MY this place is beautiful!

Well it’s the weekend. Usually this would mean relaxing, sitting back with a good book, maybe catching up on some TV shows, and walking the dog. And of course running errands, groceries, etc.

Here it is a bit different for me, but not a lot.  It still means a bit of relaxing, though I am also trying to work at least 4-5 hours each weekend day, sometimes taking a whole day off only to work 8hrs or so the next day.

I find that the weekends is when I most miss my wife and dog. Normally we spend a lot of time together on the weekends. Also my weekends here tend to be just working or hiking, but in any case just me (and Yukon right now).

On Friday I came home, ate a quick supper and then walked with Yukon for an hour and a half or so.  I finished off the Wheel of Time series and didn’t do too much else besides staying up late reading.

Yesterday, I slept in, fed the dog, ate breakfast and relaxed a bit and then worked from noon until 5pm.  I’m trying to spend the time working on the weekends on work that I am not doing here going my fellowship stay. This weekend, I am looking at some CryoSat-2 data and writing some new scripts.

Last night Yukon and I went for an nice almost three hour hike to the top of some of the hills/mountains behind Skulsfjord. It was nice to go around and up and down and so forth.  However, the flies were starting to drive me insane, constantly buzzing around my head…and my one toe felt like it was starting to blister so we headed back without going up the bigger peak that I wanted to get to. Nonetheless, the hike offered some amazing views and we did walk a fair bit.

Last night after we got back the local reindeer decided to come eat the grass near Yukon’s run.  He was a bit excited by this but overall was very calm and behaved considering.

Last night I again stayed up late reading (the new Steve Berry book, it was only okay), so I slept in again this morning. I went to the kitchen to make breakfast and found that a spider had made a web from the window to the sink.  So I stopped to take a few pictures before removing it.

The rest of today I will work a bit, walk the dog and make supper and relax (probably with a book).

On Wednesday I fly to the Netherlands for some meetings at the European Space Agency ESTEC.  Then Friday-Sunday I will visit with my family in Holland. Looking forward to seeing them again so soon. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and let me sit outside a bunch and maybe wade around a bit in the ocean, though in this case I will definitely miss the midnight sun.