The Current State of Things

First of all, today is an important day on one of my other blogs.  My 365 Project blog has its final picture day today!  It's been both fun and tedious but I'm glad it's over.  The whole idea was to take a picture every day for a solid year and I succeeded.  They didn't always get posted the day they were shot due to lack of internet or running out of time during the day, but they all got actually taken on their proper days.

Our next-door neighbor (the one with the nice, quiet dogs) moved out.  He didn't sell his house, but instead his brother is going to live there.  We used the opportunity to modify the fence that ran next to our garage.  At some time in the past when the fence was built, instead of going right alongside the garage (or shop as Sue calls it) they turned the fence toward the corners of it and used the wall of our garage for a section of the fence.  Thankfully, that's over and done with.  Now we have outside wall access like we should.  Now we need to get gutters up there.

Mark and his family moved the other day.  They haven't been there a year yet, but they found it necessary to move already--most of it due to the fact that the landlord is going to have the units under construction in attempt to separate the duplex and made two separate dwellings out of it.  Apparently, Bekah's bunny rabbit isn't going to be making the move with them and we're watching it for a while while a new owner can be found.  Hopefully it's a short while.  (It makes too much noise at night.)

Things at work have slowed down considerably.  I don't remember if this is the exact time of year that it usually happens, but it does happen every year if memory serves me.  I am doing lots of things to keep myself busy when I don't have my usual amount of activity going on though.

It's been interesting playing show & tell with Iceland pictures at work.  I currently have 110 pictures that cycle randomly when my computer goes into screen saver mode.  My monitor faces the office door so everyone that goes from the office to the shop has it staring right at them as they come through the door.  The pictures have gotten a lot of comments, and rightly so--there are some beautiful shots we took that weekend!

When we came back from Iceland we bought a couple pints of schnapps at the Iceland airport duty-free shop.  One of them, Brennivin, is a cheap, notoriously nasty (they call it the Black Death) stuff of legend.  The other, called Icelandic Schnapps, it much better and tastes completely different.  Believe it or not, it's flavored with lichen moss!  The moss is practically Iceland's national plant... It's so prevalent there.  We tasted both the schnapps last week.  I'm sure they won't be treated as much more than a curiosity.  I've never been much of a schnapps person, so they're not exactly my cup of tea.

Oh, one quick note I forgot to include (or did I?) in my Iceland blog posts:  The price of gas.  Let me preface this by saying that the American people don't have anything to bitch about.  When we gassed up our little sippy cup of a rental car it cost a little over $60 for 3/4 of a tank.  We had to convert Iceland Krona to dollars, and then convert liters to gallons to get the numbers.  The bottom line is this:  We paid just about $7.50 per gallon for gas, and it hardly varied a bit from place to place.  

Spring is underway finally.  Everywhere we look there are signs of blooming and budding.  I say it's about time.  We've still got to endure the rainy part of spring though.  I'm ready for some nice, warm weather.  Especially after Iceland!