One of my dearest friends organised a virtual bourbon-tasting evening for me and another friend last night.

Below are some unattributed notes. For those familiar with all three of us [the other two used to keep LJs, donkey's years ago], you can probably guess which persons are responsible for which.


Nose: "This is exactly like the pine air freshener from the '80s. The ones that came on the tree-shaped cards."

Palate: "I've added orange soda. *sips* Ah. I've turned it into washing-up liquid."

Finish: "What did you write?" "I put 'grateful it's over'."
Nose: "Vanilla, with notes of eye-burning."

Palate: "This tastes much better than it smells." Also: "This is bar bourbon, not home bourbon."

Finish: "If I met it in the morning, I might not like it as much." "Not for taking up to the hotel room, then."


"Hang on. I can't pour."
"Is that quantity, or glass-targeting?"
"Both."

With apologies for jumping back in time to before the Harpa concert, I went to meet my travelling companions at their hotel around mid-day. From there, we walked up the Sculpture and Shore trail to the departure pier of the ferry to Videy Island, which is a three-minute journey from that particular bit of Reykjavik coastline.

Videy Island is home to artworks and ruins, as well as hosting Yoko Ono's "Imagine Peace" cylinder. It is lit from October to December, between John Lennon's birth and death, and for a few days in spring. The island is a wonderful place to walk and just admire the scenery, particularly Snaefellsnes peninsula, on a clear sunny day. We were lucky enough to have one of those during our trip on a Sunday, as the ferry doesn't run except in good weather on fine weekend afternoons in winter.

There are a lot of photos from the shore walk and the ferry trip below the cut. It took me some time to curate them, which is why this entry is appearing after the one about the concert at the Harpa.



Viðeyjarstofa House on Videy, viewed from the opposing shore.

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We grabbed a hot chocolate from the visitor centre before hopping on the ferry back to Reykjavik. So to recap, on International Women's Day, we:

• spent the entire day with other women
• took a ferry ride to see a work of art by a famous woman
• drank one of the best hot chocolates ever made by anyone, but in this specific instance, by a woman
• put vodka in the hot chocolate on the ferry ride back, because we could, and if you are judging us, we don't care
• saw a chamber music concert with a majority-woman quartet, that featured the premiere of a piece by a woman composer
• ate fish tacos (fnaaar)
• patronised a bar run by women

I did post to my journal about the penis museum, which counteracts these points somewhat, but otoh all the penises have been detached from their dead owners, soaked in formaldehyde, and subjected to ruthless public scrutiny. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Post-penis museum, we went to do a bit of shopping at the Kolaportið flea market. This was a curious mixture of overpriced tourist gubbins, authentic junk, local produce, jewelry, and genuine Icelandic jumpers (hard to find amongst the tourist gubbins). One of my companions and I bought jumpers for our kids, as well as acquiring baked goods and cheap, pretty hand-crafted jewelry.

Tuckered out after our exertions, I toddled back to my hotel for a luxurious mid-afternoon zizz, a rare pleasure. Eventually I levered myself out of my pit to get ready to go to the Blue Lagoon. I ambled down the road to my companions’ hotel and we had a drink (beer for me, mimosas for them) in the lobby before the bus arrived.


We spent the bus ride goggling out the windows at the golden hour prior to sunset.



Thanks to slemslempike’s tip, I hired a swimming costume, which cost me all of £5 as opposed to the £40 buying a new one would have done, assuming I could even find one in March in the shops in Reykjavik, which I couldn’t.

We gathered our slippers and robes and headed inside to shower off and change. The showering-off is taken very seriously. You must strip off completely and scrub down, and put conditioner in your hair and leave it there to try to prevent it from turning to straw (top tip: it doesn’t work). Only then may you don your swimsuit and head into the lagoon waters.

A brief history: the Blue Lagoon is not a natural geothermal spa. It’s formed from the weirdly luminescent effluent of the nearby geothermal power plant. A plant worker who suffered from psoriasis was the first to discover the healing qualities of the supersaturated alkaline waters, and the first iteration of the Blue Lagoon was born, a casual affair that was neither temperature or depth-controlled, and was in fact rather dangerous. In the intervening decades, it has morphed into the much safer and more formalised tourist hot-spot that it is now, and has also grown considerably since the plant continues to operate (and provide much of Reykjavik’s power).

We had two face masks - I went with the standard mineral exfoliation, followed by the algae mask, which was very cool and soothing - and a couple of drinks. The first was the girliest option on the menu, strawberry sparkling wine, and the second, a skyr smoothie. We swam lazily about in the sparsely populated lagoon, easily avoiding Facetiming strangers. Half an hour before the lagoon shut, the one companion who’d brought a waterproof case for her camera dashed quickly back in to the lockers and retrieved it to snap a few photos.These are below and behind the cut.


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After a long, soapy shower, my skin felt amazing and my muscles pleasantly achy from all the walking and swimming. My hair, on the other hand, was and remains a haystack, despite the mandated conditioner application. It was entirely worth it. I fell asleep on the bus home, and stumbled happily into bed, where I slept for nine solid hours.

A couple of months ago, BBC 6 Music played a heavy metal version of The Stick Song that is quite possibly the least favourite earworm of every adult in the UK with at least one child under the age of six. It’s from a now-infamous episode of a CBeebies show calledHey Duggee. Duggee is a cartoon dog/scout leader who for some reason always says "Woof", while his scout troupe consisting of a variety of tiny animals can all speak English. The troupe earn improbably titled badges* over the course of each seven minute episode.

I looked up the song on Spotify and discovered that this band, Slay Duggee, has made an entire album of heavy metal versions of CBeebies show theme songs. It is wonderful. I must particularly commend their rendition of “Baby Shark”. Do check out Kids Love Metal here.

( 366 meme questions, Jan 8 - Jan 14 )

* My favourite was the Brave Banana Badge.

With apologies for missing a day; I shall do a double post some time this week when I'm not quite so exhausted.

We spend the weekend away in Norfolk for a friend's wedding. The location was beautiful and merits its own post. The bloke's parents kindly agreed to have the children so we were able to let our hair down. Here we are in our glad rags in a more civilised moment, just after the ceremony and before the wedding breakfast.



The wedding was on the same day eighteen years ago as the death of my maternal grandfather, with whom I was very close. The bride and groom didn't know that, of course, but I'm privately pleased to now have a very happy memory conjoined to the same date.

Today was much better than yesterday. ( Pre-schooler TMI ) But that is not the only reason it was better, for today, the first birthday card arrived for me, from my aunt-out-law in the USA, and also a Mystery Amazon Package, which turned out to contain this:


[Still life of Slowly Rotating solar-powered Jupiter sitting on its stand.]

If you would like to see Slowly Rotating Jupiter rotating, click below.


[YouTube video, 45 sec, of Slowly Rotating Jupiter rotating.]

It has been gifted to me by My Mate Josh, who is an awesome and faithful friend and has been for over twenty years. He also reads this journal. Thank you, Josh! <3

Screenshot of a shiny pink Ampharos.

On Community Day, when I was back in the UK I caught a shiny Mareep straightaway, and jumped for joy because I had just acquired enough Mareep candies to achieve the full evolution cycle. And now I have a beautiful shiny pink Ampharos in my backpack. Huzzah!

From a PokéGo perspective, it was fantastic being in central Vienna, where the Pokéstops are as dense as forest trees, during the Spring event. I managed to evolve a number of Hoenn region Pokémon, and I got a Moltres from doing Field Research. Hat-tip to the bloke for helping me with completing sequential curveball throw tasks. I’m very pleased there’s now a way to get Legendaries without having to battle in difficult raids, which would require interacting with other people. (That’s just not my favourite aspect of playing any game!)

That said, the reason I’m making this post is that when I got to London this morning, I found that kaberett had popped a Snorlax in a local gym. I added my Alakazam, and fed the Snorlax a few berries. Seeing a friend’s Pokémon is not quite the same thing as seeing said friend, but it still put a big smile on my face.

Keenly aware that I have 34 minutes in which to write this or I shall be missing a day for the first time since I started this project, here are three excellent things that happened today.

1. I had a chat with my Big Boss. It went well. (<==this is my British side talking) I AM SO RELIEVED, Y'ALL, I CANNOT TELL YOU. It took me weeks to work up the courage to ask for the meeting, so actually having it happen and it be okay is EPIC. (<==this is my American side talking)
   
   
2. I found out that two of my favourite people are dating. I may have done flaily muppet arms when I was informed of this.
   
   
3. I saw Black Panther tonight and it was everything I could have hoped and more. Share with me your favourite fics?

As amused as I am at how many people have Opinions about taps, I won't be getting back to your comments today. My apologies.

This is because I have just spent an entire day (9 AM to 5 PM) learning to snowboard. Or, as our instructor so tactfully put it, "hauling ourselves repeatedly up a hill and then falling down a lot."

I am pleased to have survived the experiment whilst retaining my ability to walk. I do have, however, a bump on my head and a badly bruised coccyx. I'm still kicking myself for not wearing my padded cycling leggings under my waterproof trousers and instead going for my standard workout leggings.

I managed to go down the hill once on my own heel-edge, and most of the way once toe-edge, without falling over. When they got to the demonstration of turning in the afternoon, I just laughed. I will certainly not be "snowboarding to recreational standard" (as per the blurb for the course) without several more lessons. Or possibly never.


Here is a photo of us at the end. Astonishingly, we're all still smiling. The one without a helmet was our skillful and lovely instructor Kasha. Then there's me. Then there's the instigator of this particular lark. Our daughters are currently taking snowboarding lessons together, and are already more skillful than we are. The person on the end in the blue helmet is another friend she talked into attending.

If you'll excuse me, I'm now going to go drink a lot of mint tea and take some ibuprofen in the hopes that I will be able to bend down enough to hug my children tomorrow.

Selfie with friends P and H. Glasses gang!

Tonight I went to dinner with a friend and ex-colleague (H) whom I haven't seen for a year and a half. We talked and laughed and we ate delicious Filipino food together. Not a half-bad way to spend an evening, and I got to introduce both of them to the joys of pancit and purple ice cream, which I'm pleased to report they thoroughly appreciated.

( Filipino feast below the cut )