Tók ákvörðun í morgun um að taka þátt í Reykjavíkurmaraþoninu, skemmtiskokk 3km

Skráði mig líka á www.hlaupastyrk.is/kolbrun, hleyp sumsé fyrir gigtarfélagið.

*****

Decided to run in the Reykjavik Marathon, coming Saturday, only running 3km (about 5 mile).

Þegar ég var 17 ára gömul þá skrapp ég til Kanada í hálft ár. Passaði þar börn og kynntist ýmsu fólki sem ég hef svo kynnst aftur með tilkomu "Facebook". Þetta var árið 1991. Dvölin stóð yfir frá 10. janúar, stuttu síðar hófst Persaflóastríðið. Ég snéri svo aftur heim í lok júní. Þessi ferð var sú fyrsta sem ég fór til Ameríku, dvaldi eina nótt á Long Island hjá þeim systu og Óla sem voru með þjónustu fyrir fólk sem þurfti að millilenda, daginn eftir flaug ég svo frá La Guardia til Toronto (millilenti eingöngu þar örstutt og kom bara á flugvöllinn) en flaug svo þaðan beint til Regina þar sem ég svo bjó. 

Þremur árum seinna snéri ég aftur og heimsótti fólkið. Þá flaug ég beint til Winnipeg og gisti þar eina nótt á hóteli. Þetta var árið 1994.

Níu árum seinna fór ég svo til Kanada eina ferðina enn og fór til Vancouver í beinu flugi frá Íslandi, febrúar 2003. Yndisleg borg. 

Nú er svo komið að því að ég ætla að halda til Kanada eina ferðina enn. Við Unnur dóttir mín ætlum að skella okkur í mæðgnaferð til Toronto seinni hluta maí og gista þar fimm nætur. Erum svo lukkulegar að hafa þar heimboð. Ég hlakka mikið til að sjá enn eina borgina í Kanada enda landið í miklu uppáhaldi og mun sjálfsagt alltaf vera.

Mig dreymir um að taka einhverntíma Road Trip þvert yfir Kanada og til baka í gegnum Bandaríkin. En það bíður betri tíma.

English version:

Canada here I come once again. This time Toronto will see me and my daughter. Very much looking forward to it. 

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

Have haggis, neeps, and tatties coming out of my ears.
Had a great night dancing Scottish dances as well as eating too much. Will be repeated again next year.

Nýtt útlit á nýju ári fyrir Nýju Kolbrúnu hf. Fannst komin tími á eitthvað huggulegra og fann þetta líka glæsilega þema hjá Drupal. Vildi geta sagst hafa hannað það sjálf en er hrædd um að það væri helber lýgi....
Ég ætla að vera duglegri að nota síðuna á næstu mánuðum en ég hef gert undanfarið... Það er líka hluti af nýjum tímum.

New look in a new year.
It was time to update the look along with my own updated look Smiling
I also plan to be a lot more active in using this website of mine and build a proper profile/portfolio site especially once I stop teaching at Uni and lose the one I have there - HÍ síðan.

Apparently there is a new year now,
2009 is here with all its glory and I figured it's time for the first entry of the year.

I'm sure it will be a very exciting year in every sense.

That was it!

...by M. Scott Peck, M.D. is one of my favourite books. It starts with this sentence, "life is difficult", and it states that once we acknowledge that truth then and not until then life can become less difficult.

Iceland as a country and its citizens are experiencing just how difficult life can be these days. But all around me people are thinking in solutions, how to cope if they are the ones to lose their jobs like thousands of Icelanders have in the last couple of weeks. We all put on our brave faces but the faces are grave. Our famous black humour and sarcasm seems to have been pushed to the side even and people who are well off like me (for now at least) feel the need to be careful and not discuss it too much with people around them because we just don't know how badly the situation is with them.

I seem to have made a lot of good choices since I moved back to Iceland last year.

I chose to rent a flat instead of buy one with money I didn't have. My rent is fixed and I'm allowed to stay until summer '10. And even though I'm paying a lot for the flat it's not so bad compared to what most are paying. The flat is nice, big enough and in great area.

I took a job within the public sector instead of private to be more secure in my job. Good job, great people and no worries.

So I don't owe much money and I don't have any money but I make enough money to live a relatively good life. I won't be going abroad as often as I have which has been my biggest money pit but I can still allow myself the odd cup of latté :)

What I'm saying is ... that even though Iceland has had a big financial setback and people are being financially abused I will be OK!

In October 2002 my mother (then 54) was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy of one breast and lymph nodes under her arm were removed followed with chemotherapy, radiation therapy and hormonal therapy. My grandmother also had breast cancer and had a mastectomy when she was 58 years old and died at 76 from other cause.

My mother is now off all medication and thankfully the cancer seems to have completely retreated.

Sadly not all are so lucky.

October is breast cancer awareness month. It is believed that 1 in every 10 women are diagnosed with breast cancer, please show your support. There are so many ways to do it.

I've been unusually inactive on-line this past month as my laptop had to go to the "hospital" and have it's motherboard and screen renewed. And when online I've only managed the most essentials like taking care of the module I moderate and to Scrabble on Facebook :)

I attended a creative writing class last week and have two more sessions to go. Loads of fun and "taught" by a well known author in Iceland. I particularly liked him for starting out by saying he could not teach us to write creatively but only share his experience with us. Look so forward to going again.

In just under three weeks my daughter and I are going to New York. Just managing to visit Dísa before she moves back home at the end of April.

I've been meaning to go visit since she moved but since I moved away myself and she always seemed to have someone staying whenever I thought about coming (that one time in 2006) I never did go before.

Unnur is naturally extremely excited about the whole thing and I can basically get her to do anything these days just by reminding her I'm taking her to NY.

I must get my creativity to work in the coming weeks so don't be alarmed if I start writing weird random stuff. I sure hope I will. Write not be alarmed.

A link to a short article on the use of technology to find missing persons!

The link

The stepson of my supervisor at Napier has gone missing, the article is the description of her husband's experience with Social Networks in the search for the missing son.