Mondays. Mondays have been some of the best days I've ever had. They've also been some pretty mediocre ones of course, but this monday was certainly one of the better ones.

I had aquired a couple of small water barrels that I was planning on using for some smaller homebrew batches to try some parallel experiments, and with christmas around the corner, I decided to try making christmas beer. A bit of a read gave me some rough guidelines, and I set about crafting up two recipes, and madly dashing around shopping for ingredients. Which also included ringing around and later internet research to work out the icelandic or danish names for allspice. (It's allehande in danish, and when I found it here, it was labelled in spanish)

I also bought some copper pipe and made myself a wort chiller, although there are no pictures of that. It sped things up considerably.

But yes, so I made two small batches of christmas beer, with the help of Bella and Lee. Making beer is always fun if you have helpers. And while the beer was finishing up, Lee was preparing some icelandic lobster for us all. We are so rich! Having access to supplies of prime icelandic lobster, the sort that makes you sneer at the best of the best available in restaraunts. mmmm yummy.

After a delicious dinner of oven roasted satay lobsters, and toast in the drippings, I got a call from Wolfgang. It was the aurora watch team, hard at work. And my, what a display! My balcony doesn't always give the best views, but it was too cold to get out anywhere else, at least so quickly, so I just grabbed some from the balcony.

Probably the most active and brightest I've seen in town like this before. And with a nearly full moon overhead too! I've only seen more active and brighter once or twice before, and both times I was well out in the country.

Unfortunately, they didn't last long, but still wonderful. Later on, wolfgang and I met up and went for a drive out in the country, hoping they'd return. We had a nice drive, out via Kjós and back via Hvalfjörður, but other than a faint greenish tint, we ended up just having pictures of stars and snowy moonlit landscapes. Still a nice drive, and a great monday!