Doug's Project 365

This geyser is not actually Geysir, the one for which all other geysers are named. That’s been dormant since around 2000. This is its neighbor, Strokkur, putting on a show for us and various assembled tourists.

We took a short hike to the edge of Svínafellsjökull Glacier, which you can get right up next to. When we were there the fog was flowing down it like water, and up over the neighboring hill.

In this picture you can also see how the sandy slope appears to be layered on that hill. This is caused not (as I suspected) by repeated ash from volcanoes, but because the land thaws out and slides annually, forming a pattern like tree rings that’s common on a lot of the similar hills we saw throughout our trip.

 

One of the two highlights of our 3rd day in Iceland was Diamond Beach. Ice from a glacier accumulates in a lagoon, and is washed in & out by the tide. This activity strands many blue-white glacial icebergs on the black sandy beach. It’s a bit surreal to walk among them.

 

The winter in Iceland is long & cold. They compensate by using a lot of bold colors, like the roof of this church in Vik.

We’re in Iceland! On our first day we took a food tour of Reykjavik, which I highly recommend. Thor, the guide, provided a great deal of interesting history & culture along with the food. At our first stop we had these thin rolled pancakes with raspberry jam, whipped cream, and (of course) coffee.

I have fond memories of my dad using this hinged souffle-style omelet pan when I was a kid. I don’t use it much because it needs 3 eggs, which is more than I usually want. But we had some egg whites leftover from something else so I was able to get enough volume from one real egg.

Result:

There is a mail chute in the old 11-story building my office moved to. Despite there being a post office in the building, I doubt dropping a piece of mail in here would do anything useful.

In preparation for our upcoming trip to Iceland, I bought a camera lens that’s wider-angle than any I’ve owned before. I am not used to shooting with a lens like this, so today I went out for some practice.

The shot of this building that I like the best is 24mm, which is previously as wide as I could go (except for my fisheye lens). Below is the new widest, 14mm, from the same spot.

 

Kat has this adorable holiday decoration, hand-crafted by a friend of hers.

Lis took me to see the Squirrel Nut Zippers up in Beverly.

This pic was taken earlier in the show than hers, when the musicians were all still playing the same instrument they came on stage with.