Kudos!

Iceland hit the maps again, thanks to the charms of our own Unnur Birna Vilhjálmsdóttir, crowned yesterday Miss World. Björk, Sigur Rós and now a new millenium globe class beauty queen! Now that's a quality hat trick, isn't it?

She really is Super Cute, this girl. And smart...studying law at a good university here in Reykjavik, working part time as a police officer and dance instructor, keeping her head screwed on right about the whole pageant culture. Her mother, Unnur Steinsson, made it to Miss World in 1983 and placed fifth. She says that she was pregnant with our new royalty during the competition...how's that for being born for the crown?

Anyway, this girl just glows and we're proud of her. We know that however superficial these competitions can be, our representative is a smart and dilligent young woman who deserves all she's worked for. Great stuff!

More on people in the limelight: a friend of mine, Greg Camp, was on Jay Leno the other night with his band Smash Mouth. Known him for years. How many? Um...lots to be exact, but haven't spoken to him for nearly as many. These are hardworking guys who love music (remember 1997's"Walkin' on the Sun"?) and once again deserve all the publicity and success they achieve. Kudos.

Morning in RVK

A study in pastels and corrugated iron: the view from our apartment balcony looking north out over midtown Reykajvik at around ten a.m. Pretty, isn't it?

Oh, I've been lax on the celebrity watch, so I'll drop a name: Sir Roger Moore, here on UNICEF biz, has been sighted strolling our main shopping street. And White Stripe Meg spent a colorful weekend sharing air with the locals at Sirkus, our best little bar. Someone else was here recently too...Oh, Quentin Tarentino, for the opening to that horror flick by Eli Roth, Hostel. Roth's last movie, Cabin Fever, which I guess Tarantino luuuuved was just disgusting, but I'm sure he's a nice guy.

Wonderbaby

It's slightly out of focus but I just don't care because it's a photo of my very happy supergirl after just having earned a silver with her gymnastics team (she's the one waving).

No one expected Valentina's group, team Ármann, to place at all...most of the ten girls had never even competed before in their lives (Valentina is an old pro at it, though she's always competed individually on the uneven parallel bars, balance beam, etc.) On top of that, this was the first time the team busted out their dance routine for an audience...and out of six teams they took second!

I'm the proud mommy of a very hard-working, loving and strong soul...who's cute to boot!

Who could ask for more?

Lost

Is anyone missing a pair of black socks? If so, they're down by the town lake waiting to be found.

You never know what you're going to discover in the wilderness of Reykjavik's city parks, do you?

(By the way, here's the unofficial lowdown on glugg, or mulled wine. Thanks for the prompt, McFatty)

Xmas Lights

Today is the first day of Advent, and as such we can officially begin preparing for Christmas. Lights can be strung up and stored angels dusted off and displayed without hesitation...the good old Christian calendar says its Ok! We're even supposed to light the first of four Advent Sunday candles and place them carefully in windows to light the way for Baby Jesus, or, rather, to begin more intensive preparation for the impending Darkest Day of the Year at the Winter Solstice.

Wherever our beliefs lie, 'tis officially the season to honor light in deepest darkness and be thankful for all the wonderful people in our lives who will help us survive through the coming months of cold. Find your friends and family and gather them to you, light candles and yule logs and fairy lights, mix a big warm pot of glugg, bake some gingerbread cookies and get yourself a pair of fuzzy mittens... wintertime has come.

Northern Lights

Hotel Rangá, originally uploaded by blue eyes.

I didn't take this photo, but uploaded it from the Icelandair Hotels website. It's a lovely shot and appropriate because we're sliding in Aurora Borealis season here in Iceland as the weather gets colder.

Actually, it's not that cold here right now about 45°F/8°C today. There's no snow, only sporadic rain and occasional gusts of wind. By law all cars are to have winter tires on by now, but there's hardly a reason to; the only thing they accomplish at this point is the tearing up of the asphalt on the roads. Still, you never know when you're going to wake up to a frozen landscape here...the weather on this island is so unpredictable that there's hardly any way to plan for those deep-freeze days. Pretty much everyone over twenty agrees that there used to be a lot more snow in winter here in Iceland. Now we never even know if we'll have a white Christmas or what we call a red, or snowless, one. It's a little disturbing and very frustrating: the winters end up being just cold, grey, seemingly-endless stretches where the ground freezes and thaws in turn, and arctic winds whip up the barren, crystalized soil that stings into your eyes and ears with menace. Snow, though definitely not romantic past the first few days of the season's first fall, at least provides a much-welcomed diversion to endless winter grey.

That's what the norther lights do as well. We usually only get the green auroras here, with maybe a little purple blended in, but when they show it doesn't matter what color they are. They slink across the sky like silky dancers, always giving me the feeling that the performance is solely for me. An amazing natural phenomenon.

We just moved back into the apartment on the third floor of our building on the top of Þingholt, and have a stupendous view northwest over all of Reykjavík and beyond. When the auroras light up we can watch them from our living room windows or even just lay in bed and let the show lull us into a soft and dreamy sleep.

Sunday Feed

On grey weekend days there are always bits of brightness down by the Reykjavik town lake: little ones sporting shiny smiles in their multi-colored parkas offer ducks and geese and swans bits of bread from loafs that never seem to last long enough.