Sensommer '23 - Nagan of Copenhagen

It’s early September as I write this, so summer’s not technically in the books just yet—not formally. But tradition insists that the Danish summer is over. (Although it looks like we’re going to be blessed with at least another week of summery weather after a couple of weeks of yuck, so there’s that.)

This was a much less eventful period for us, something for which I think we’re all grateful. But before I get to the pictures and tales of our uneventful late summer period, just some notations for the permanent record.

First, in early August Mike MacIver finally married his long-time girlfriend Leslie (whose last name I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know remember). This was apparently the picture he posted on Facebook, and Deb was kind enough to forward it to me.

Second, an old Chicago friend of ours died in July while we were down in Portugal. At some point in August, Trine had to go into Facebook for some reason or other and bumped into a photo of some of our closest Chicago friends gathered at a private memorial they’d held for him.

(I don’t know why Heather alone is blurry, but it seems oddly appropriate.)

And now back to us.

This next picture is more significant than it appears:

Looks like a nice fish dinner, right?

By all accounts it was.

What makes it special is that Maddie herself caught that fish—the first in her life—and then ate it.

Her first time fishing and we’re told that not more than 5 minutes after she cast her first line Maddie was reeling that fish in. (She was up at a summerhouse with her friend Josephine.)

Another picture for the permanent record: one of the discoveries related to our sewer issues was this sewer opening under the floorboards of our toolshed.

Who put that there? I mean, was the toolshed there and the kommune came around and said, “Sorry, we’ve got to put a sewage access opening in there?” Or was the sewage access there and the original owner of the property thought, “What a great spot for a toolshed?”

Argh.

With all the expenses of Maddie’s confirmation, Molli’s graduation, Didi’s surgery, and our sewage saga, it was obviously time for a household appliance to die. Here’s a posthumous shot of our dryer shortly after it died. (The dryer’s on the right.)

And a propos of nothing, a shot of Didi.

And hey, look, a cloud! (The contours of which are not entirely dissimilar from that profile of Didi!)

It was actually a hell of an impressive cloud. I don’t normally think of clouds as being tall or short, but that was a very tall cloud.

Usual summer yardwork shots: before and afters of some hardcore hedge maintenance:

And hey, look: new dryer!

It’s amazing how liberating it is to have a working, reliable dryer when you’ve gotten used to a piece of crap that sometimes takes four or five hours to not dry your laundry.

For a week in late July we took Billie into our home while her owners vacationed.

I apologize for my ugly foot, but it was such a cute shot of Billie I had to keep it.

For once I got a picture of a dramatically colored sky that actually seemed to capture the dramatic color of the sky:

Didi was just so damn cute in her post-surgical bodystocking it was almost sad when we could finally take it off her for good. (She’d had to wear it for about ten days.) Although it had been an awful hassle having to unsnap the bottom and roll it up on her for walks.

Because we’d been apart on her birthday, we finally got around to taking Molli out for a birthday dinner in August.

I’m getting pretty good at sneaking myself into my own pictures just to prove I was in fact a part of things.

Molli chose the restaurant—some kind of vegan Lebanese restaurant.

She was a little disappointed in her selection after the fact, I think. So we set out for ice cream to compensate.

En route to pick Maddie up from the summerhouse, I passed by Trine’s other side business.

When I got Maddie in the car, I told her what I’d seen.

“Isn’t that awesome?” I said. “And you know what that means?”

I was about to say Mor’s making lots of money for us! but Maddie answered first:

“Oh my god… free sandwiches!”

Earlier this year Maddie had asked if she could play around with Trine’s old guitar. I might have mentioned that in an earlier post… and it might have been late last year rather than earlier this year.

Her friend Jose is musically inclined and had also been playing around with a bunch of instruments—taking lessons, too, I think—and Joe’s dad Rune once played in a garage band and has done a brilliant job of training Jose to love classic rock: her wardrobe consists mostly of band t-shirts featuring Led Zepplin, Nirvana, The Who, Van Halen. So, you know: a good influence.

Not long before we went on vacation Maddie told us she wished for an electric guitar.

We said well, let’s see. Keep playing with the acoustic and see if you really enjoy it, and by the time your birthday and Christmas roll around… we’ll see.

Not long after summer vacation Maddie asked if she could spend her own money to buy an electric guitar starter kit she’d found online: guitar, amp, cables, and a stand all for about two hundred bucks.

She’s been working very hard and it’s her own money, so we said sure.

And then one day it arrived.

Is it just another enthusiasm or something that will stick? Only time will tell, but so far she’s been very committed to her ax and seems to be making progress.

Mormor and Maddie took a tour to Odense; this is the only picture I have from the trip.

August 4 was a Saturday. That night, Patrick the teenaged punk across the street threw a party (as he often does when his parents are out of town) that got a little out of hand and unbelievably loud. We could hardly hear our own television in our own living room, even with all doors and windows closed. We asked repeatedly for Patrick to turn the outdoor music down—not off, but down—and got jeered and mocked and shouted at for it. We tried to reach his father on phone and email, hoping to ask him to talk some sense to his son, but we couldn’t reach him. Finally we called the police. First time in my life I’ve ever been that guy.

It achieved nothing, but at about one or two in the morning we saw that someone had chalked “SUCK IT” on the street in front of our house. Because of course they did.

The next morning we woke up to find the artists had upped their game overnight (apologies for the language, but this is for the permanent record):

We also discovered it was not chalk, but paint.

Honest to god. I’ve lived in dodgy neighborhoods in L.A., Chicago, and New York, and never seen anything like that.

Our next door neighbor was out early trying to scrub it away with soap and water. I asked what the hell he was doing. This had nothing to do with him. Well, he’s friends with Patrick’s father, but so what?

It was Patrick that was going to get that up, and he was going to do it right away, and he was bloody well going to apologize and he had better bloody well mean it.

Weirdly, the neighbor kept scrupping hopelessly at the filth with his brush and soapy water while trying to justify the kids’ behavior the night before prior to the street art. “Kids have a right to party a little, don’t they?”

It was a line we’d heard from some other neighbors, also friends of Patrick’s dad.

Yes, kids have a right to party a little. But this was not a little, and the subsequent behavior seems proof enough that these were not just some happy-go-lucky kids having a merry old time until the mean old grown ups narced on their music.

It took Patrick and 2-3 others using a high-pressure water jet several hours to get the paint off the street. Patrick did apologize. Not for the music, mind you, but for the way he and his friends treated Trine and me when we were only asking them to turn the music down—and, of course, for this monstrosity on the street. Totally out of line, he acknowledged. Beyond the pale. He had no idea who’d done it. He seemed sincere enough, but he’s a weaselly little rat punk who’s always been a rotten kid and “seeming” is easy.

I say he’s spinach and I say the hell with him.

Oh: they also managed to spray away the surface of our sidewalk during the cleanup.

To this date I have not heard a word from Patrick’s father. Not a word. I’ve seen him, walked right past him with Didi one evening just a week or so after that weekend, as he and his wife were cleaning their car, and I said, “Hey.”

“Hey, Greg,” he said.

And he turned back to his wife and resumed talking to her. Like I’m the bad guy, right? Pfft.

Would you not die of shame if this had been one of your kids? Would you not have immediately tried to smooth things over with your neighbor?

On the plus side, though, I don’t think we’ll be having any more music problems with Patrick.

Sorry for the long digression, but it was a significant event that ought to be remembered. And Maddie was home and will surely The Night the Kid Across the Street Went Insane.

And now back to regular blog stuff… and Maddie’s first day of 9th grade!

The Værløse airshow was held as usual in the middle of August and although we heard it all weekend, there was a lot of cloud cover and this is the only picture I managed to get (from our yard, and yes, I know it’s boring and stupid).

One morning on my way to work at about 5:50 in the morning I turned left at the bottom of our street to find a couple of deer hanging out in the grassy shoulder of Søndergårdsvej. I brought my bike to a slow and quiet stop and we just stared each other for a moment.

Then I remembered I had a camera in my back pocket.

I was as quiet and slow as I could be, but it wasn’t enough. They bolted.

I thought about including the whole series of pictures I took, all of which are worse than this one but some of which at least feature larger red-brown blurs, but then I thought: why? It was a couple of deer. They ran… as deer do. End of story.

Speaking of impromptu photo ops, one evening Molli had left the house on her way to somewhere and phoned Trine a few minutes later: there was the most amazing rainbow in the sky and we had better check it out!

It really was extraordinary: I used the panorama feature of my phone to capture the whole thing. It doesn’t do it justice in terms of its colors, but the fantastic thing was how much of it was visible so I thought it was more important to get the full arc.

One of Maddie’s confirmation presents was that we were going to give her Pop Pop’s old phone. I spent most of the spring trying to make sure it was backed up and ready to be wiped and reset and everything, but finally when it came time to install Maddie’s SIM card the phone rejected it. Turns out the phone was tied to Nana and Pop Pop’s Xfinity calling plan, so only Xfinity could unlock it, and they were willing to do that, and tried, but it was a struggle. It took them days to figure out why: it was because Nana and Pop Pop had an overdue balance of more than $300, so the phone couldn’t be unlocked until the bill was paid in full.

I explained that Nana and Pop Pop hadn’t stiffed them on the bill: they had died. Xfinity didn’t care. Game over.

We weren’t going to spend that kind of money to unlock a used iPhone SE, so this picture probably tells the rest of the story succinctly enough:

I don’t know what story this picture tells, but I happened to see this bit of Maddie art in the basement and found it striking enough to take a picture:

I may sort of secretly be hoping she sticks with the guitar and forgets about painting…

And now, another deer sequence! This time out in Hareskov. Here’s what I saw (using zoom):

Here’s the world’s most oblivious dog (the deer is still there in the background, nowhere near as far as away as it seems in the not-zoomed photo):

Every once in a while I see our property from an unusual angle and it just strikes me.

I really cut the apple tree down dramatically this spring and at first worried it was too much and I’d killed it, then realized I hadn’t killed it but had probably ensured we’d never see another apple, then remembered Morfar’s words: you can’t kill that damn tree, it’s impossible.

He was right.

The days are shortening, obviously, and by late August we’d reached the point where the sun wasn’t even fully over the horizon as I biked through the marsh in Emdrup that’s about halfway between our house and my workplace.

Those pix were taken on different dates. I’ve had more such biking moments of zen here in September, and have even taken to sending them to Trine in the emails I send her each morning to let her know I’ve reached the office without spontaneously combusting, but within about a week it’ll be too dark to take any pictures at all.

Speaking of dark: I had very abbreviated business trip to Barcelona at the end of August and start of September. Here’s the moon over the Mediterranean on the flight down:

I stayed at the Hotel Cituadella, which was very nice. Nice enough that I’d stay there again, which is why I have this otherwise boring photo here.

The weather had gotten all cool and rainy in Denmark, so it wa a nice escape.

In a city so famous for world-class design and architecture, I was actually shocked to see it was just as vulnerable to stupid, lifeless concept art in public as any other city.

And I’m annoyed that that picture, which I took out of our minibus, is better than the picture I took out of our minibus of some striking Gaudi (or Gaudiesque) architecture.

For some reason I’d always thought Las Ramblas was something really special: I’d pictured it as some kind of elevated walkway along the seashore. No one told me it was just a perfectly ordinary commercial high street. Disappointment: off the charts.

I don’t know or care what “Snow Monster” is. Obviously some kind of ice cream chain. But the words beneath the logo say “Stupidly Fluffy Ice Cream.”

What the hell kind of motto is that?

The day was very businessy, but at every business we visited they sooner or later ushered us up to the roof to show us their unique and spectacular view.

That’s just one of the dozen pictures I took from the rooves of each of the three businesses we visited. They’re not very good pictures, certainly none of them are any better than this one, and that’s why I’m only boring you with the one.

After the three business visits we had a walk through town to the restaurant where we’d be having lunch. I took pictures of things I thought were pretty or interesting. I have no idea what any of them are.

WAIT!

Don’t scroll down.

Way up ahead down that alley in the photo above, you see the bridge between buildings?

That’s significant. We’re about to walk directly under it. When we do, you’re going to look straight up. And when you do, tell me what you see first: a skull or a crown.

Ready?

Go!

Did you see the skull first?

Sorry: bad luck.

Did you see the crown before the skull?

Then that’s good luck.

Or something like that.

We were in a hurry, we were all hungry, and the woman explaining the legend seemed a little confused about it herself.

The previous two pictures were of government buildings on some big square we walked through.

Only when I offloaded the pix from my phone did I think to ask Professor Google what the hell those signs said.

Turns out they’re four different ways of saying red… Spanish, Catalan, Andorran, and something else. Portuguese, maybe. Or something. It’s part of a government initiative to make the point that it’s okay to have different words in different languages or something. I’m really not clear on the concept. But Google translate will actually tell you the first two of those words mean red but the second two mean crimson.

Make of it what you will.

And now to lunch!

We ate at a steak- and seafood house right on the harbor. One of our appetizers:

As near as I could tell, they just take minnows, toss them in batter and breadcrumbs, fry them, and that’s it. Salty deliciousness, and nowhere near as fishy tasting as you’d expect.

My entree was some kind of aged beef just seared like mad for about 30 seconds on both sides and then served. The name of the dish ought to have been “sunburned cow.” And yes, it was every bit as good as it looks.

The restaurant was on the second or third floor of a waterfront building on the harbor—all through lunch I couldn’t help noticing one weird sight out there:

Nobody could explain it, but I was happy to see it.

Naturally after the meal we had to go out on the roof and appreciate the view. The next three pictures are scanning from left to right.

We finally had some “free” time after lunch: four hours to do whatever we wanted before meeting again for dinner.

I chose to walk to La Sagrada Familia.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

And… thar she blows!

In the next one I used the panorama function vertically for the first time ever. So it’s a little distorted, but I’m glad to have at least one picture that has both the bottom and the top of the church.

You could almost convince me the park across the street was Silverlake in L.A.

Almost.

Okay, now Greg’s gonna try to get all artsy with his lousy iPhone SE camera…

Meh.

If any of us were soccer fans it would be cool to know the FCB museum and gift shop are basically across the street from La Sagrada Familia.

(If…)

That night after dinner I took a taxi with my boss to see the church again… she’d spent her afternoon time shopping and wanted to see it.

(Temple to God at right. Temple to crispy fried chicken at left.)

While my boss walked around the church, I ordered a drink at one of the cafés and talked to Trine on the phone.

Pro tip: when you order a double scotch in Barcelona, you don’t get 2×3 cl of scotch. You get a real drink.

Louise made it all the way around the church and back to me about one minute before the illumination of the church abruptly ceased.

Midnight on the dot.

We had to walk a little to find a taxi: across the street from the church was a murderer’s row of American commercialism: Five Guys, Ben & Jerry’s, and McDonalds. I enjoyed the juxtposition.

Next morning I went out to see the beaches.

On the flight home, this was the part of Europe over which we made landfall after crossing the Mediterranean. (North is left, south is right.) It was so distinctive I was sure I could actually find that coastline on Google Maps when I got home, and indeed I could: the city around the harbor above and to the right of the peninsula is Toulon, France.

Some Alps. French or Swiss? No idea. (Although I did get one picture with a distinctive lake that enabled me to identify it as a town straddling the Swiss-German border.)