps 12°C [54F], sunrise 3.22 am, sunset 11.41 pm.

Last week when I was getting ready to head to the cottage I noticed that my bikini was missing and realized I’d probably left it behind at the Laugardalslaug pool the weekend before. Decided therefore that I’d drop by there on my way out of town and see if they had it in the Lost & Found.

So I go in there, into the ladies showers where the staff has a little room in which they hang out, and find two teenage girls playing cards.

YT: Hi. I was here last weekend… [blah]

GIRL 1: What day was it?

YT: Saturday

Girl pulls down a basket marked ‘Saturday’ and starts going through it.

G1: No, it’s not here.

YT: [anxious] Do you think it could be in any of the other baskets?

G1: Probably not.

YT: Could you check … maybe Friday’s?

G1 pulls down Friday’s starts going through it, and sure enough unearths YT’s bikini top.

YT: That’s the top!

G1 goes through everything but no bottoms.

YT: How can the top be there and not the bottoms? I mean, if you found the top …

G1: Oh, you wouldn’t believe what people steal around here.

YT: […?]

G1: Oh, yeah. People steal all kinds of things.

You know what? I didn’t believe it.

YT: Is there nowhere else where they might be?

GIRL 2: Everything goes downstairs if it’s not here.

So I persuade GIRL 2 to take me ‘downstairs’ - which was actually the most creepy-assed basement you’ve ever seen - to have a look. And, boy. It was a bloody fricking warehouse down there. There must have been HUNDREDS of towels, THOUSANDS of bathing suits. I took one cursory look in the bikini section and just threw in the towel gave up.

Anyway, I was seriously bummed. I really liked those bikini bottoms: black boxers, with a drawstring in front with little gold shells on the end, and big gold metal rings where the drawstrings came out. Got them in Berlin last March so it’s not like I can just zip out and buy another pair. The damage is severe.

However, I figured I could at least try to get something similar. So last Friday I went to a couple of stores to see if I could find black bikini-bottom boxers anywhere. Nope. Sold out. And then it dawned on me that every time I’ve tried to buy a bikini with boxer bottoms [because they suit my shape the best] at this time of the summer, they are always sold out EVERYWHERE. Always. Because evidently they’re the most popular type of bikini bottom so, at least at this time of year, they’re rare enough to constitute a serious shortage.

Which also means - maybe - that they’re rare enough to be attractive to thieves.

So I’m starting to give a bit more credit to GIRL 1’s theft theory, although I’m still having major trouble getting my head around the actual WEARING part. I mean, it’s bad enough to steal someone’s bathing suit, but then to actually WEAR it? UGH. Gross.

So, anyway, if any of you who are here in Niceland happen to see bikini bottoms that fit the description above hanging around a pool somewhere, please remove them from that person’s body IMMEDIATELY. Just for the sake of humiliation, you understand. I sure as hell won’t be wanting them back.

AND THE WEATHER HERE IN BOXERLESSLAND IS …
They kept going on and on about what a great weekend it was going to be weather-wise, but then it turned out to be just mediocre. Hardly a ray of sunshine, and today it was mostly foggy with a sort of damp chill in the air. Right now a decidedly cool 9°C [48F] with the sun coming up at 3.17 this morning and setting at 11.45 this evening.

My father and his wife own a cottage with two other families, so they have the right to it every third week. They don’t always make use of it, though, and when they do it’s often just for the weekend, and they are very generous about lending it to us, their children, when it’s not in use. Meanwhile, YT is pretty much the only one who is flexible enough to be able to make use of it during regular weekdays, because I’m the only one who doesn’t have a real job.

It’s such a great retreat and I love to sneak off there by myself for a few days. I’ve just come back and this time, because my father and his wife are away for a few weeks, we were able to use their entire seven days. So EPI and I went up there for the weekend and he left on Monday morning for work, while I stayed on and, well, worked [the luxury of having a laptop for an office]. I love the solitude and the few days’ throwback to living all by myself with nobody else to worry about, being able to distribute my toiletries all over the bathroom and hang my bikini in the shower until I need to use it again, eating when I’m hungry, sleeping when I’m tired. All that.

Something like this would probably only work in Iceland, though, and really only in the summer. So far I have not been partial to the idea of heading up there by myself in the winter, when it is dark [it’s easy to feel safe in the middle of the night when it’s bright daylight outside]. I recall one valiant attempt at solitude at my aunt and uncle’s cottage in Canada, when I stayed behind, as I recall, in order to write something profound and brilliant. A futile exercise: I fled home the next day after a late-night encounter with a large and particularly grotesque spider, as well as another large unidentified insect that was actually intelligent enough to fly into the room, then turn its head and look at me! Thankfully there are no such horrifying creatures here, although it has to be said that the Icelandic specimen of spider is completely disgusting and never fails to give me the heebie-jeebies.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with a picture of the sunset, taken last weekend almost exactly at midnight.

Weather today: Absolutely divine, so that I could hardly tear myself away from the country. I sunbathed on the deck for as long as I could before I absolutely had to head home, and it was HOT, probably around 30°C where there was shelter from the wind. Driving into town I was one of the few cars going that way, whereas the traffic out of town was bumper-to-bumper: this is one of the Nicelanders’ main travelling weekends [although it seems that lately every summer weekend has become a major travelling weekend. Right now at midnight it’s 11°C in the capital [52F], sunrise was at 3.13 am and sunset at 11.50 pm.

YT: I was reading an interview today with [a woman] who’s been trying to have children for years.

EPI: M-hm.

YT: Apparently they’ve tried everything and they’re going to adopt now.

EPI: Yeah?

YT: I didn’t even know she was married. Apparently she and her husband have a long-distance marriage; he lives in Denmark and she lives here.

EPI: […]

YT: What?

EPI: And she wonders why they can’t have children?

[PS. I’m still away!]

Björk and Sigur Rós, two of our most illustrious [read: famous] acts are organizing a mammoth* concert this evening in support of the environment. And not a moment too soon. As the Nicelandic idiom says: oft var þörf en nú er nauðsyn [it was often needed, but now it is necessary], since in the midst of the economic downturn the fearless leaders of this land are once again championing the cause of selling out our beautiful landscapes to evil multinational aluminium giants.

Prior to the last elections, the Social Democratic Alliance promised a halt in plans to add to the number of aluminium plants in this country. As some of you may know, aluminium giants like Alcoa and Alcan hover around Iceland like vultures, on account of the cheap energy to be had here. The last such project to go ahead - a huge aluminium smelter on the East Fjords taken in as a quick fix for the area - required a vast amount of land to be sunk to create a reservoir and dam to feed the plant’s needs for power.

This election promise now seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird, as our current Minister if Industry and Commerce [who rode into office partly on the strength of the above promise] has just extended a declaration of intent for the construction of a brand-new smelter at Bakki, in the north. Can anyone say ‘traitor’?

Aluminium smelters are not the answer: they provide a quick-fix injection into the economy, overheating, and then a massive hangover - just as we are experiencing now. But of course our politicians are not interested in long-term solutions - like politicians everywhere they seem to have built-in short-sightedness that extends only as far as their current election term.

So if you’re in Iceland, head out to the concert in Laugardalur this evening, to show your support for the cause. Unfortunately I’m not going to be in town, otherwise I’d be there waving the flag, but I shall definitely be there in spirit.

* Well, mammoth by Nicelandic standards.

[I also blogged about this issue here and here and here.]

[No weather today as this post is being brought to you through the magic of blogging technology, i.e. pre-dated posts.]

Our Prime Minister, Geir H. Haarde, has now come out and said that it would be much more logical for Niceland to adopt the US dollar than the euro.

Just picture it: paying for our dried fish and brennivín with greenbacks featuring Abe Lincoln, as opposed to Nicelandic krona notes featuring a picture of YT’s dad.* I’m just sayin’.

Still, hearing old Geir talk, it doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea. We already do much of our business in US dollars, so if we were to join a monetary union it’s a more logical choice then the euro, despite our being in Europe. Also - and I know that this is the really clincher - old Geir doesn’t actually want to take up the euro because it would mean that we’d have to join the European Union. I also know he has the backing of a large share of the nation on that front. Our independence was too hard-fought for us to succumb to another controlling body - at least that’s the sentiment among a great number of Icelanders.

At any rate, it seems like it’s becoming crucial to do something [anything!] - the rate of the krona has fallen by 40 percent [!!!] since the beginning of the year [HINT: if you’ve been meaning to visit Niceland, this is the time to do it] and who knows where it will all end. Trouble is, the greenback isn’t doing so well, either. Pound Sterling, anyone?

ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY
This weather reporting is getting kind of dull - we have the same weather all the time, day after day. Brilliant sunshine, cool breeze, yadayadayada. The grass is starting to look parched - not something we experience very often up around this latitude. Right now 55°F [13°C - hell, why don’t we take up imperial measurements, too?] and the sun came up bright and early at 2.59 here in the capital, will set at 12.02 tomorrow.

* Trivia alert: my father actually served as a model for the drawing of Jón Sigurðsson, our independence hero, who is on the ISK 500 krona note, i.e. it’s a picture of my father’s body with the head of Jón Sigurðsson on top. So anytime anyone asks to see a picture of my father I can just pull out my wallet and show them the ISK 500 note, very convenient. Not that anyone ever asks, though.

There’s a place here in Reykjavík called the Family Park and Zoo, which as the name suggests is a park for families [i.e. they have play equipment for kids, rides, etc.] and a sort of mini-zoo, with domesticated farm animals, as well as wild animals found in Iceland: seals, foxes, minks and reindeer. Recently they’ve also set up a sort of mini-aquarium, with a few species of fish and other oceanic critters.

Anyway, each year during Midsummer Night they open the park between 11 pm and 1 am, for anyone who wants to listen in on the cows talking, or who fancies a roll around in the dew. They’ve also got lots of other things going on: a bonfire, live music, “strange creatures” roaming around [i.e. people dressed up in costumes], and suchlike. I’ve been meaning to go ever since AAH was little but have never got around to it - until last night. I was talking to a good friend on the phone who mentioned that she was going and told me just how great it was. EPI came home around 11 and I managed to coerce him into coming with me, and we ended up having a really fun time, even if we didn’t have any little kids with us.

We first came upon the seals, who were curious as ever. Is it any wonder the Germans call them “sea dogs”?

Next we checked out the aquarium. Can you spot the flounder?

Ah, there he is:

We went to listen to the cows, but this little guy, at least, wasn’t talking:

Whereas this guy had a lot to say, but I promised I wouldn’t tell …

In a tent there was a band playing jazz …

And outside there was a field for rolling around nekkid in the dew [note the clothes rack, very inviting]:

Meanwhile, Midsummer Night was encroaching on the little lake [although this photo was taken just prior to the one above - the position of the camera made it look darker than it actually was]:

On the way back out we bid farewell to the seals again [can you spot them?]

And on the way home, there was a gorgeous sunset:

… with the Sólfari sculpture looking like some strange prehistoric animal:

And that concludes our little Midsummer Night mystery tour. Thank you for joining us!

TODAY WE HAD YET ANOTHER STUNNING DAY
White-hot, brilliant sunshine. I was sitting inside today working [in an actual proper office] and it was SO HOT. I felt really sluggish and realized I hadn’t actually felt that way on account of the summer heat since I lived abroad. [Implications? Discuss.] Our economy is going to hell, the krona is in free-fall, Icelandair laid off 200 people today, gas is up to ISK 173 per liter [USD 7.40] … but at least we have beautiful weather. Temps right now 12°C [54F], sunrise this morning was at 2.57, sunset due for 12.03 tomorrow.

In Icelandic lore, there are four nights a year when mystical, magical things happen: the night before Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Twelfth Night [January 6] and Midsummer Night – tonight.

Many amazing things are supposed to happen on this night. Magical stones may be found that will make your wishes come true. Various types of healing grasses and herbs can be picked, just on this night. Cows gain the ability to speak – but if you do hear them, you must cover your ears, because anyone who listens in on their talk goes mad.* Also, the dew is very intense on this night, and it is said that if you roll around in it naked, you will be healed of whatever ails you, and will not become ill for an entire year afterwards.

Apparently it’s a common theme in Icelandic folklore that whenever something transgresses any sort of whole, some sort of threatening situation is initiated. Under such circumstances all sorts of forces are released, both good and bad, and things attain special, heightened powers [as in the magical stones, dew, etc.]. This applies, for example, when one process is complete and another begins, such as on the stroke of midnight, when a year is complete [on New Year’s Eve] and when the sun reaches its zenith in the sky, during Midsummer Night.**

IT’S A GREAT NIGHT FOR ROLLING AROUND NAKED
Although not sure you’d want to do it in the dew, cuz you’d freeze your butt. The light is magical, at any rate - right now at almost 11 pm the sun casts a gorgeous gold hue and there’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s 11°C [52F], sunrise this morning was at 2.56 and sunset here in the capital will be at 12.03 tomorrow.

* Perhaps they use Google translator.
** Nicked from the Icelandic Science Web.

[This post is filed under MY ICELAND.]

Well, I must be hitting the big leagues because I’m getting hate mail and lunatic rants.

Yay! I guess.

And while I generally have a policy of evicting anyone who comes at me or other readers of this blog with profanities and blatant disrespect, I rather think I shall let those be. Give a man a rope long enough and he’ll hang himself with it, I always say. Knock yourself out.

A couple of other things:

Graham from Scotland asked the other day whether I could post some pics taken between sundown and sunrise. I always make a point of going out at around midnight during the summer solstice every year, but I missed it this year because it came a day earlier than usual, on June 20th as opposed to the 21st, on account of the leap year. Pulled a fast one! And quite frankly I’ve been too exhausted in the last few days to head out at that time of night, with or without a camera. BUT - there is a solution in the form of the webcam they have set up eyjan.is [and probably elsewhere]. It gives the date and the local time, so log on there at any time after midnight our time and you’ll be able to see what our light nights look like.

Finally, one for the geeks in the crowd: can anyone recommend a good web host? I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but I’ve been having some trouble with mine lately, i.e. my site has been down fairly frequently and there have been a few other grrr-inducing things. The requirement is that it be reliable, affordable and have efficient and speedy customer service. Anyone??

IT’S BEEN SUCH A GREAT WEEKEND
Gorgeous weather! Sure - a bit cool, but that’s par for the course … at least most of that nasty wind has subsided. I’m working for much of the weekend [I really try not to work weekends, but in the last few weeks have had to relax that rule far more frequently than I like] but still I managed to do some work by the side of the Laugardalslaug pool yesterday, which was obviously highly preferable to being bolted to the office chair. It’s 12°C [54F] and sunrise was at 2.56 and sunset will be at 12.03. The will soon be getting shorter *sob*.