Nidaros

It’s about 1:30 PM here and we’re about an hour and a half gone from Trondheim, the ancient capital once called Nidaros, founded by Olav Tryggvason. The sun, since it crawled up at about 9:00AM has been hovering about a hand’s span above the horizon. We got up early this morning and took a bus ride through town which took us to a vantage to see the city from above. Because of the geography most of the places we visit have something like that but the view from this one was particularly spectacular. We also went through the university here which is fairly large. There are something like 20,000 students out of 180,000 total population in the city. We saw a fortress on a hill and then went into the city center to the Nidaros Cathedral which is built on a bend in the river in town. It is a beautiful building with a large rose window in the front and three rows of statues of saints and other religious figures in alcoves along the outside around the window and entrance. Inside, under the window, is an enormous pipe organ that is currently being renovated for the coming 200th anniversary of the Norwegian constitution. The organ has something like 9000 pipes according to our tour guide.

We walked back through town and got a little taste of daily Norwegian life. There was a mall with a McDonalds and a bunch of clothing stores including one called “Bik Bok” which I think is a great name but is probably just “stuff and things” in Norwegian. I’m still trying to keep up with the picture uploads but the quanity of neat stuff and the intermittent internet are conspiring against me. I did make some progress this afternoon though so I’m through yesterday evening at least.

Norway is cold

The ol’ shipboard internet is a little more finicky than I had hoped. It pretty much only lets me rsync when I’m using the work VPN and the flickr uploads usually fail pretty badly.

Tonight we had our first Aurora lecture and it was actually pretty informative. Dinner was good and we sat with a retired couple from Queensland, Australia and talked about Obamacare. :|

After dinner we went up on the top deck and our astronomer pointed out most of the features of the night sky that would be relevant to us and I learned that taking a long exposure picture from the top deck of a boat is difficult unless you like modern art. I got one good star picture out of nine and that was only 5″ / f2.8 / ISO3200.

I also learned that I need more layers and that the wind makes the cold much worse. A fifth top layer, third bottom layer, wool neck gaiter and glove liners helped but we’re in port for an hour now so that’s not really an apples to apples comparison.

Tomorrow is an early day. Up at 6:00, breakfast at 7:00 and then our tour of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim at 8:00. But after that we get free time in Trondheim and lunch and then I can probably catch a nap after our 2:00pm lecture.

So far, so fun.

Off to Norway

Mom and I are sitting in Terminal 3 at Heathrow waiting for our flight to Norway. We got up pretty early this morning and ended up just taking the Piccadilly line to the airport rather than dealing with the Express again. The Express itself is great but the fact that there are no escalators at Paddington to get to the Circle line is difficult. We each have a carry-on and a 45 pound checked bag and that makes stairs a trial. As it turns out, there’s no one on the tube outbound at 7:00am and that means we had a quick and uneventful journey back out here.

The departure board is unwilling to tell us what the gate will be so we’re sitting at the far end of the gigantic duty free mall using our 45min of free WiFi to catch up with the world and upload pictures. We probably need to eat though so I’ll make this the end and hopefully post more when we get settled on the boat.

London

Mom and I are off to foreign parts. We flew from San Antonio on Wednesday afternoon and arrived in London just before noon Thursday. After dragging our cold weather laden luggage up and down a bunch of tube station staircases and a few blocks through South Kensington we checked into our hotel and then set out into the city. We stopped and looked at Buckingham Palace and then walked through St. James park and over to Westminster. We managed to get into the abbey about 10 minutes before they closed the tour entrance for the day so we had about an hour to walk around inside. Unfortunately they don’t allow pictures inside but it’s very pretty inside. The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is moving in a quiet way.

After leaving there we walked along the south bank of the Thames, up to St. Paul’s and then stopped for dinner before heading home. I’ve uploaded a few of the pictures that turned out ok both at my usual place and on my new flickr account if anyone wants to have a look.

Tomorrow the plan is to get breakfast early-ish, spend the morning and early afternoon at the British Museum and then go see Cirque du Soleil at Albert Hall in the evening. Then we get up bright and early on Saturday morning, go back out to the airport and get on the plane for Norway. We do immigration in Oslo and the connect to Bergen where we get on our Northern Lights cruise. It’s 11 days from Bergen to Kirkenes and back. Hopefully the sky cooperates enough to get some decent pictures of that.

http://thwartedagain.com/zenphoto/albums/norway
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thwartedagain/

baking

I’ve been clearing out my stock of to-be-baked things. I’ve canned four 16oz jars of pumpkin puree and one jar of sweet potato in preparation for fall event baking. Tonight I made four mini loaves of banana bread using the pan that mom gave me for my birthday. They turned out really good. The ceramic does a good job, I’m pleased.

banana bread

I also have been learning about how to make apple pie. There are a few articles on serious eats about how to select the right apples and how to make a good filling out of them and all of that. I wanted to try the filling out on its own so tonight I filled my miniature enameled cast iron dishes with sous vided apple filling and made tiny apple crumble. I only baked one and put the other three in the freezer because this stuff is supposed to freeze pretty well.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/perfect-apple-pie-recipe-double-crusted-thanksgiving-dessert.html
http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/10/the-food-lab-what-are-the-best-apples-for-apple-pies-how-to-make-pie.html
http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/10/the-food-labs-apple-pie-part-2-how-to-make-perfect-apple-pie-filling.html

The plan is to make a real apple pie but I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t going to completely screw up the filling. I’m reasonably competent with the crust now.

Anyway, it came out and was delicious but I need to not leave the lid on while it’s baking or it doesn’t brown.

mini
apple
crumble

concern

My sourdough starter has not been doing very well for the last couple of days. It’s supposed to be all foamy and alive and the best it manages to do is a few bubbles on the underside. It stopped smelling of vinegar but now it just doesn’t smell strongly at all. I’m going to keep feeding it but I don’t have a lot of hope at this point.

I made some pumpkin puree last night and did my first canning ever. It seems to have worked out ok. As far as I can tell the lids are sealed well and I have two 16oz jars full which is enough for two pies. But I also want to make pumpkin bread and pumpkin ice cream so I may have to do another batch. I suppose we’ll see.

sourdough starter day 4

I forgot to feed the starter this morning so it went 36 hours or so between feedings. That’s not the end of the world so I’m just continuing on. I’ve decided that it was maybe a little too wet so this feeding was 25g rye, 20g white flour, 45g water (back to 100% hydration) plus 20g starter.

I failed to ride my bike today but I did my PT homework and some laundry so I’m not a total failure. Also I met mom in San Marcos and we had coffee and made hotel reservations for the January trip and did a little shopping at the outlet mall. That’s it. Busy week at work this week probably. People are here from London and I’m supposed to be teaching someone how to use the software I’ve made.

probs

I have a problem. I am very, very bad at throwing things away. I am also not good at dealing with mail and putting things away and all of that being-a-tidy-person stuff. The public part of the house I usually somewhat tolerable because there is a small, but non-zero chance that people might visit. My office, however, bears the cost of the rest of the house being more presentable. Just look at this pathetic display.

Sadness

Today, rather that do something fun, like read or get coffee or go shopping for shit I don’t need and have no way to store I started tackling the mess in the office. I estimate I made a 10-20% dent in the stacks of crap. Mostly old mail, financials statements and the like, birthday and Christmas cards, and so on. The mail is at the same time both the most difficult in that there are hundreds of individual items that need to be reviewed and the easiest in that there is little to no emotional attachment to the items and so they can be kept or tossed due to criteria like, “Will I ever have to have this if I am audited?”

There are substantially more difficult items in the stacks and boxes. However, once in a while I run across something fun. Like, for example, my first ever paycheck as an employed adult for three whole hours of work as a co-op at Cypress before I graduated and went full-time on December 26th, 2000. I never cashed it. Because I am dumb.

I wonder if it would still clear. I bet not.