What Sundays are for

It's all about the shopping. J and I spent a good portion of today stocking up on home appliances and other essentials, like milk whisking gagets. We started at Elko and picked up a marvel of German dryer engineering, the condensing dryer. This thing is full of bells and whistles, and instead of sending the steam out a hose to the outer world, it condenses into a bottle. These appliances are apparently quite commonplace here, and we had our pick of about 10 different styles. We went with the one that had settings for "cupboard dry" and "iron dry" since they were cryptic enough to go with our washing machine that is labeled entirely in Icelandic (and takes over 2 hours to complete a standard wash cycle)

Next stop was IKEA, where the locals were gobbling up shelves, dishes, rugs, and of course, the Swedish meatballs. That place is really effective at turning you around so many times, you forget where you are, and what you came intending to buy. Things like daybeds that have no place in your house start to look really cool and appealing, and you are struck with the desire to redo the kitchen and install those cool sliding appliance-hiding wall units. We managed to come out with only a few extra items, thanks to J's diligent list-maintenance, though we will have to take a few more trips to really finish off the house refitting.

Now we are in a frenzy of clothes-washiing after Mount Washmore in the laundry room started to topple this morning. It's still such a new luxury to have a fully equipped room dedicated solely to washing that laundry and mopping still seems kind of fun. We'll see how I feel about that in a few months...

Ship sighting: It's been a productive few days in the maritime department- I saw a dredger on the horizon this morning, Helga Maria is still in the shipyard but looks spiffy in a new Iceland blue paint job, and there's a big Danish Coast Guard ship in the prime slot. Today was probably a pretty rough day to be on the sea though. Our apartment is set back from the sea about 50 meters (60 yards) and the windows were covered in seaspray for most of the day. Even now as I write with the window open, I can hear the surf roaring against the seawall outside.