Thick stew

A couple of people I'm living with had their birthday in a relatively short timeframe, so they decided to make the celebrations a joint effort. Since these are of the little quirky kind, they did not invite everybody they know asking everybody they know to come as well and go to Kaffibarinn. No-no. Someone had found a nice camping location between the viewpoint and the domestic airport, so instead of high heels and collars we dressed in warm jackets and hiking boots and took off towards Perlan on Wednesday. Our small squad was a curious looking lot, carrying all sorts of at-least-somewhat-dry trashwood we managed to get our hands on. Most of it was splinters that were torn off our former downstairs kitchen, apparently a future room for another tenant. We salvaged what we could.

Speaking of that kitchen, its fate quite well summarizes how this building is maintained. The landlord is apparently turning it into a room since "nobody was using that kitchen anyway." Well, it wasn't very inviting to use in the first place, since all the wooden and metal surfaces were more thoroughly paint splattered than Jackson Pollock works. Not to mention that it was all the time used as a building material and equipment storage. So yeah. From now on we'll have roughly 15 people using one kitchen with three stove hotplates. One short circuited few weeks back.

But anyways. After climbing to Perlan we wandered westwards for awhile, since they didn't remember the exact location. It turned out that we arrived from a little peculiar direction, since the site was located in the bottom of a gorge. We threw our firewood down first and got a little mountain climbing experience. Everybody had enough grip on their gloves and shoes and we were able to descent smoothly and safely. Of course, a brief exploration of the surroundings revealed alternate routes to the camping site, via really tiny stone stairs.

It started getting dark right after we had settled down and lit the fire, producing quite an unusual camping experience. We were located just next to an airport, weren't too far off of a busy motorway, but you couldn't believe it by the complete silence of the surroundings. The occasional plane taking off or touching down excluded, of course. Cooking consisted mostly of stuffing different kinds of small things inside lumps of dough, letting them slowly cook next to the fire and wondering what might come out of it. It worked well.

Tonight we'll have the mixed bag concert and a week later Björk is playing. Good times for the music lovers.

And some randomness:
- Swiss army knives rock. Admitted that I'm late in discovering their usefulness, at least I got there. It's like everything you'll ever need and more in red plastic and stainless steel. Dad gave me one when I leaving, and I seem to find more and more ways to utilize it every day. Mine seems to be some sort of an officer model though, sporting for example a stupendously terrible magnifying glass and a retractable antenna-like pointing stick contraption. I suppose those are useful for the grumpy old generals whenever they need to roll out the map and go to the "alright, this is us and this is them"-mode. No hate for the corkscrew though!

- For anyone with a bit too much time and aural enthusiasm in their hands, there's Ishkur's guide to electronic music. A tremendous amount of effort has been put into that - the descriptions are often amusing and the samples have been cut with excellent precision. I often lose myself listening to the few second long loop which I just conveniently forgot playing on the background. Most of the stuff is pretty uninspiring, but I've found so many new tunes and artists from it. For grooves, check out for example Downtempo -> Chillout. My newest addictions are Hedfunk's Agua and Luke Vibert's Get Your Head Down. Go there, you'll love it.