reeling my soul back across the Atlantic

We're back! Actually, we've been back for almost a full week now. It seems insane to consider that, one week ago, we were in Reykjavík, fighting the wind and lamenting the imminent end to our vacation ... actually, what is slightly appalling is considering how much we did in that one week, compared to the practically nothing that we have accomplished since we got back.

(Then again, if we had kept going as hard as we had been that week, I probably would have dropped dead from exhaustion by now.)

One of the few things we've done is distribute some of our Icelandic booty. My brother-in-law was kind enough to make use of our house while we were away (thereby preventing the cats from going completely feral), so we rewarded him with — what else? — a plastic helmet. With braids.

The pose and cutlery were his idea.
Meanwhile, life continues apace. Both Pd and I went back to work the morning immediately after our return, which seemed like a reasonable idea in theory but turned out to be utterly crackpot in practice. We subsequently spent the weekend recovering from that (and the residual jet lag that we hadn't dealt with).

...
I am going to write up our Iceland trip in detail, with accompanying photographs. However, the Air, which replaced the reliable-but-slowly-failing iBook in March, is itself failing —the hard drive is making unmistakeable chirping and "working" sounds when in shallow thought. I took it to the Genius Bar, and a new hard drive has been ordered and will be put in as soon as it arrives. Until then, however, I am trying not to tax it too hard — or do any work that I would be deeply unhappy to lose. (I am backing it up every night, but it could conceivably fail at any time.) So the photo-managing and subsequent blogging may take more time than initially anticipated.