Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

As I mentioned at the time, we had a ham for Christmas. A pretty good sized one for two people. It produced a lot of leftovers, including the ham soup we made from the ham bone. Yesterday, I finally ate the last of the leftovers. So that was a pretty cost-effective ham!

We had a very quiet Christmas Day.

( Bearing Presents )

I did not take a picture of our meal, as it's mostly the same as Thanksgiving: ham, stuffing, mushrooms, corn biscuits, and deviled eggs. (Lisa made the eggs for Thanksgiving dinner but forgot about them so we ate them later.) I very much enjoyed what I did eat, but I find that the Ozempic that I've started taking for my diabetes is acting as an appetite suppressant, so I could only have a little bit of everything. We'll have leftovers for many days, but that is not a problem, as we like all of this.

After dinner, we went out for a walk. We can only walk around the block, because Lisa still isn't sure about her knee that she sprained when I was in Seattle, and I find that I need to stay relatively close to a restroom most of the time these days. But after making multiple laps, we were able to each have a slice of the pumpkin pie Lisa made, including the whipped topping she made from the heavy cream we bought on our last grocery trip.

With all of the food and exercise, we were all pretty tired and went to bed early. Good food and peace and quiet makes for a nice Christmas for me.

For reasons included in a friends-locked post (don't worry, I'm okay), I had to go back to Reno this afternoon. The timing was such that I did not have time to each lunch before heading into town, and by the time I got away, I was getting pretty hungry. So I decided to do something I've not done for several years and have lunch at the Manhattan Deli at the Atlantis Hotel. Those of you who attended the 2011 Worldcon may have eaten a meal or two there. It has been described by some sources as the best New York-style deli in Nevada.

Having been burned before by their larger portions, I had a half-sandwich (pastrami) and a cup of matzo ball soup. I forgot to take a picture, but believe me, it was filling enough.

I marked a keno ticket while eating, and won $1. Unfortunately, the ticket cost $5. Ah, well, that's why they call it gambling.

I have to get blood tests tomorrow for my annual medical exam coming up in a couple of weeks. That means needing to fast for at least twelve hours, and thus means I'm not going to be able to have my usual breakfast at the Wigwam Restaurant. So this evening Lisa and I went to the Wigwam for an unusual breakfast. They were doing an evening breakfast-for-dinner buffet. It actually cost slightly less than my usual breakfast. It was certainly not as good as the one we had a couple of times in Iceland, or what the Peppermill served back when they used to have a buffet, but it was worth what we paid, and I'm well fed and unlikely to fret too much tomorrow morning.

This morning, I walked down to the Wigwam restaurant and had my usual.

( More My Size )

This is about the right size weekend breakfast for me. It doesn't leave me staggering the way The Grizz did yesterday.

After breakfast, I walked to the post office to collect the mail and then home. Total distance walked: around 2 km. Probably not really enough to work off that breakfast, but better than nothing.

Meanwhile, I continue to act as Mission Control for Lisa and Chris' travel from Munich to Prague today, with the added challenge of mostly without contact. They have a hotel room, and even though they ended up traveling on separate trains (Chris missed their train), I'm hopeful that they eventually end up at the right place, as the reservation (made and paid for by me) has both of their names on it and they both apparently know where it is. (It shouldn't be difficult to find, as it's roughly across the street from the train station.) Originally, this was where and when they would have been staying on the return from their eventual destination before the weather disruption a few days ago canceled their original outbound journey.

Yesterday and tomorrow were/are full of activity, but today is just an ordinary work day for me, notwithstanding that it's my 59th birthday. This morning, we went and got some food (including, rather ironically, some venison), and I'll get to try salt marsh lamb, which sounds good and I've never had before.

Meanwhile, we're going to try moving Lisa to the extended-stay place that we found tomorrow. I made the reservation yesterday and accidentally overlapped it with her hotel stay. Fortunately, I was able to call the place's reservation number this morning and get the reservation changed to start tomorrow. Lisa plans to move tomorrow afternoon (fingers crossed that she can get an extended checkout so that she doesn't have to try and schlep luggage across Munich during rush hour on the U-bahn). This initial stay is only for a week, but we'll extend it for the rest of the trip if it appears acceptable.

Everyone I meet seems to ask how I like the Welsh weather. The answer is that I think it's just fine, and that I'm happy to skip six weeks of northern Nevada summer.

Before writing about our second day in Reykjavik, I think I need to correct something about our first day, specifically the brunch that Lisa and I had that morning. In yesterday's entry, I accidentally said that the buffet cost of 4900 kr was about $71. I've now corrected that. It was 4900 kr per person, and the total 9800 kr for two people was $71. The per-person cost was about $35.50. Iceland is expensive, but it is not that expensive!

This morning, we decided to try the breakfast buffet at Slippbarinn, which cost about the same as what we paid at Apotek. Slippbarinn's breakfast showed up on several "best breakfasts in Reykjavik" lists. Don't believe them. Both Lisa and found it very underwhelming and we both wished we'd gone back to Apotek.

Rather than continuing on to our next planned stop, we went back to the hotel, in an attempt to walk off that heavy breakfast that did not sit well on either of our stomachs.

( Photos from Reykjavik )

After the museum, we had a look at Eyesland, an optician. On our previous trip, Lisa spotted some frames that she thought suited her, but they couldn't fill the prescription she has because it wasn't single vision. She got a separate prescription for just this reason, but unfortunately they don't carry the frames anymore, and she can't remember that exact model of frames. Our local opticians in the Reno area don't have anything that suits her, either, and almost all frames they carry are made in China anyway. Eyesland has frames from other such as Austria and Italy, not exclusively made in China and hiding behind a "Designed in [country]" label.

We then went over to the DIY place (BYKO) where we've been buying heavy work gloves every few years as we pass through. Unfortunately, they've also gone over to the dark side, and all of the heavy work gloves they had are Chinese-made. Oh, well, I guess I'll have to keep trying to mend the ones I have from previous trips. It's surprising to me how difficult it is to get heavy gloves for hauling firewood and doing heavy yard work.

The next store over sold computers and appliances. I got a wired mouse. While the wireless mouse I bought in Denver worked, it seems to misbehave a bit, and so I decided to go ahead and get a wired one.

After finding the Kronan grocery store not having the things we wanted, we went to Bonus, which is smaller but had most of what we wanted to buy. There we bought some food to keep in our room refrigerator, allowing us to take light dinners to go with the big breakfasts and medium lunches we've been trying to do while here. While queuing to check out at Bonus, Lisa asked the local woman in line behind us her opinion of Kronan versus Bonus. She said Kronan was certainly bigger, but Bonus is friendlier.

Loaded down with groceries in my tote bag, we returned to the hotel, unloaded everything, and decided what to do for lunch.

( A Few More Pictures )

We slowly made our way back down the hill by a different route and through some streets that we do not remember from our previous trips. It's possible that there's just been enough turnover in businesses that they look different.

Stopping at the small 24-hour grocery near our hotel, we got things that we'd forgotten on our larger grocery run earlier today. I bought a hot dog from them as well: 790 kr / $5.70. It was pretty good, too.

Then we went back to the hotel. Both of us were really tired, but Lisa more so that me. My pedometer shows 15,500 steps today, and I know I'm feeling it in my feet and legs. It has been too hot back at home to keep putting in lots of walking. I hope my feet toughen up a bit by the time we get to Glasgow. In the meantime, I plan to take advantage of our lovely bathtub and the hot mineral water tonight before getting some well-earned sleep.

Today's planned task was to continue working on the East Lot, including cutting the larger branches of the cottonwood tree down to burnable size and putting them into the wood box for use next autumn, then putting the smaller branches into to the to-be-burned pile, along with other yard debris. I was planning to do that after breakfast.

( The Big Breakfast )

As I was eating breakfast, I heard the wind start to come up. By the time I finished, it was howling. There was no rain (although it's been showing over Donner Summit and I-80 was closed for a while), but the wind was severe, and I decided that I did not want to go out there and work in it. It's hard enough to do that work without having all of the dust and pollen blowing around. The forecast says this should blow through by tomorrow, so maybe I can get it done then.

I had a look out the front window and saw a small bird perched on the front porch looking for all that it was hanging on for dear life as the wind howled around the house. I linked the photo, but it's hard to see through the front screen door. I could see much better through it than the camera does.

It being Pi Day (3.14), Pizza Hut was running a promotion (buy one large pizza, get one free), and I took advantage of it this afternoon. Now Lisa and I can't eat two large pizzas all at once, so the second one is wrapped up for lunch tomorrow.

Yesterday morning, I had time to go down to the Wigwam and get a big breakfast (take out to home as is my usual practice) before the meeting I had that morning. Today, I gave myself more sleep, so I didn't have time for that, and had only enough time to run over to Starbucks for a coffee and a breakfast sandwich. Even then, as I was frantically trying to consume this breakfast, I got an important phone call for today's meeting. I told the person to wait until I managed to swallow the last piece and then got to them.

Anyway, we got some some pretty serious issues handled, none of which I can talk about right now. Maybe later. Besides, as I write this, Lisa is making dinner, and as I did not get any lunch, I'm looking forward to it.