high school principal man

Duglegir lesarar may recall my earlier mention of High School Principal Man, one of the colorful regulars. I have since begun to think of HSPM as the regular's regular, so much does he seem to own the late-afternoon conversations at Laugardalslaug. Well, there's another installment, because today was really a red letter day for me and the Meistari himself.

1) I was walking down the hill toward Smáralind at lunchtime and coming up the hill, attractive lunchmate in chatty tow, was street-clothes HSPM in a red suit jacket. From this I craftily deduced that he likely works somewhere in our little industrial park. He certainly looked comfortable in the 201 surroundings. Holy moly! Maybe he's not a high school principal after all. Or maybe he is an HSP (ret.) and now he's dabbling in a service-sector job in the Kópavogur wilds. Or maybe he's the president of Avion Group.

2) And then I saw him later at the pool, at the usual time. But today, for the first time ever, from across a semi-vast expanse of pockmarked poolside concrete, he gave me a gruff "Góðan daginn". We had been building up to this for months, with the occasional mid-conversational nod of recognition. But today the whole thing broke wide open. I see a bright conversational future ahead for me and this quintessential regular.