through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered--

First of all, kudos to Icelandair, which managed to weld a new engine on the plane or something while we were sitting on the tarmac, and there was only a 90 minute delay... and who had meal vouchers and new boarding passes waiting for us, without being fussed at about it, when we landed on the very large and scenic rock 90 minutes later than anticipated.

Wait, I might be getting ahead of myself.

Scott and I are enroute to Helsinki for Finncon. Mechanical difficulties delayed our flight out (Scott claims he saw Mary Robinette Kowal on the wing of the plane with a gremlin puppet) and so we missed our connection. Fortunately for both of us, we has fancy tickets for a change, and they are paying for themselves now, as we're in the fancy people lounge. Scott is napping (I got a little kip on the plane), and I am gorging myself on potted shrimp and cappuccino from a machine with buttons that is teaching me the icelandic words for Hot Water and Chocolate while we wait out a five-and-a-half-hour gap between our old flight and our new... which takes us to Copenhagen, not Helsinki, but Copenhagen can get us to Helsinki. So we'll just be nine hours late, and since we built an extra day into our travel schedule it's all good. Except, you know, missing our dinner date and nap time in Helsinki.

Anyway, Iceland is beautiful--what I've glimpsed from airplane windows and through the glass walls of walkways. Somewhere out there in the fog is a volcano, and there was sea ice on the way in.

Here's a photo of what I've seen of the mountain.




I'd post a photo of my scrounged fancy people lounge midnight breakfast (Okay, it's more like a 3 am breakfast, as Iceland is on GMT without daylight savings--because, I assume, they get enough daylight this time of year for most purposes. It's just about to turn 9 here...)

So as a consolation prize, here's my new favorite schnapps, courtesy of the nice flight attendant who wanted to help me get a nap. 



This is basically alcoholic birch beer syrup and comes with your very own twig.



My wand is 3" long, black birch, spirits of alcohol core.

Oh, look at that. I stalled long enough that the pics of my breakfast loaded to dropbox. ENVY MY SCROUNGE!