Heather in Iceland

Now that the sibs. have stopped choking. I meant the flower not the person :)

I am so far behind processing, and uploading pictures it isn't funny. And I am tuckered out, there is just something wrong when the parents can wear you out. But i think they are kinda tuckered out also :)

We Lucked out and got a BEAUTIFUL sunny day, it is looking like it could be the only one that will happen for there trip. We rented a car today and headed out to do the golden circle tour at our own pace. First stop was Þingvellir this is a national park in Iceland and from 970 AD to 1890 ish it was the site of the yearly parliament. The tribes from all over would come each year and meat and create laws, trade, and try cases. The neat thing about the courts was that it was left up to the victim to enforces the ruling. If the court said that someone should die, it was up to the victim family to carry out the sentence or not. That has some interesting safe guards built into the justice system.

One of the cool things about Þingvellir is that there is a big crack running down the park where the NA and Euro/Asia tectonic plates are pulling apart. And there is a cool waterfall that is falling off the NA side and running down the crack and out into the EA side. When i did the bus tour almost a year ago. It was A: Raining, and B: we had a pushy tour guide... This time not tour guide and a nice sunny day.

This time as you can see we had time to walk up to the waterfall :)

Next stop was Gyser, we stopped and had lunch here also. Turns out that the sause that i didn't like from the hamburger from last trip is also on the chicken burgers :(


After lunch and shopping in the tourist trap, I picked up some herbal tea that should help somebody upset stomach in the morning :)


We headed to Gulfoss Water falls next, this fall is also knowen as the golden falls.



That done, and the rain starting to creep in and threaten, we headed back to Reykjavik. All told it was a nice day tour. I am wondering if sister and husband when they come would like to do this trip, weather permitting.

Wale watching

Well mom and dad have been here since Thursday but Thursday doesn't count :) they landed at 6:30 AM in Iceland, and the hotel room wasn't ready until 11:00 :(

Friday morning I had Python training, the language not the animal, unfortunately there was a big bug that I needed to fix, so after giving them a tour of the office. So I ended up spending the first day of my vacation working :(

Anyway day two I dragged them whale watching, it was a lot more unpleasant than you would think, it was cold, waves where high (better than 6 flags if you wanted a roller coaster ride) and did I mention Cold and wet, and oh yea it was COLD!


Recognize this intrepid traveler? Also this was the first photo that I touched up with light room.

The clarity setting is cool! Anyway after seeing a few Minke whales and some dolphins. I gave up trying to take photos in the chop. But got this one, unfortunately it wasn't swimming at the time.


On the way back there was a flock of birds soaring around the boat, following and skiming the waves around us. It was cool.


After we docked, I took them into the office, to get hot chocolates and warm up. Had a nice visit and a couple of hot chocolate then walked back to my place in the rain. Dad didn't like the uphill but we all made it. Looked at websites for a while and planed the next few days of there stay. Tomorrow we head to Thinkvillr and Gyflos, and Gyser. Speiling on those is optional.

Then after that we grabbed bathing suites and went to a pool neat the hotel. It was cool i hadn't been to a Icelandic pool before. I think I will go back, one of the neat and sensible ideas is that you have to shower before getting into the pool without your suite. have to wash the head, arm pits, crotch and feet with soap. Then you can put on your suite and go in the pool. It seamed weird first then I thought about it and it makes sense. It gets rid of allot of the things that are transmitted by pools. The pools didn't seem like they had allot of chemicals in them and they had hot tubs that where from 38c up by 2c to 44c. So you could chose hot hot you wanted. Mom and I liked the 42C one dad ended up like it about 40c.

Anyway I left them tuckered out at the hotel and are going to meat at 7:00 am for breakfast then pick the rental car up at 8:15 and head out.

Home from the Heat

Well i got home early Sunday morning, and am finally out of that heat. Atlanta is a nice area but just way to hot in august! I would walk to work ( you know my nice and early 6:30 am) and it would be so hot and humid that I felt like I needed a shower when I got to work.

Well enough grumbling, Just got my new Video card installed, had to go out and buy a new Power supply. This card needs a 550w power supply minimum, and mine was 535W, booo!

but it is nice and the video performance is notable.

Looking forward to my folks being here on Friday. Have a bunch of things that might be interesting to do, and will have to see what they are up to.

A Good friend of mine just told me she is Pregnant!! not going to say who as it is her News to tell. But way to go! And i get back here and stop into Subway for a sub and a lady I chat with there greets me with "Guess what I am pregnant!" must be that time of year :)

So to all you lady's that want kids I say go for it, the galactic dice seem to be rolling good these days!

anyway back to playing with my new toys...

Oh wait I should tell you what I did in Atlanta.
Well I worked and we got a lot accomplished. The first weekend there I met up with one of my sisters and her husband and we went to Six flags over Georgia... The coasters we went on where good, but the lines where long (45 min+) and it seams that every coaster and ride exits through a gift shop :(

They have this flash pass, that lets you cut to the head of the line. In hind sight it would have been nice, but it costs the amount of another person into the park.

There where only two piss offs, well 3 if you include the heat, The first was the bat man ride, waited 45 min to get into the ride and I can't go because I am to tall for the ride. They couldn't lock down the restraint. The second was the Joppa Jons pizza. I normally like there pizza, but this stuff was crap. I was worse than the pizza I forgot and baked for 20 extra min. It was not fit for animal consumption let alone human consumption. And that rounded off weekend #1.

The second weekend didn't do much of anything.

The third weekend I checked out Friday night and stayed with sister and my folks are down visiting them that weekend, and this week (they are doing the visit the kids tour). So we all piled into the car and went to the Atlanta Botanical gardens. Downloading the pics now, so I might add some to the bottom of this post in a bit.

Which came first the word, or the pratice?

I learned something interesting yesterday, This weekend is a long weekend here in Iceland and it is jokingly referred to as the national breeding weekend. According to my co-workers, it seems there is a lot of camping and outdoor festivals this weekend, and it is also the time when it is legal to have sex outside :)

so you take a situation where allot of 20-35 year old people are camping out at festivals, drinking large amounts of alcohol (it's Iceland, they drink!) and it is legal to have sex outdoors..

Statistically more baby's born in 9 months in Iceland than any other time of the year so maybe there is something to this breeding weekend :)

But that isn't tee interesting part, the Icelandic word for spouse is the same if you are just living together, or married. So in Icelandic if someone introduced as there spouse you can't assume they are married unless they have rings on.

This got me to wondering if that was the cause of the Icelandic people to live together and have kids, being a couple and having a family isn't tied to the legal sense of it as in N.A.

Then I was wondering does language follow function? Did the word come about because that is how people live. Or was society influenced by having one word for what we consider separate situations?

The Eskimos have many words for snow, because it is such a important part of there life's. So if the type of snow wasn't important to there culture would they have one word for snow?

It makes you wonder!

well I am off to Atlanta early Monday morning....