The Eating: Tea and Sympathy

Last night, I joined a few friends for an early dinner at the landmark Tea & Sympathy, a handkerchief-sized shrine to Anglophilia in the West Village. I had heard of this place for some time, but had never made it over before. B was beside herself with joy, as she only treats herself to their famous cream tea (pot of tea, scones, clotted cream, and jam) and steak-and-Guinness pie once or twice a year. The four of us nestled into a corner and tucked into various dishes of steaming pastry, meat, and enormous piles of mashed potatoes. Perhaps a muggy August evening wasn't the ideal time to experience it, but I was still pretty happy with my serving of bangers and mash, a dish I haven't enjoyed since I visited Scotland back in 2000. People who are down on British cuisine need only visit the corner of Greenwich and Jane to change their tune. I'll be back after the first frost.

Squirrel Fishin'

A practical demonstration:

The Watching: Little Miss Sunshine

Friday night we decided to keep things low-key with dinner and a movie. Little Miss Sunshine has been getting good press and features several of our favorite actors. The premise is sort of high-concept: the semi-loser dad (Greg Kinnear), his frazzled wife (Toni Collette), the crazy grandfather (Alan Arkin), and the troubled brother (Steve Carrell) take off across the Southwest in their dilapidated VW bus to take their sunny-natured daughter to participate in a beauty pageant in California. Various scenes of hilarious dysfunction ensue, but these actors transcend the predictability of the formula and managed to make me both laugh and care about what happened to them. Steve Carrell and Alan Arkin were particularly great--as a suicidal, disgraced professor and junkie, respectively, they managed to be the sanest characters in the film, aside from the adorable 10-year-old Abigail Breslin, as Olive. Her final scene alone is worth the price of admission. Go catch it if you can.

Please stand by...

I just realized I haven't posted in quite a while. The week got busy and I've been having fun, but nothing especially noteworthy has been happening. I have a whole lot of nothing happening today, which is nice. I'll post a little bit on Reading and Watching later today, and I may have an interesting Eating experience tomorrow.

The Playing: Well...

It was okay. In Georgantas family parlance, I generously give myself a B-minus. Or flat, as it were. I started out fine, but halfway through the first verse I stumbled over a word. Which made me stumble over a chord change. I rallied, but my face was red and then I kept forgetting a word and the cycle would start again. But I was better than I had expected (feared?), so I guess it was a positive performance overall. Right now I'm practicing Yo La Tengo's "Detouring America with Horns," which has a nice progression and makes a good exercise.

You know you're in SoHo when...

I was waiting on line at the post office and eavesdropped on the trendy young woman at the counter in front of me who was ordering stamps. "I was looking at the stamps you have available and I'm wondering if you have something more elegant? I'm looking for something with more red in it." She then made the poor clerk pull out every "style" they had in stock, but none passed muster, so the girl left in a huff. Really, it's time we had a designer boutique for stamps downtown.

The Playing: Final Exam

So the moment has finally arrived: Tomorrow is my final guitar class (of this session, anyway; I may sign on for the next level), and I have to sing and play my little song. This scares the crap out of me, as I've had awful stage fright since I was in my teens. I was actually part of a musical theater group when I was a child, and I loved it. Of course, I was all made up, in costume, and drowned out by an orchestra and a dozen other singers--to me, it was just a fancy-dress party. I couldn't even see the audience beyond the stage lights. [Aside: My stage debut was, however, marred by a disgusting case of pink-eye that I contracted from the communal eye makeup during dress rehearsals. In the opening-night pictures, I look like I've been beaten up.] Tomorrow, it's just my hesitant, imperfect playing backing up my hesitant, imperfect voice in a small, well-lit room where I can see my classmates' eyes. So, after tonight's jog, it's another good hour-plus of final cramming practice. Let's hope I don't disgrace myself tomorrow.

Update (10:15 PM): Maybe it's time to stop practicing; my cats have started singing along with me. My neighbors, if they can hear me, must think I'm insane. Not to mention a terrible singer.

The Watching: Get on the Treadmill

I was out with some friends last night and, as it usually does, the conversation turned to music. One of our group mentioned that this video is a must-see, both for the choreography and for the fun music. I've never heard of these guys, but my hat is off to them. Enjoy.

The Highbrow: MoMA for Dummies

Usually, I find this kind of thing totally annoying, but for some reason, I'm kind of charmed by Jason Polan's not-so-little project. This guy spent two weeks hanging out at MoMA and hastily sketched every item on display. The museum rotates the displays in the permanent collection galleries every few months, so this is both an interesting exercise in endurance and a nifty document of an ephemeral state. And, you know, it's sort of cute.

The Traveling: Northwest Fjords and Reykjavik

After leaving the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, we continued north to the fjords, where the population is about as sparse as it gets along the coast of Iceland. Roads were almost never paved, and the houses were miles apart.


We did, however, come upon this interesting spot. We stopped because of the goofy sign, but then saw the windsock and the painted rocks lining the gravel strip. Yes, it was the local airport.


We saw black sheep.


And sheep chilling on the beach.


This is the only intact traditional farmhouse we saw. Note the turf roof. I don't think anyone was living there, but it may be used as a shelter during the annual sheep roundup in the fall.


There were also many, many horses scattered throughout the countryside. I've never seen such herds before, sometimes more than 50 at a time. They're cute, shaggy little guys.

After all that nature and solitude, we were looking forward to revisiting Reykjavik for our final night. We arrived in the midst of their modest gay pride parade and had a great lunch at a little vegetarian cafe, then headed over to our guesthouse for a nap, followed by a soak in one of the city's 16 geothermal pools.



We passed this portrait studio on the way. Gotta love the Icelandic notion of baby pictures.

Then we headed back out to get in one final good meal (food in Iceland generally sucks); we got lucky with a romantic little spot tucked away in an alley. Will had the lamb, but I wanted something that I couldn't get back home, so what did I order?


Whale! I took a photo of my actual meal, but it looks pretty gross. I am happy to report that it was quite yummy, kind of like a buffalo steak.

We didn't need to leave the city until early the next afternoon, so we checked out the local flea market in the morning, which was kind of lame, though I couldn't resist buying a cute Icelandic ear-flap hat.


We poked around the harbor and enjoyed the colorful boats.


Will bonded with his brethren one last time.


Here's the pond in the center of the old city as we passed by on our way to the bus station to leave town. I just realized that the birds look headless. I guess they all chose that exact moment to stick their heads behind their wings.

And that's the end!

The Traveling: Borgarnes and the Snaefellsnes Peninsula

After we got back to the mainland on Wednesday, we picked up our car and a quick lunch in Reykjavik and hit the road for Borgarnes, at the base of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, which juts off the western coast of Iceland. On the way, we spied a lovely green valley with the ruins of a farmstead.


We made it to Borgarnes around 5 and checked into the oddly named Motel Venus (the teeny tiny rooftop in the bottom left). By that time, we had lost the sunshine and entered the fog and rain.


We went into the village and wandered around a bit. We visited two parks. One claimed to contain the remains of a Saga hero (not in the one I'm reading); the other contained this sculpture as its centerpiece. Throughout our trip we marveled at the profusion of public art, even in tiny hamlets like this one.


The next day, we continued west on the peninsula. The guidebook told us this "town" was sort of interesting. We discovered that Ari the Learned, a twelfth-century scholar and cleric, had been the first pastor of this church.


We got a little cranky after this stop and Will spied a sign for a geothermal pool down a dirt lane. We went to investigate; it wasn't open yet, so we went to a nearby beach, where we were attacked by angry Arctic terns. We returned to the pool, which had opened, and spent the next hour submerged to our necks in hot mineral water while a cold mist frosted our hair (sorry, no photos of this).


We continued on in a better mood. We rounded the end of the peninsula and found a room for the night in Olafsvik and then returned to the south shore for a little more sight-seeing. I should mention at this point that the rural "highways" in Iceland are only intermittently paved. Here's what our car looked like by evening.


We walked up a little path from the road.


And took the obligatory "awww" shot.


The evening light (it was about 9:30 at this point). An interesting fact about this peninsula is that there is a large, dormant volcano at the tip that is topped by a sizeable glacier. This volcano, Snaefellsjøkull, was where Jules Verne began his Journey to the Center of the Earth. It's not the mountain pictured above; the clouds were too low for me to get a good shot of the big guy.


Later, we investigated the odd rock formations at Hellnar.


On our way back to Olafsvik, we came upon a spooky abandoned house. To give you an idea of how late it stays light, it was after 10:00 at this point.

Tomorrow we conclude with the northwest fjords and our return to Reykjavik.

The Traveling: Iceland

We are safely back from our week in Iceland. I'm quite tired right now, so will have to tell the tale in two or maybe three installments. I think a photo essay format will work best, so here are our first 2 1/2 days told in images:


Day 1 we landed at 6:30 am at Keflavik Airport and were in Reykjavik about an hour later. It was cold and rainy and it took us another hour to track down a cup of coffee. We explored a little, but it was a bank holiday and nothing was open.



Around 1:30 that afternoon we headed over to the local airport to catch a flight down to the Westman Islands for our 2-night stay on Heimaey. There were only four other people on the plane.


We walked around the town a bit that evening and explored the harbor.


Will made friends with a sheep.

That night we began Reading: I read Njall's Saga, a prose epic detailing adventures in medieval Iceland; Will read Atom Station, by Halldor Laxness, Iceland's only Nobel Prize-winning writer. We shared plots and impressions.



The next day we climbed up a steep ridge to go watch the birds.



Just beyond my feet is a sheer 500-foot drop to the water.



Puffins and fulmars loafed on the rocks nearby.



We had a great view of the town and the famous lava flow that nearly closed the entrance of the harbor during the island's 7-month-long eruption in 1973.



On Wednesday morning, we had our first taste of sunshine as we boarded the ferry back to the mainland. It looks calm here, but large swells rocked the boat for most of the 3-hour ride. I had to breathe deeply and stare at the horizon the whole time. Will parted ways with his breakfast.

Tomorrow: the trip to Borgarnes and further driving along the Snaefellsnes Peninsula.

More Updates

A concerned reader requested an update on my home climate-control situation, and yes, cool air is finally circulating, to the immense relief of my cats. My heart goes out to him in his current troubles with way-past-schedule workers in his own home.


There has been some Reading and Watching, but updates on those may have to wait for a week or so. Tomorrow, we head to Princeton for two days of wedding festivities for a high school friend of Will's, then we have to rush back to NY for the final preparations before heading off to Iceland Sunday evening. And, needless to say, it is unlikely we will be posting from our perch atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (I have a weird, nerdy fascination with plate tectonics). So check back around August 14 for pictures of glaciers, cliffs, geysers, and Will tossing pufflings off the cliffs of Heimaey.

The Playing: Minor Breakthrough

I mentioned a week or so ago that my coeditor gave me a mix CD of basic but good songs that might assist with my Playing, along with a listing of the chords used in each. I've been listening and mentally auditioning them for my big "final" later this month. I figure, since I'm down to my final few weeks, that I need to select and practice one; if I don't, then I'll be stuck plodding my way through one of the classic/soft-rock staples we've been learning in class. Not acceptable. So, as I stated before, I've pretty much decided to do "Drivin' on 9" by the Breeders. I came home from class tonight all fired up from our rhythmic strumming and decided to start learning how to play it--and what do you know, I figured it out (aided by my little cheat sheet, so at least I knew what to listen for) and was pretty much playing along with it by the third try. My only stumbling block was the bridge. I haven't quite figured that out yet, but I'm excited that it was so easy to get the verses and chorus. I'll sort out the bridge tomorrow.