We spent the day at Snæfellsnes with Dean Sharenow. Dean is Rob’s college roommate and is half of the bandKill Henry Sugar. (I’m listening to his music now and highly recommend it.)

The weather was foul when we set out and I really wondered if we had made a mistake since you could not see the mountains, at all, because of the fog. Fortunately as the day progressed, the clouds lifted. We stopped at Búðir, which is a national park now, but used to be a fishing village. The only things left of the village now are the hotel and the church. Looking at the mountains, it is hard to imagine that the ocean is at my back.

As we walked back to the car, I spotted a roof sitting on the ground. Curious, I walked over to it and discovered a set of crude stone steps leading underground. Of course, I had to go down them. At the bottom, rough stone walls enclosed a tiny room. I imagine that it had been a turf house, but don’t really know.

In an attempt to go to Snæfellsjökul, we went on from Búðir to road F574. Now, those of you who have visited know that the more digits a road number has the worse it is going to be. The F means, only try this in a four-wheel drive. Dean had rented an appropriate vehicle, so we started up the road. It was gravel, single lane and very steep. Guard rails? Ha. We laugh at your guard rails, they obstruct the view when you are trying to look straight down the side of the mountain.

About a third of the way up, we paused at Songhellar, or the Singing Cave. Apparently a man named Bardur Snaefellsas lived in this cave with the “dwarf-voices” or echoes, while he built a farm at Laugarbrekka at Hellnar. The cave is formed from a lava bubble, so has a nearly perfect parabolic arch at the top, which makes a great echo. It has a crazy amount of grafitti carved into the walls dating back 1753. It’s so nice to know that vandalism is not a result of modern times.

Sadly, the road became to icy for us to continue up to see Snæfellsjökul. As a seeming reward for our good sense at turning back, the clouds lifted affording uninterrupted beautiful views of the coast from above. I did not even try taking a picture, because it trying to do it justice seemed like a futile effort.

For the rest of our drive, we travelled under blue skies. We stopped to visit with some horses, who came up to the fence to be petted as if they were dogs. They are small enough that it really does feel like petting a dog. A very large dog, but still.

After we got back from Snæfellsnes, we went to a party at Jodi, Sam, Julie and Sarah’s. It was fun, but we were there very, very late.

Okay, it’s a small thing, but I’m still pretty excited about it. Shimmer made the top five bestsellers list at Clarkesworld Books for the Week ending April 23, 2006. Kind of cool.

For the first time in what feels like weeks, I have not manipulated any trash. I did live hands today for several scenes and am fairly tired.

Rob’s college roomate and good friend, Dean, is out visiting us. He’s a lot of fun. We went to the rotating restaurant on the top of the Pearl. How was the meal? It rotated. We’ve decided that next time we’ve got guests, we’ll take them to the bar at the rotating restaurant and have dinner elsewhere.

I just found out that I’ve been accepted into the new Dr. Who anthology coming out in hardcover in June 2007.

When I was growing up, the local public TV station carried Dr. Who and I started watching at exactly the right age. I loved the show. The opportunity to write a story with the Doctor is so incredibly exciting that I actually can not find the words to explain it. ’nuff said, eh?

On Friday, they are going to do an update of my server which means that sometime between Friday and Monday it and my email may go down. Be patient.

When we arrived at the studio, Audrey immediately started sniffing the ground of the lobby, like she could tell her human was there. So I let her off lead and she started tracing the path, looking for her girl. Oh, what a happy reunion they had. It was really sweet. Audrey was vibrating with excitement.

I spent the rest of the day on the studio floor, except for lunch and a half-hour massage. I didn’t even unpack my computer. A lot of it was the basic stuff, fetching carts or standing around just in case the puppeteer needed something. But I did get to do some fun things as well.

Remember that shot we tried to do yesterday when the puppet was stuck to the floor with a piece of taffy? We shot it again today with the dugar firmly taped to the floor. But, it was in a different part of the set and we suddenly developed a lighting problem. I couldn’t be in the same relationship to the legs as I was yesterday because I cast a shadow that gave away the fact there was a puppeteer.

The shot we were doing used only his legs and then a brief moment of his hands reaching down to try to free his shoe. Yesterday, Thor was in front of the legs, and I was behind reaching over so that my hands came down at the right relationship to the puppet’s body.

Make sense? If I was in front of the body reaching down, it would look like the puppet’s hands were on backwards because my thumbs would point the wrong way. Except that today, I cast a shadow if I was behind his legs. The only place I could be was in front of the puppet. Too either side would put me in the shot. And here’s where we get into a lucky thing. I have hyper-mobile joints in my shoulders, so I can rotate my arms a full 360. That allowed me to twist enough to make it look like the hands were in the right relationship to his body.

I can also turn my feet backwards, (not all the way) but it’s never come in handy except as a party trick.

I did a little more livehanding for two of the puppets. It was a very busy day.

Today was the first day back at work and I seemed to spend most of the day working trash in various forms. I started off with manipulating the trash can that one of the puppets was “holding,” then on to the giant ball of trash that another one was “holding” and then a trash can that yet another one was, yep, “holding.” See, these puppets all either had rodded hands or some other reason that they couldn’t actually hold the trash that they were supposed to carry.

I also spent a portion of today guiding Thor’s hand into his puppet’s butt. Really. See, Thor was under the bench and his puppet was sitting on it. Because the bench just had a hole cut in it for Thor’s arm to pass through, he couldn’t find the hole in the puppet, so I had to help him enter the puppet. It should be fairly clear, if the puppet is sitting on the bench, and Thor is under the bench which part of the puppet’s anatomy has the entry point.

I also did a tiny bit of live-handing for him today when he got stuck in the taffy. Nothing exciting. We’ll have to do that shot again because the dugar kept moving–the dugar is the road surface in the studio. It’s basically a giant sheet of linoleum.

Poor Audrey ran into the building and straight for her room, but her girl wasn’t there. Such a sad little dog. We went for a long walk after work and then I gave her a bath. She was a sad, stinky little dog.

I got my Official Absentee Balloting Material in the mail before we left for our trip and spent today voting in Oregon’s Democratic Primaries. Ugh. All of the candidates seem to have the same rhetoric “Vote for me because I do things!” Except that very few of them say what the things are that they do, and it makes a difference.

Don’t miss the photos of moss. You can sink your finger in all the way up to your palm. It’s amazing.

Monday, April 17th, we stayed with Tóti and his family. His wife, Hannahlið, made a fantastic vegetarian meal, which was a really pleasant surprise. After dinner, Rob and Tóti ran some errands and I stayed behind to teach Marsibel (their daughter) how to make a puppet. She’s been out of school with a cold and then the holiday so she was really bored. The exciting part of this is that she’s seven and doesn’t speak english yet. That’s right, I taught puppet building in Icelandic. And mime. She was really good about figuring out what I meant and helping me learn new words. Hannahlið was standing by, but didn’t need to help as much as either of us thought she would.

The funniest part about the visit was the reaction of their very large dog to Audrey. Their dog was horribly jealous and tried to sleep in Audrey’s little basket. Have you ever seen anything so ridiculous?

So on Tuesday, April 18th we left Tóti’s house and met Bernd, then went for coffee at Bláa Kannan (the blue pot). Then Rob and I took Audrey for a walk at the Akureyri Botanical Gardens, which were completely covered in snow. Someone had gone through the park before us, leaving a single trail of footprints. Audrey bounded between the footprints like some kind of snow porpoise.
After stocking up on groceries for the road, we went to Bernd’s for coffee. Bernd and his family live in a valley outside of Dalvík, north of Akureyri. Jodi, Sarah, Julie and Sam met up with us there and we had a grand time talking about travels and puppetry. Just in case you don’t remember, Bernd Ogrodnik is my friend who did Strings (Go watch the trailer) and he has a number of the puppets at his place. He also has a fantastic workshop that is the envy of every puppeteer who has seen it.

Jodi, Sarah, Julie and Sam continued on their way while Rob and I stayed around for the night. Great conversations with Bernd, his wife Hildur and his intern Ava. It was a lot of fun.

On Wednesday, April 19th, we planned to drive up to the northern most part of Iceland but that plan changed. Bernd is working on a new show and as we were walking to the car he asked if I wouldn’t mind ducking into the workshop (Seen from above in this photo) and showing him some fast connections for shadow puppets. Well…you get two enthusiastic puppeteers in a room and the conversation will quickly become more involved. We went through the connection pretty fast and then moved on to a story issue and some other concerns he was having with his new show. Rob went for a hike with Audrey but when he came back, Bernd, Ava and I were still working. We wound up staying through lunch and leaving around five o’clock.

At that point we revised our plans and drove straight to Egillstaðir where we stayed at Gistihús Olgu. Road 1 was long and wild. I won’t try to describe it, but will just give you a collection of photos. Not all of these are from the drive to Egilsstaðir.

On Thursday, April 20th, we got up and began our drive around the southern part of Iceland. We had planned to stay at Skalafell, but realized when we reached the glacial lagoon, that it was still early in the day. We had driven to Skaftafell when Eve was here, so we’d be seeing landscapes that we had seen before. Rather than staying we decided to head back to Reykjavík and have an extra day at home.

And here we are.

While you are waiting for me to update my blog with the latest travel news, here is a photo album of things we saw on the last two days.

Well, I have my doubts, but I was tagged by Joy and by the rules of the game, I have to tell you six random things about myself and then go and tag six more people.

1. I’m writing this with a towel on my head.
2. There is a poodle asleep on the sofa next to me, but neither the poodle or the sofa are mine.
3. I have tried to learn Icelandic, German, Italian, Bengali, Mandarin and American Sign Language.
4. I cannot ski.
5. I have no problems climbing heights, but have trouble descending them.
6. I do not like cooked carrots.

I am tagging Jason, Clarissa, Buster, Chris, Maggie and Steve.

Why? Because I want all of you to post more often and this is an easy way to get a post out of you.

This should be our last night on the road. Skálafell I in Suðursveit We’ll finally get to see the glacial lagoon that I keep missing. Twice I’ve taken friends or family to the glacier, but haven’t left early enough in the day to make it to the glacial lagoon.

At many of the guesthouses in Iceland one has the option of a kitchen, so Rob and I brought groceries with us for what is called a “self-catering” holiday. We’ve just discovered that in rooms without kitchen access we can make a boiled egg in the electric tea-kettle, which every room has.

Advice regarding eggs
Hard-boiled or soft-boiled eggs
Place the cold egg in a saucepan and cover it with cold water by least 1 in. (2.5 cm)
Cover the saucepan and bring it to a boil
Take it off the stove to stop it boiling
Let it sit in the water for 20 to 25 minutes for a hard-boiled egg or from 1 to 4 minutes for a soft-boiled egg
Drain and rinse in cold water

Next it’s on to Ytra-Ã?land in Þistilfjörður. This is the only one that we might not be able to get to because of the weather. I’ll let you know after the trip if we’ve made it.