All in all a fairly uneventful day. The puppetry was all on an elevated set, which meant that there was very little for Emily and I to do for the puppeteers. I did a little bit of live hand work, but other than that very little. It’s the sort of day that is fairly excruitating because I’m basically being paid to wait, or to be available. It goes against the grain for me; I’d rather be earning my money. But I won’t complain too much!

The most excitement I had today was hauling my novel out to edit it.

Well, I’m in the midst of a website update, so there’s a chance that you’ll arrive and get frantic error messages that disappear as soon as you click on something. If you see anything that looks broken, don’t fret–unless it is still broken tomorrow.

I updated Esja and Dinner to include photos.

Rob and I are off to Kolaportið, the flea market in Reykjavík, today and then I’m not sure what we’ll do. We’re talking about going to climb Esja.

Sometime in the last week it started getting dark at night again. Last night I slept without an eye cozy for the first time (excluding my trip to Boston) for months. I still haven’t started seeing stars again, but seeing dark outside our windows keeps surprising me.

We were released for a couple hours in the middle of the day because they had a lot of scenes without puppets to get through. It’s like we turn into kids on a teacher workday when this happens. Everyone frantically tries to make the most of the time and we all run out of the building. Today, a group of us went screaming over to the mall to shop. Apparently everyone is having a sale this week to get ready for the new merchandise coming in, so things are 70% off. This means that they almost cost as little as a non-sale item would back in the States. Funny how your lens adjusts. I got a pair of trousers and a shirt. I was initially hoping that I could wear the trousers to work, but the rise is too low for my job.

I spend all my time bending over, and thank you, I don’t like cleavage in the rear… Clearly, I’ll need to add that to my list of things that I get to say at work. Which reminds me that at some point last week someone said, “I get good results with rear-entry head.”

I’ve just finished reading John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I understand why the reviews have compared it to Heinlein, beyond the obvious nods, the book is like Heinlein for grownups.

Don’t get me wrong, Heinlein is one of my favorites. Once I discovered him, I devoured all of his books; some I loved, but some I was too old for. I miss the thrill of romping through space and Old Man’s War brings that back for me along with very real, very adult emotions and questions. Highly recommended.

The last two days have been a lot of fun. We’ve had a lot of scenes which required using all of the puppeteers at once. And it’s an elevated set, so there’s no pain. Or at least not much.

Steve headed home today. I sent him to the Blue Lagoon to have a facial and soak in the healing waters before hopping on the airplane. I’ll let you know what he says when I hear from him.

After work, Emily and I went to dinner at Indian Mango, which is a new Indian restaurant. This was easily one of the best meals I’ve had in Iceland. Very satisfying, well-balanced and good presentation. We were both very happy campers.

My dad plays one of these. He’s even played with the symphony. On television. Twice.

After a very long and very satisfying day at work, we all went out to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Steve wanted to experience the wonder that is intermission in Iceland and to gloat over his daughter that he had gone to opening night. Granted, it’s a week later than in the States, but it’s opening night nonetheless.

The movie is fun, but not good if you know what I mean. It’s dynamic, the villain is great, the plot is wandering and it’s frenetic. In this particular case, the intermission happened in the ghost scene. In the middle of the scene. Sometimes the projectionist will time the intermission so it makes sense with the film, other times it is random. Tonight was random. Steve said it was the most memorable part of the film. Sadly, I’ve gotten used to having an intermission and will have trouble when we go back to the States.

Steve and I went to Vín og skel for lunch today. I’d been hearing about this restaurant from friends and am pleased to report that the food is very good. I ordered the two course lunch special. Turnip soup, that even my meat-and-potatoes brother liked. Then redfish served over a couscous pilaf, with a delightful trio of vegetables dishes, in individual tiny bowls; carmelized onions, pan fried potatoes, and sauteed rutabega and butternut squash. Very good, nice presentation and excellent service.

After that, we headed off to work. Steve dropped me off at work and headed out to explore the town.

We climbed part way up Esja today. On the way back down, Steve saw a side path and said, “Why don’t we go back down that way?”

“Okay. But you know it’ll hit a point where it goes straight down,” I said.

Steve got a wicked grin and said, “Great.”

So down we went. At a certain point, Steve was ahead of me and stopped. The path, in fact, the ground in front of him had disappeared. “Hey, Mary. Guess what?”

“What?”

“It goes straight down.” And then my brother vanished over the edge.

I followed him, leaning back on my heels and trying to stay on the vegetation instead of the sheer gravel slide that the path had become. The thing is that I’d always thought of Steve as a sporty sort of guy, but not as particularly outdoorsy. I’m wrong. Who knew?

We had to cut the hike short because Tóti from work came over for dinner. I made ratatouile with goat cheese and pesto vinaigrette and served that with greens and the leftover potato salad. We had daim ice cream for dessert.

Found this on Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Not a journal.

13 - In 20 Epics there is some rain. We sold all the copies we had at Readercon. It was an epic job of salespersonship by interns, friends, us, others. Finding the epically designed books was a long sordid tale of hidden icons, misdirection, and dead letter offices which was only concluded when Mary “I live in Iceland” Robinette “Shimmer” Kowal tracked them down far into the Labyrinth past the Steaming Kitchens of Despair. The books sold grandly, richly, with bread and cheese and some ale. They found spots by the fire in inns, they were purchased by plucky, heartfelt, surprisingly good looking kids who in a certain light looked like writers. The books were prizes, ill-gotten gains, kept in saddlebags, used as hats, ripped in two and kept by distance-separated lovers. There are at least twenty epics in the book but you only have to buy one. Lulu. Powells.

Today I took my brother, Emily and Jonathan to Draugasetrið - The Ghost Centre. This is the Rock City version of ghosts. It’s in a tiny, tiny town right by the ocean. The museum itself is housed in this old fish cannery, which still retains ghost odors of fish. In the waiting area, we had a beer and watched people emerge, shrieking from the tour.

I mean, full-fledged screams. From grownups.

I’d been there once before, but hadn’t sat in the waiting area watching the emergence. It was pretty impressive to watch people run out. I had told them what to expect before we went in. The exhibits look like the sort of things an artistically inclined community would put together for the Halloween haunted house. Lots of black plastic and burlap seperating the exhibits. Which are really nothing more than static dioramas of events from the stories. Sometimes, they don’t consist of anything more than a picture.

The cd has an icelandic narrator, speaking in english, who speaks slower than a snail on ice. He has this deep, mournful voice and no awareness of when the narrative is funny. “After sailors die at sea, they return. Sometimes angry, sometimes sad, but always wet.”

So why the screaming?

One of the ghost stories is about Rusty, a ghost of a young boy who haunts travellers. He is called this because of the color of his ragged clothes. They have hired a couple of teenage boys to jump out at the people going through the museum, and they are really good at it.

We screamed. And then we laughed. A lot. It was fun, although by the end I was starting to cut loose some of my stage screams. Which is fun in a different way.

Today was one of our very rare working Saturdays. I don’t know how they manage, but somehow the working Saturdays only happen when I have guests in from out of town. Like, say, my brother. It’s actually not as annoying as it sounds, because it means that I get Monday off, which is in many ways better. Everyone heads out of town on the weekends, so it would have been fairly crowded. Monday on the other hand, we’ll have things to ourselves. Plus, it was a great day on the floor. Lots and lots of live hand stuff to do with Julie, which is always fun.

After work, Steve took us out to dinner at Austur India, which Harrison Ford said had the best Indian food he’d ever had. I can’t agree with that assessment, but it was good. There was no heat to the dishes, even the ones that said “spicy.” I suppose that it is possible that spicy means “seasoning other than salt,” but I don’t know for certain.

We ordered the Tandoori Jhinga, Murgh Tikka Makhni, the Banarasi Saag and an assortment of naan breads. The Tandoori Jhinga was the only dish with a hint of heat, and probably the best balanced of the three. The Saag was disappointingly bland and runnier than I’m used to saag dishes being. Not unpleasant, mind you, just not outstanding. All of the naan breads were very good, but oilier than I would have liked. I wish I knew what dishes Mr. Ford ordered when he came.

We went to Footloose, which was quite the experience. The set design was inventive, the choreography was fun but the voices were weak. I think there were four good singers in the cast, and everyone else was flat.

I really enjoyed the evening, but did have to adjust the lens that I viewed it with. If I think of it as a show at the city theater of the capital of a nation, then it was weak. If I think of it as community theater in a town of 150,000 then it was very impressive. Steve said that he had a great time, but felt like he was in high school. I know what he means. The production values were very high, but since it is a musical, the singing really pulled it down. Still, the acting was strong enough that even though it was all in Icelandic, I was engaged throughout.