Almost Christmas

So it's been an emotionally draining week. As you may have heard Christmas is in a couple of days and for normal folk Christmas is spend with families. Unfortunately I live way too far from home to travel there; it's mostly a financial issue. But it's more than that. I don't really know where home is exactly. If I were to go to my parents house I'd be going to see them and my other siblings. I didn't grow up there so there wouldn't be many friends. I could go back to Hawaii. Oh, I miss Hawaii so much. Go to the beach, feel the warmth of the sun on my face and the searing heat of the sand on my feet. Paradise. I really want to swim in the ocean. I've got family and friends there. That would be a better "home" for me.

The emotionallity doesn't stop there. Tons of people are leaving for good. So I'm staying in Sweden or around here for Christmas then off to Paris for New Year's. But being one of the last ones here means that I'm saying goodbye to everyone. Seriously, there are lots of people leaving and the bus/train station is right behind where I live so there've been tons of goodbye gatherings over there. Tons of goodbye parties as well. Saying farewell to close friends almost everyday for a week really drains you, especially if you know there's a very slim chance that you'll see that person ever again. And now Delta house is fairly empty. Out of the 14 or so people on this floor only 4 of us are still here, and us four aren't the chummiest of chums. We're acquaintances. It's alright, but a lot of it turns into boring small talk that I'm only trying to look like I'm paying attention so they don't get mad at me. I've got Yassine here, though. He's a friend of mine from Morocco. He's having a couple of people from his home country join him for Christmas and maybe go somewhere. So that's what we're going to do. We still don't know where we're going, but that's what makes it an adventure, right?

yeah, so this building is just about empty. But every time I go down to do some laundry there's a shit load of clothes being washed with more on top of the washers waiting. There must be a lot more people here than I thought. I rarely go down to the first and second floors. Come on people.

Also I've moving my stuff into a bigger room here on the 3rd. It's tons bigger but it's difficult to come up with a good floor plan for all our things. Mike is going to moving in here as well when he comes back and he's wanting to buy a couch and a card table for this place. So I'm doing my best to come up with a good solution. There's a few obstacles like those stupid lamps that cant' be moved more than a foot. I've tried a few things and I think I'm close to a solution. It'll be great. I know it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of my internet friends.

Exams suck

Hello all. So I had my big scary exam yesterday and it sucked. It was for a class called knowledge modeling. It was taught in the technical school. That is to say in a different school than the business school where I normally attend (plus I have a background in psychology). And the class was taught by three very boring technical school nerds. The classes were so boring that I only went to half of'em. The ones I did go to made me sooo sleepy that it wasn't worth going, even though I really tried to pay attention. They sucked the life out of me. So I studied super hard for the last couple of days. I only had a few days because my group mates and I were working really hard on presentations and papers for our other classes.

So there was this break I had between study sessions that was spent attending a Swedish culture thing where they were talking about traditions of a Swedish Christmas. There was a drink there called glog which is a lot like spiced cider. Anyway, I like the stuff but this time it wasn't sitting right. Soon after I finished the cup I had to run to the restroom to spew it up. It was weird. I've never done that before: drinking something just to pewk it out a moment later. The group went up to the study room in the library and keep joshing me about what happened making ralfing noises and picturing gross scenarios. I threw up again. That was a long day where I got about as much done as a pewking college student could. The presentations went very well the next couple of days, btw.

So the exam yesterday kicked my ass. I wasn't as prepared as I'd like to've been, but I think I passed. The think was after I had the exam I was super exhausted and headachey. We even had a big lasagna dinner that night with a bunch of people from delta. I was very tired and barely social. So went to bed early and slept till 11 this morning. So glad all that is over with. There's still more to be done during the break but I'm glad that day is over.

Sunday. The day the week winds up to kick ass. Can you feel it? I certainly can. This week's going to be hell. I'll be so glad when it's over. I'm not going to type why cause it'll depress me. Oh, hey we had our Secret Santa thing this last week. I had Chara. She's from Oklahoma I think but I don't really hang with her much. Not close friends at all. So there was a little lack of motivation doing this one. I wasn't going to half ass it, a little, maybe, but I sort of when through the motions. so yeah, half-assed. I got her some play-doh, some bouncy balls, because they were cheap at the toy store, and for her final gift that I gave her a box of stuff from the Body Shop. They weren't terrible gifts but there weren't that thoughtful and I didn't work at making them so. You wanna know what I got? well, my secret santa was this dude from germany named Max. He did this theme of 2 girls 1 cup. don't ask. But what he gave me was 2 candy bars, 1 cup, and for the final gift he gave me a double dvd of swedish porn. Awesome? you decide.

We went out to the Bongo Bar after all that, Mike got really drunk. We took him home and watched Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. I had to explain that White Castle is gross. The worst fast food I have ever tasted.

We also went to a hockey game last week were our team got there asses handed to them. The team here in Jonkoping won their division last season and this game was against Finlands national champion. They won 6-0. The worst thing about the whole game was that the fans were almost completely silent for the whole thing. There was no cheering section. The Finns on the other hand were loud. How can a home game feel like an away game? It was terrible. I got some pics of that but Leila has my memory card. I'll post'em when I can/want to.

That's it for now.

Later

wish me luck for my week

Oh those shenanigans!

So I'm taking another break. I'm almost done with my take home exam. I just need to adjust one more question and that'll be it. Done with the class. Oh, get this. yesterday we met with one of our teachers to get the grade of our big paper. we did a research project and we thought we did an alright job. I thought we did well and I've got some experience behind me to let me say so. we walk and and find out we barely passed. It was all bullshit. I swear. Our research design was done much much better than other kids I saw walk out of there with better grades. This isn't our only qualm with the teacher either. At the end of this meeting one of the guys in our group still needed to get his exam back. This was weird cause every one got their graded exam back like a month ago. So he gets his back and the teacher had dropped a couple points of the test. Points, according to my friend, were awarded to him earlier when the teacher showed him his grade a couple weeks before. So my friend got really pissed. I thought he was going to deck the teacher. There were some heated words, I left the room, and the guys had a short terrible discussion. This meeting totally ruined our scholastic day. We were going to work on some other stuff but after this meeting every one was bummed. We got nothing done; sat there for an hour or two. then we had to get out of there and stop moping and went to the coffee shop. Once there the mood lightened, we saw some friends there and the day seemed salvageable. On our way to said coffee shop I saw my friend Louelle who told me that I was supposed to make a pizza for my roommates birthday dinner. Okay, it was my roommates birthday like last Thursday and there were two failed attempts to celebrate, but we finally did it up right last night. there was a big dinner with great food. It was a good time. I also got my hair cut cause the girl who cuts hair was there and she had her stuff there. It's fairly short but I like it. I'll post some pics soon. after that my friend mike was really trying hard to get me and Leila to go out. We were tired but after about an hour of pushing we let in and went to a sports bar for a few drinks. I was good to get out, sort of. We just hung out and it was good, but I needed today to work on that take home exam as well as some other stuff later on today so I couldn't be out too late. Too bad, but we got home around 2:30 or so and after that we came home to some shenanigans. Vodka bongs, deep frying (we bought a deep fryer a couple of days ago), a water fight (my pj's got soaked), and people wanting to watch a movie. We started the movie but we got too tired. This was around 4 when people left my room and I went straight to bed. sleep didn't come so easy and I was tired, am tired. so I got up at seven (three hours later) and started stuff. I finished some of this exam and started my laundry. So far things are good. Not sure for the rest of the day, but for now I'll keep going.

When is it ever going to get done?

It's so hard to concentrate right now. I'm trying to finish up a take home exam and I just realized that I don't have everything that I need here. I'm at JIBS and I need some handouts. I'm also needing food. There are other things that are making it difficult to concentrate which I don't want to discuss. But I need to get this stuff done so wish me luck.

Okay I'm back. Still can't think. I'll just chalk this up to my break. So yeah, i downloaded the current episode of Prison Break that we're going to watch tonight. I'm sort of excited for that. There's been a group of us who've watched season 3 together and now we've been keepin up with this new season week by week. It's fun to have this to look forward to every Tuesday but I think this may be the last episode of the series so "good bye" to this show. I know there'll always be others, but this one was sort of special in way because we did this way before we had internet. Also there are only a few more weeks till everyone leaves Sweden to go back to there own countries for good, or moves out of Delta house, or I just won't see these guys for weeks. Things are really going to change soon. It's sort of sinking in now. It's a good thing. I need some change right now.

Have I mentioned that there's snow on the ground? Yep. We got snow in November. I heard that it doesn't snow here much and it usually comes in January or something. Well, I'm not a huge fan of snow. It's cold and slippery. I'd love it if it were warm, like sand on Sunset beach. And there's this debate that snow is much better than rain. I'll agree to a point, but after the precipitate has fallen rain leaves a small trail while snow leaves a lasting impression that I usually can't wait to get over. The temp here is going to rise anyway. It's going to be in the positives tomorrow anyhow and all the lovely snow will be washed away by the awaiting rain that supposes to fall. It's not that I like rain, dislike it too, but I just prefer it over snow. This is a current opinion subject to change any second so don't battle me on this one.

Okay, I'm going to get some more stuff done for real this time.

Later tater.

Brave the cold!

I had to come to the university to do some school work. Can you believe that it's 24 degrees today. I mean that's the high temperature. So cold. But I had to brave it to get stuff done. So much distraction at home, right? I mean when there's a tv going and a few people watching, what else is there to do? So cold, though. It's alright cause it'll be much warmer in a few days. It snowed a bunch too. I was just talking to someone about Hawaii just a second ago and I got a little jealous of all of you back there. I'm still really trying to get there this June. I found some cheap airfare back to the states which might be a good idea so i can maybe work? Who knows?

I think one of the major reasons why it's hard for me to be motivated here is that it feels that I've lost a good deal of my identity. I mean you are what you do, right? And I haven't been doing anything that I normally do. I haven't been riding my bike, I acquired a guitar very very recently, and other social activities seem so far from what I normally do. It may be a slight touch of homesickness but I don't I've every really had that in my life. If part of growing up is learning to deal with different situations then why am I regressing? Maybe I am growing up and I need some stability and I'm not getting that here. Everything, it seems, is up in the air. What I really think it is, now that I think about it, is that my needs are being met. I'm working on that too. Louelle is trying to get an apartment and I may room with her. Her dad is helping her and he's Swedish so this may happen. Finding a place is very difficult here.

I should get back to studying (I really mean starting). So I'll let you go.

Wish me luck.

What?

I feel like I'm trying to be torn in two and I'm using most of my energy to keep me together. Such a taxing weekend. Things have definitely changed and they can't go back. And I'm constantly being reminded of the new situation. I wish the fog would blow away and I could see my true path. I'll just have to stay in confusion at least for a little longer. Just being drawn to something that could never happen. So close I can feel it but can never take that last step. My heart rate can't take it much longer. I need something to give.

Heart. Pounding

You know those times when emotion seems to dictate every action in life? Well, that doesn't happen to me very often, but the last couple nights I've been over run. It's sort of exciting but I don't like it in the fact that I'm not in control. I'm not saying that I'm always in control but these moments are uneasy because of the distance from that control is greater than I'm used to. I think I'm more scared than excited; definitely more scared. But I have to experience life, right?

Road Trip, Baby!

Oh, man. I know I'm not good at updating this thing but here's more. I think I say something like this every time I write something here. Any way, internet friends, here's the up side of the down low: Last weekend Leila, Jerome, Alice, and I took a road trip up to Gothenberg and Oslo. And, yeah, it was pretty fun. I was more excited about riding around in car. The US has such a huge car culture and I've only been in a car a couple times in the last three months, so this was sort of a big deal for me. I love road trips. This one wasn't that big. It was only a couple of hours drive to Gothenberg, where we stayed a couple of nights, and the ride to Oslo was 4 more.

Here's my view of the ride to Gothenberg:

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

We met up with Leila in Gothenberg later. So, yeah, Alice is from Latvia so she brought her car back with her like a month ago. It's her last night here in Jonkoping, btw. Anyway, this was our last chance to go on a road trip.

So we get to Gothenberg, found Leila, and stayed at a friends apartment. This friend of ours used to go our school but found a better college there. We met him at the big mall there so he could bring us to our place:

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

It was great to see him again. He was a guitar buddy of mine who has an electric. I'd borrow an acoustic and he would solo over me playing. It was great. So he lives with two other Iranians who used to go to school here as well. We dropped our stuff off and explored late night Gothenberg. We ended up going to a bar. we were all a little tires so just a few drinks, walking a round a bit, and back to the apartment.

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

We danced in the street:

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

The picture was taken late, but we did.

Here's a picture of Naheem on our way home:

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

so we get back to his place and the sleeping arrangements sucked. I slept on the concrete hard floor, not really sleep, but everything was sore when I got up. It was horrible. We were going to bring stuff to sleep on but the car was so horribly small that we only brought a blanket and a couple of tiny sleeping bags. Leila was disappointed because I was supposed to bring more but I was convinced to do otherwise. I really wish I listened to Leila.

But the next day i bought a guitar!

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

Well, this was the cool shop that I bought it at. Pics of the guitar will come a little later. I bought cause it was like 500 crowns cheaper than anything here in Jonkoping. That's all i really wanted.

After that we went to a Persian restaurant which was a very exciting thing for the Iranians. it was really good food too. It was my first time sampling this cuisine.

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

That was Leila's plate. It was really good.

After that we went to some discovery place where they had a zoo of sorts and other things. here's a few pics:

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

I'm noticing that the pics I'm showing are mostly of Leila. Let me explain that the other two on this trip are really really good friends who are practically joined at the hip. They're always together. So while they were together doing their thing, that left Leila and me to do what we wanted. I'm cool with that. I like Leila.

After that we were all very tired cause we all slept horribly. It also gave me a chance to play my new guitar, which was cool cause there were other musicians in the flat.

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

so that black acoustic is my new one. And that thing I'm holding is an Iranian drum that the guy with my new guitar owns. he's really good at the drum thing. At the time of the photo they were playing traditional Iranian songs. It was fun. Those guys were fun.

After that we went to sleep cause we wanted to wake up early to have time in Oslo after the drive. You know everyone we talked to said that Norway was super expensive so we bought food in Sweden to bring with us, and when we got there we barely noticed a difference. totally not worth sitting with bags of food around me for hours on our way up. So we get there and we didn't book a hostel before and it turns the first two we tried were completely booked. The next one we tried was in the best location, nearest to the center of the city, and we found a room with four beds. It was completely perfect.

Here's some pics of Oslo:

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

Can you believe they had doritos? I've been looking for those in Sweden for a long time. I also found Mountain Dew for like $4 per can.

We Also went to a museum statue place with a bunch of naked art:

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

From Gothenberg and Oslo trip

so that was the trip. we left for Sweden soon after those pictures were taken. The trip was good. The weather was fantastic. It was as good as it gets for that time of the year. Sure it was cold but the sun was shining almost our entire trip. And you have to realize that these places are known for being rainy and windy. We totally lucked out. Then we had a 6 hour drive back home. It went by fast and I was tried when we arrived. If I wasn't i would've gone to the switch party.

Wow. That was a long post for me. I someone appreciates it.

I'm out!

Here's my weekend

Guess What! We finally got internet! It's been like three months in the making with multiple broken promises on the way. There've been a few sign put up by "the man" telling us soon, but that all turned to rubbish. So I payed for it yesturday (i went friday to pay but the place isn't open then) at noon and I had to wait till 4 o'clock till it started working. But once it started I've been off and running. I've downloaded a few movies, iLife, microsoft stuff, and the like. I've also looked at web pages. It's awesome. Rock band has gotten some songs. Oh, I found a guy who owns the drums and another guitar who lives close by and we've become friends. Mostly because I want the drums and this guys barely has any games. Here's some pics:

From Jonkoping

From Jonkoping

From Jonkoping

As you may have noticed some of us were in the halloween spirit then. We were there for a preparty. So one of those guys was Captain Planet, another a hippie, a zombieish thing. You can see that my face was black but I did that to put the emphasis on what was going over my head:

From Jonkoping

pretty sweet, huh?

I carved the sucker first and it looked like this:

From Jonkoping

live this in the dark:

From Jonkoping

It was fun. There's tons of people here who haven't done that sort of thing before. The whole halloween spirit, I'm finding out, is an American thing. It was sort of lame here. It was even hard to find people to watch scary movies with.

Here's an alternate costume. Me as a swede:

From Jonkoping

And lastly there was an animal party where we did an international cook off. I of course made some pizza and it was great. here's my creation:

From Jonkoping

There was a lot of food and my pizza was the last entre presented at the table after most of the other foods were eaten. We polished it off too and everyone was super full. Amazing party.

That's it for now.

Synopsis will be expanded

Once again it's been awhile. Forgive me, baby. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I actually do and here's a very quit synopsis:

I carved a pumpkin last night, last friday was a halloween party that rocked and I went as a swedish zombie with super tight pants and tons of zombie makeup, I'm finally done with all the exams and presentations. this term I've got a class in the technical school and it totally blows. HUGE nerds teaching this class makes it the most boring class i've ever had. Maybe going to Gothenburg this weekend. More details with pics later. Short on time now and need to go to school.

It's been a stressful week

So guess what happened? I'm here at the library on a Saturday and have been since 8:30 or so. The reason being for an exam I thought I had at 9. It turns out that it's 2 in the afternoon. let me tell you this place is a ghost town this early. It wasn't that bad of thing to get here this early. I get to study a bit more for the exam and get all the bandwidth I want, which can sometimes be fairly narrow. I am a little tired though. It was a Friday night with the club downstairs pounding the bass through the building. And I stayed home to hear all those bass notes while I tried to sleep. there was a party at a friends house that I really wanted to go to but couldn't.

So yesterday I studied, the day before was spent trying to do homework but got very sidetracked by other people doing stuff and inviting me to go along. Like there was a Dutch cultural presentation that pretty much had to do with cheese and people not talking about their country. Then I found out that the landlord of the building that I lived in bought us all tickets to a hockey game that night. It was cool. We won in overtime. I forgot my camera but there was a ton of picture taking going on. I'll try to get my hands on some of them. There's photos of me trickling down off of Facebook if you want to see more. I'll try to remember to take my camera places. After the hockey game we were wondering around Jonkoping looking for food. There was absolutely nothing open, except a candy store and we didn't want candy. So someone made food back at the building and we stayed up till like 4.

The night before was the celebration of a frenchman's birthday were a few french guys made dinner and everyone else brought stuff to compliment. Louelle and I bought a cake and it was soooo good. It was chocolate with more chocolate stuff on the inside. They got some good bakeries here.

Yesterday I took a break from studying and went to an after work, which is an all you can eat buffet for only buying a drink. They do this at just about every restaurant and club in town. They all do it at different prices but the food differs quite a bit. The after work I went to was at a sports bar based in Boston. The food is still very a Swedish version of American food. Like their pizza looks sort of what my pizza looks like but mine is way better. Their buffalo wings still lacked kick. It's still worth it when you're only paying like 50 kronors.

Last monday we had presentations to do in our class for our paper that we wrote on a successful innovation. It turned out that I didn't need to do all of it. That was sort of the original plan cause I'm a native English speaker, but Faustina did the bulk of it cause she wanted to get some experience cause she's never done a powerpoint presentation before. It all went fine for us, but there's this one kid from Pakistan whom everyone hates. He left our group alone but he asked very rude questions to pretty much all the other groups. This is him:

From Jonkoping

This photo was covert. What he's actually doing in this picture is looking up info on the net about the topics of other groups are presenting on. He's looking for hard questions to ask to rock the boat. He's a jerk and we all hate him. It's that he's a power freak. When he presented he got really defensive when people were asking him questions with points of views that were not succinct with his own. btw, he gave the guy presenting with him only one slide and he took up way too much time with his slides to a point where the teacher asked him to wrap it up but he still took like 5 more minutes.

From Jonkoping

Here's a pic of a friend of mine in my program. He's from Nigeria and this is the first time I've ever seen him eat anything in his life. And we've been out for lunch a bunch of times with groups from our program. It's rare. Savor it. His name is Olawale and goes by Wally.

Here's a pic of Cider, the cat we adopted from the side of the road who lived with us for a couple of weeks.

From Jonkoping

I should go back to studying.

Later

Hi friends. there's always so much to say but always so little time/will. Okay, here's something I'm a little embarrassed about. there was this dude that came up to me on the street claiming that he lost his id and bank card and needed to get to another town before his exams. In hindsight this was obviously a scam. but at that point for some stupid reason I didn't question it and I gave him enough money to get back to his town. Don't ask how much, that's the embarrassing part. I explain my laps in judgment because at right before I met him I had finished a group meeting where we almost finished our paper and I was on some sort of a joyous high. Previous meetings have resulting in just about nothing. I was also super tired. I'm like always tired here, btw. Mostly resulting from a dance club right under our residence forcing us to stay up past 2 every night. Anyway so i give this guy some cash and we exchange phone numbers and email address. The guy told me that he was going to move to our town and that he'd pay me back later but I didn't think I'd see him again. Unfortunately he called that night to hang our and try to see if he could sleep on our floor. so I let him up because he says that he might have to sleep outside cause he couldn't get a train. so he comes up to my room and is a little drunk and keeps ranting about a girlfriend that he's broken up with. Well, he's a bit creepy and was very glad to see him go. Everyone on our floor was creeped out too and we were glad see him go. He called back the next morning trying to get back in but I wasn't there and wouldn't let him in even if i was home. By that time I pretty much knew I was scammed.

When I wasn't home when he called I was on my way to little town that's famous for making hard candy. the weather was beautiful, we bought some candy, i forgot my camera, we took a fairy to a peaceful island, and had a lovely day.

Another thing that happened was that I found out my camera wasn't broken. I think I mentioned it earlier, but I wasn't able to view pictures in the viewing screen in picture taking mode but could when just looking at pics. So I went to the mall here and it turns out that the person who borrowed my camera was drunk and tried to delete a photo and got into the settings and changed a few things. On the candy town trip someone dropped a camera and broke it a little bit and I went with them to fix it and this is how I leaned that I'm an idiot.

Here's some pics.

From Jonkoping

Here's my first pizza. I think I promised this picture awhile back

From Jonkoping

This is my roommate from Scotland, Euen. He accidentally cut the tip of his finger off while cutting some bread and had to go get stitches and the emergency room.

From Jonkoping

this is my bed. Since we have a tv in our room our room is pretty much the common room in the building. It's lots'o'fun. There have been small skirmishes over attempts to get optimal sitting position.

I'm resolved to take more photos now I know my camera isn't broken

Hey, Swedish

toothpastefordinner.com

It feels like school now

Man, where to begin. Did I mention that my little TV couldn't get fixed so I had to buy a new one. It sucked too cause I had to ride my bike out to the repair shop after they said they might be able to fix it. It took me my second attempt to find it and when I got in they guy told me that it would cost about the same to fix it as it would to buy a new one. So I decided to look around. I looked at a few stores and found some good tvs at decent prices, and then i found this german electronics store. It was huge, even by american standards. Bigger than a big Best Buy with more stuff and fantastic prices. they even had rock band set up and it was connected to one of the biggest televisions I have ever seen. Of course I sit down at the drums to show off my skills, really just to play. I haven't played in so long. Anyway, I was there playing the Nirvana song on expert as per usual. I pretty much rock the place. But here's the thing, when I turned around there was a lot of people who were watching me, who weren't there when I started. I fest sort of cool but there wasn't any reaction to anybody so I put the sticks down and wove my way out of the crowd trying to not to smile too widely. It was a little awkward. So I took a bus back the next day and got a 32 inch tv for the same price it would've cost me to buy a comparable sized tv to my last one. Good purchase and it looks great in my room. And the next day I figured a way to get Swedish programming in my room. So my room is pretty much the common room now, which is cool to a point. last night we were up to like 2:30 watching the third season of prison break. We have four more episodes to go. I'll probably happen tonight.

So there's lots of school work. I should probably be doing school work right now, but I wanted to update my internet friends. And one group is still a headache and the paper is due next Wednesday. I'm so tempted to just write the thing myself and leave the rest of the group in the dust. I know it's an exercise to get me prepared to work with coworkers in the future but it's still very frustrating.

Oh, and I lost my nice umbrella yesterday somewhere which is a real bummer. Seriously, i bought that thing for when we went to Europe a year ago and it was a good one. We had some good times together, mostly because I didn't get wet when I would've with out it, but now it's gone. It made me sad for a little bit. oh well, such is life.

So there you are for now. I hope it was good for you.

group projects blow

It feels like a lot has happened since my last post but nothing seems to be at the forefront of interrestingness. There is a big one: I practially broke my tv and it sucks. I got a package from my parents not so long ago. There was a bunch of close and books but also my external hard drive. And when trying to plug this hard drive in I accidentally grabbed the plug to my tv and plugged it directly into the wrong voltage outlet. If you don't know much about differing voltages in different countries then tough. I'm not in the mood to explain it. Point being it fried my tv a little bit. It sort of still works but not well. When I wrongfully plugged it in a ton of smoke came flowing out of the tv. It wasn't even turned on. So I unplugged everything and now it's broken. I've got a phone number to a repair place and i'll try that today. It really sucks.

I'm sort of in a not so good mood because I just got out of a group meeting with people who are hard to explain things to. This is what the deal is: we're researching an innovative technology that has been successful and reporting on it, or at least that was what we were supposed to do. What we were doing was basically reading up on an innovative technology. You know what, I don't really want to go to far into it. But what happened was I had to rock the boat a bit and get our project going in the right direction. It confused just about everyone but in the end I think we're going to be okay if everyone pulls their weight. It wore me out. And they want to meet so early in the morning when we don't have class or anything. Okay, 11 o'clock isn't that early but the meetings slip into lunch time. That's not right in my opinion unless there's food present at our meetings. I'm just tired and hungry now.

One more things. I'm teaching little kids at church. 5 and 6 year olds. In Swedish. My first attempt was last Sunday and the teacher for the 4 year olds didn't show up so I had them too. the total number was only 5 but it was still tough to teach little kids in a language where I really have to strain to understand, especially the 4 year olds. It went okay, could've been better. Next week will be so cause I know what I'm up against.

okay, more good stories to come.

Points!

Hello internet. I'm sorry to inform you that my health is back in the decline. It's okay, though. It's not as bad as it was before but I'm really missing when I could I could sing without restraint. I was going to go out last Saturday afternoon and test the waters of playing for money, but it was a no go. The sun shone and people were there. The friend that I was going to go out with slept in so we didn't leave on our scheduled time. There are other excuses but won't write them. The fact that the weather is turning angrier also pulls the tide against us. Mark my words, it will happen.

I'm not sure if you've read my other posts but a few posts ago I wrote that I was annoyed at the fact that some dirty, stinky liquid was flowing out of our trash in our kitchen. It happened again this morning and I moped again. This time though we cleaned the whole corridor and this time there's a "we". Help was there and it made it good. One cool thing though is when I was mopping the kitchen Bob and the Landlord came in. Bob is the super of our building. But I sure as hell got some points from the higher ups today. Score! They came in and we discussing our trash situation, which for us is just a big black trash sack. They were finally going to get us a can. I stealthfully got this information by knowing Swedish unbeknownced to the others. I thought it was a little rude to be discussing our living situation in from of a few of us using a language they thought we didn't know. but that's how it is where we live; they don't ask our opinions on anything.

I've been procrastination enough. I've got a bunch of work to do. I'm making American pizza again tonight. I'll let you know how it goes. All the sentences in this paragraph start with "I" except this one.

Bye

How could you say no to a face like that?

Last Saturday I was on my way to a grocery store when a furry little creature ran across the bike path. A friend whom I was with almost crashed and I went looking or the animal. It turned out to be a kitten. Probably 5 weeks old or so. He was so little and it was very cold outside then and the cat was shaking. We hopefully did the right thing and just left it there. Just kidding. We picked it up, put it in one of our cloth grocery bags and went shopping. The tiny cat, then called Osker, became fairly restless and tried relentlessly to get out of the bag. I felt bad when I kept blowing in his face to scare him so he'd stop. After buying food we took him to the vet. They were barely any help at all. They kept us waiting for like an hour. On another note, while we were waiting there was a short movie that looped every few minutes and it showed a dog after it had been is some sort of traumatic accident all bloodied up, then taken to a vet and operated on. It was pretty disgusting. But that's how things are here in Sweden. On first aid kits it shows very graphic pictures of wounds that the certain bandages are for. Back to the vet. The only information we got out of them was the phone number for the police because they would take the kitten, not the vet. We thought that was strange so we left and tried to think of maybe someone else who would want a cat. We brought it back to our apartment and all the girls on my floor fell in love with it. Being a few days later, the cat is now named Cider, has food and kitty litter in her own room, and gets tons of attention from the girls on that end of the hall, the opposite side of mine end. One of the girls has decided to keep it. The problem is that we aren't allowed to keep pets. I don't really want to keep it. The main reason is that the cat smells and it lives in the same room that I keep my bike in. There may be a mysterious call to the police that a stray cat may be on my floor.

I also took my long board outside this weekend. Before this I used my board only to go to one end of the hall to the other. It's fun and I've gotten others to try their hands at boarding down the hall. A friend of mine, Dave from Australia, and I went to the bus station parking lot. It was fun. The roads are in good shape here but its getting cold. I'm not sure if it hit 50 degrees today. I went home to put shoes on (I've been wearing my slippers most of the time, a.k.a. flip flops, sandals, thongs, etc) and a scarf. I'm not excited about the cold. I've heard it doesn't snow much here but rather cold rain. I get shivers even thinking about it.

One last thing. I shaved my room mate's head a couple of days ago and it was very disgusting. He's the kind of guy who showers when he feels like, and no, it's not every day, or every two days. I'm not really sure how often it is but when I shaved his head he had a ton of flakes under the canopy. His hair wasn't that long to begin with, but oh man, it was gross underneath. I didn't say anything to him at the time but darn sure I washed my hands for ten minutes after wards.

"What did she say?"

Today I had to explain a "that's what she said" joke to a French guy and an Iranian. I don't think they appreciated it as much as I did. Many times regional humor doesn't transfer over and it makes me a little sad. It'll take some times but I'll indoctrinate them to say the same awful jokes that Americans use to amuse themselves on a daily basis.

Speaking of America, I made an American pizza for lunch today. Swedish pizza has thin crust and weird toppings. Also I don't know how to make them that way. Neither American off hand but I looked up some crust recipes and had at it. Let me tell you everyone on my floor was stunned when they saw me at work. Mostly because I've never cooked/baked that much here, but it was something that sort of took up all the kitchen. Our kitchen isn't that big for the 15 residents living there. It turned out okay for my standards but everyone that tried some liked it. I put pepperoni, olives, and mushrooms on it. I introduced black olives to some people in the process. One problem was that the pizza stuck to the pan. I didn't oil it enough, apparently. It wasn't a big deal but I know I can do it better. So in a few days I'll have another go. I've got some pictures of my pie and I'll post those later. btw, I think my camera broke a little. It doesn't show what the lens in looking at on the view screen, but it'll take pictures and put those on the view screen. When I set it to video, that'll show up as well. I'm hoping it's a minor problem.

Well, the weather's been uncooperative lately. It's been cloudy and rainy for some time. There was supposed to be a bonfire last night but it was canceled. I actually couldn't go because I got stuck doing laundry. Doing laundry takes FOR-EV-ER (name that movie). They only got 2 washing machines, one dryer, and one drying closet. I think I've mentioned this before but it deserves another rant. The first annoying this was completely my fault. I put my detergent in and my close and I pushed the button to turn it on. It turns out that I didn't push it hard enough and didn't actually turn it on. So I come back a half hour later and I find my close on top of the washer with a note stating that I forgot. When I first got down there and saw my close I thought they were washed and needed some drying. They felt dry when i touched them and thought the washer was working really well. Then I saw the note and got a little mad. Why couldn't the person just start the washer? They were nice enough to write a note, so why couldn't they be nice the other way? I'll tell you. Getting laundry done in that place is a battle. If someone takes too long or doesn't use the machines properly they close are out of there. Another girl came down one time and found her clothes on top of the dryer. They were in the drying and drying, but for some reason, someone took her clothes out to dry their clothes. It could have been that the dryer stopped before the clothes were dry. This dryer is the worst possible dryer on the face of the earth, or at least I'm pretty sure. I gets the clothes really hot but it doesn't seem to do that much. I had clothes in the dryer and drying closet and I keep taking close out of the dryer to put in the closet to dry them faster. I rambling because it took me 5 hours to do three loads of wash. FIVE of them. Actually 6 and a half if you count the first time I put my clothes in a washer. I really hate doing laundry here. If they were American sized washer I could probably fit it all in one load and be done in a little over an hour. This country doesn't have laundromats either.

Now I'm a little tired cause I had a group project meeting this morning and lots of American pizza in my belly. I'll go read stuff now hopefully go to bed early.

How many states in the USA? No way!!!

I've asked a ton of foreigners a very simple question and have repeatedly gotten the wrong answer. And it's the same wrong answer given by Australians, Germans, Portuguese, and more. My simple question is how many states are there in the United States of America. Unsurprisingly, Americans seem to be the only ones who know the correct answer (I had no idea that Australia had 6 until recently but I don't care though and neither should I because it doesn't affect me), but the surprising part is how adamant the foreigners are at professing their correctness. The number of states they say is 52. It blows there mind that the actual number is so round. I had a discussion late last Friday about this. Unfortunately I didn't have a map so we searched the entire building till we found this tiny German world atlas. My rivals counted the number of states a few times before they said they had to consult the internet. They were apparently too tired at the time to trust their data collecting skills. I still don't see how they all said the same number. I'm wondering if there's an American television show they've all seen that taught them wrong. It sort of blows my mind how they all say 52.

Saturday something very cool/American happened in the streets of Jonkoping. There was a cruise of old american cars. A cruise is when a bunch of cars usually numbered in the hundreds take over the streets to show off. This cruise included old American cars for the 60's. I knew it was coming but until one of my flat mates yelled down the hall about the goings on. A few grabbed chairs and headed to the street. It was pretty cool. Lots of old chevys, a few muscle cars, and maybe two or three European cars. A few of us wanted to be part of the action so we kept asking for rides. It took awhile but we got a nice couple to let us sit in the back of a cool sea-foam green chevy convertible. We were essentially in a parade, waving and being waved at. It was smashing. While we were in the back seat I was interpreter between the Swedes and my friends. They told me that there were 200 cars in this cruise and they get only one day a year to show them off properly. It was a pretty cool thing to be apart of.

I think I'm finally over my illness. Which reminds me: I came home for lunch today and when I walked into the kitchen I found that our garbage was leaking something kind of liquid that had crawled over half of the floor. There was also a couple of people in the kitchen preparing food and barely acknowledging it. I went straight to the garbage and took it out and proceeded to mop. I was sort of in a bad mood before this because my roommate lost his key to our room and we can't lock it cause he needs to get in too, and I had found out that the key copy place won't copy our keys. I was also in a frustrated mood earlier because I'm in a newly formed group that will present an IT innovation, the whole class does it, but I was the fifth guy in our group of 5 friends who need to get with another group. this is fine with me but the group that I with now works a different way that I do. We had a meeting on our project and just about nothing got done in half an hour. Anyway, the floor got clean no thanks to the others living there.

A couple photos

From left to right: two Iranians, Leila and Nahim, a German girl, Julia, and a Mexican named Mary. The Iranians live on my floor, the german from two floors up and Mary lives 20 minutes away by bus.

From Jonkoping

Here are some friends of mine. Tsiory from France and Benny from Germany. We're at the lake enjoying good weather.

From Jonkoping

Cheers

For lunch today I ate at a place where the Swedes think is better than McDonalds. It's called Max Hamburgare and it was terrible. The thing about hamburgers here is that every restaurant uses the same meat. Everything about it is the same: the size, taste, everything. They only change it with different toppings. There must be one company supplying the meat for hamburgers in all the non-fancy restaurants. Although the hamburgers in the nice restaurants fail to compare with a nice Carl's Jr. 6 dollar burger. With this in mind I've vowed to show my flatmates what a real American hamburger tastes like. I'm going to get a bucket grill from Ikea, season the meat of my choosing, grill it up, maybe saute some mushrooms and onions, and feast.

You know I was looking at some of my earlier posts and I've noticed that my writing was fairly poor and I want to address this. You see there aren't very many native English speakers here and we have people from all over the world with many many accents which makes understanding English some what of a challenge. So what I've noticed is that I've unconsciously dumbed-down the way I speak: taking out the idioms, using smaller words, using five words when I would usually use ten. That sort of thing. But now I'm trying to get back to my normalcy. Maybe teach some of my friends how we really speak in USA.

Another thing someone brought up was the most of the Americans here aren't what they expected us to be like. There's a girl from Texas on the floor below me and she was described as being very American. And I asked the person making this comment why they didn't think that I was "very American"? The reply was that I didn't act like what they saw in the movies and American television. I still haven't met this person from Texas but my knowledge of people from that state gives me a few hints as to why I may not seem as American. Also I don't think that average Americans study abroad. When I told everyone that education was free here they were blown away. I guess it's not common knowledge. But there's still the fact that schools in the United States are some of the best in the world. Many people I've met here agree completely that the schools in the US are dominant.

Another 2 cents. This school teaches in English, right? Most of the teachers here are Swedish. But their English isn't as good as I would expect it to be. I'm making a higher standard for professors. They translate many phrases directly from Swedish and it doesn't work all of the time. And pronunciation sometimes sounds like someone scratching their nails on a chalkboard. Take the word diameter for instance. During one lecture this word was used fairly often but the teacher put the emphasis on the first "e": diamEter. It may be a regional thing but it drove me crazy that day. Normally I wouldn't care so much but these are my teachers teaching complex ideas to multicultural students who will learn how to say these words and phrases this way and perpetuate false grammar. Such is life I suppose.

I was going to put some photos up but another problem with this university is that when everyone is on the internet it gets a bit slow. I'll get it done some other time.

It's almost made up

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 8,378 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Still Cruizin

I can't believe it's September already. Time has flown by. It feels like I've been in Sweden for months, like I've figured out most things already. The days here have been fun like last Saturday we experienced the best weather here. The sun was shining with hardly any wind so my flatmates and I spent the entire day outside. It started at the farmers market where I got some nice pastries, then we went out to lunch at a nice place close to the lake where we ate outside, had some nice hamburgers, and just chilled for a while. We checked out the lake after that and just enjoyed being outside.

I think Monday I went to play tennis with one of the guys on my floor. He's really good at tennis and has been an instructor at times. In Sweden if one wants to play tennis or basketball or just about anything one must rent a court or something to play. I like the american style where there are places to play sports everywhere. Tennis was fun but i think I strained a muscle in my leg. it's not bad. That night there was a pajama party at a sports bar not far where i live. It wasn't the best party but I had lots of fun.

it's about time for me to go. Until next time...

Makin sweet sweet music

So yesterday a German friend of mine, Benny, and I went to a music instruments store a few yards away from our dwelling and walked away with some stuff. Benny bought his very first guitar and I bought a nice pair of bongo drums. We rock. On our floor there are actually a lot of people who play guitar so Benny thought of this as an opportunity to learn, something he's always wanted to do. I agreed with him and helped him pick out a guitar. The guitar he got was a Hohner which is a german company and it came with a book to learn guitar which teaches in both english and german. It was meant to be. The guitar also came with a harmonica and one of the those things that goes around one's head to hold the harmonica up to the mouth handsfree. It's pretty rad. So I've taken it upon myself to help teach Benny and he's doing very well for owning a guitar for less than a day.

My bongos are sweet. I tend to play a lot of tahitian beats on it but it works and it sounds very cool. Our floor now has plans to play on the streets and get some money. It's gonna happen as soon as my voice comes back. I'm still pretty sick but slowing getting better. A Thai friend gave me some Thai medicine and I think it's working. I think I'll be good in a couple of days.

It's sunny today, btw.

Sickly frustratind day (and its only noon)

I am sick. I think I have one of those sinus headaches or something. It's pretty stuffed up in there. It even hurts if I roll my eyes too far to the left or right. And I'm not sure if I've mentioned that I have a new roommate but yeah, not more privacy. It's okay the guy seems okay. He's from Scotland and sometimes he's hard to understand. Yesterday he was asking me something along the lines of whether it was hard rain coming down or not. He had to rephrase his question a couple of times before I understood. I am sort of sick so I blamed it on that.

So guess what, I outside the place where I'm supposed to show my documents to prove I'm here but they closed at 11 this morning. This is pretty lame. Oh and I had to get my password validated again. It apparently expired yesterday. Luckily I got to the help desk before the rush. It still took like an hour to get it done.

It's sunny today. maybe I'll go and lay in it somewhere. That's what the swedes do but it's only in the mid 60's.

I'm going to start taking more pictures. I hadn't really cause there's a bunch of Asians covering that but I'll post some soon. I promise.

Cloudy times in Jonkoping

So I've been around a bit. I've figured out how to do most everything that I need to. I even got my computer fixed. Yeah, you didn't know? It broke on my way over here. Luckily there's a mac place here in this town that told me how to get it fixed. My hard drive broke some how so I lost all my data, so i had to buy a new hard drive and have that mac store install it. There was a store around the corner to buy a new hard drive so it worked out. I cost me about 1000 kronor which is about $120. Not bad. I also knew someone with Leopard for my OS so I got that rolling now. So I'm typing on my computer which is a lot easier than the weird Swedish ones with extra letters and different spacing.

My schedule is pretty sweet so far. Classes are only on Monday and Tuesday and the rest of the week is free. I'm sure I'll get a lot busier as the year goes on but it's pretty nice not to have anything substantial to do today. It's a good thing too because I, along with most of everyone on my floor, am sick with a bad cold. And on top of that my legs are pretty sore from playing soccer on Monday. I don't play soccer or really run at all and me being American and trying my hardest not to look like a complete fool I ran as hard and long as I could to help my team. My team lost but it was fun. Some of those swedes are really good. Two days later and I still sore. To add a little bit more to that: I did my laundry yesterday. here's the situation. The Delta house is where I live and it is newly renovated office made into student housing. Making an office building into a resident building takes some changing. One of those is the drainage. In the Delta house we have two washers and in the morning when people are showering, others doing their laundry, and everything else, the water can't drain properly so it pools in our laundry room and this happened a few days ago and they shut down our laundry room. Plan B is to do laundry over at an adjacent building's facilities. And this is what I did yesterday but this involves taking the elevator to level 1, walk through their corridor, turn into this green house looking building that connects the two dwellings, head down another set of stairs, down a long hallway to get to the laundry facilities. It takes a bit of time to get there and it really sucks when you have sore legs and coming down with a cold. I found out too that the washing machines take like two hours to complete and they're really small and there a lot of people that want to use them. laundry is not fun here.

At this very moment I'm at school in the business building. I'm here on an errand to show the school that I actually belong here by showing them my transcript, passport and other things. The weird thing is that it is now 3:14 in the afternoon on a Wednesday and I missed the office hours. The office closes at 2:30 and I missed it by 15 minutes. I think this is ridiculous. Every where in this school has very short office hours, like a three hour window. It's hard to get things done here. I'll just come back tomorrow.

So I got a new roommate the other day. I had lived in my room for over a week without a roommate and I was getting pretty used to it. Then one day while riding my bike home I found some of my flat mates who told me that I was no longer alone in my room. I was a little disappointed but it's alright. The guy is named Euene from Scotland. I really haven't talked to him much but he seems alright. He moved in Monday and I don't think he's unpacked yet. I'm sure it'll all work out.

So nothing too exciting, I'm sure this post is rather boring but if you've made it this far, thanks for reading.

I made it!

Okay, ya'll. I made it to Sweden but it was one of the longest, most stressful trips that I have ever taken. Getting to Sweden wasn't bad it was taking the train from Stockholm to Jönköping that was horrible. First of all I brought way too much stuff with me, much more than everyone else from out of the country. This is how it went: I had a big suitcase (70 lbs) that everyone has and a rolling carry on (40 lbs)like a normal person, but I also had a travel backpack (50 lbs) and a bike case for my bike (65 lbs and large and awkward). This is a lot of stuff to be dragging around a big train station. So much in fact that I had to have help from very nice swedish people to take my stuff from one floor to the next because all of my stuff wouldn't fit in the elevator at the same time. And on the trains there isn't really a good place to put all this stuff so they were in the way of most people so I sat and watched my things when I was super tired from traveling and would've just rather've slept. But I made it and have gone through the introductory week which consisted of a lot of partying and boring lectures to get us ready for what is to come. My first class starts tomorrow and it's my only class for the week. I only have'em on mondays and tuesdays. so it should be alright.

Everything moves slow here in sweden in reference to paper work. it's going to take a week for me to open a bank account, and three weeks to reissue my personal number (ss # in the states)They're still doing minor construction in our appartment too that is taking way too long. I still don't have a place to do my laundry yet.

Sweden isn't a bad place. It's been really fun so far but we'll see how things are when classes start.

2 More Weeks!

hello readers. Guess what! I've got two more weeks in this country till I head over to Sweden for s'more school. Time flows by like a ranging river sometimes. And yes, I'm looking forward to it but also a little nervous/scared and stuff. There's a bunch of stuff that needs to happen before my nerves settle down a bit. First of all I need to sell my car. Btw, the same day as my last post I tried to roll my window up by pushing the button and it sounded like it was going to go up but no, and now it cost me about $500 to fix it. Geez. Couldn't it've waited a few weeks. I don't really mean that. It would be cruel for whoever buys this car. If anyone of you out there in internet land would like a different car you can buy my '98 Audi A6 from me. It's a great car; my favorite one that I've ever owned in fact.

The second thing that needs to happen is actually traveling over to Sweden. I've done this a couple of times before and I've glad I have because I know what I need to do to ge where I'm going. But i also know that it's going to be a huge pain. You see, I like to ride bicycles and I want to bring one with me when I move. The thing is if I want to ship it, it'll cost me more that it did to fix my car window. And if I bring it with me on the plane it'll cost a lot less but would mean that I would have to drag it in its bike case along with my suit cases from the airport on a subway car to the train station, through the train station to get my ticket, then to the train platform, then onto the train, then off the train in Jonkoping. That might not sound like much but remember I'm dragging pretty much everything I'm moving to Sweden with. It's a lot. And this is probably what I'll have to do. Not really looking forward to that.

After that just settling in and hopefully I can get a job over there while I'm in school. And hoping that my swedish comes back to me. I've been brushing up a little and I'm amazed at how much I've forgotten. It's coming though.

On a different note I'm finally back to the cycling weight that I was at before my accident which is about 155 lbs. Although a week after my accident, surgeries and other sufferings I was all the way down to 143 lbs. Getting hit by a car is a great way to loose weight.

Another note. I've been wearing contacts for the first time in my life starting from the middle of last week and I've never seen as clear as I do while wearing my glasses. I'm going in tomorrow to see what they can do. It's just a little frustrating, that's all.

Weird day

Okay, it's been awhile. I know. And there's been a lot that's happened too, but I really don't want to reach that far back in my mind to type everything noteworthy. As for today, however, I feel fine about explaining. Today was a little unusual. It started out fine; I went for a bike ride like i usually do. A 25 miler that I try to do a few times a week. I saw a group of emergency vehicles while out. They were surrounding an accident. One that involved a compact truck and a motorcycle. It looked bad. The moment i saw it I remembered what it was like when the few times I had been in the focus of those vehicles. The emotions flooded back. It was kind of weird. I kept going and made it back home fine. Watched a little of the Tour and was about to go and get my car washed when it started raining, hard. I didn't think much of it till I got out of the shower, walked downstairs to the basement where my room was, opened the door and saw water pouring out of the window. I immediately closed the window and tried to grab anything valuable off the ground. Mind you I was completely naked while frantically searching for things. A few electronics got wet. I'll try them later when I know that they're completely dry.

At that moment I didn't have time to do anything about the water because I had an appointment with an optometrist. I finally entered the world of contact lenses. Right now that world kind of sucks. I'm really terrible at taking them out. I was staring at the bathroom mirror for the last few minutes trying to take them our. I'm doing alright at putting them in but taking them out is a bitch. It's still an exciting world; I'm looking forward wearing sun glasses while cycling and such, but I'll be glad when I'm better at this stuff.

So I get home and the work starts. We pulled out a wet vac to try and suck as much water out as we could. It got a bunch out. I must have filled the thing up a couple of times. That thing sucks well. Right now we have a few fans trying to blow some the rest of the water away. I hope they blow as well as the vac sucked.

I got another scar. Well, a potential scar, probably two. Last week I was up in park city with my family for a week. I went down the Alpine slide way too fast, approached a tight turn, and when I went through it I went too high and rolled out of the sled. I slid for a while till I could get back in but by that time I had some good burns on my left arm. All my other scars on my right arm. You could say that I've got a lot of work to do to even the arms out.

so there you have it. Everything I want to type right now. btw, check out the new batman movie, it's ill.

Best Boise Bevy Broadcast

It's finally June. There's some great stuff about June. First of all it was my last day of work at Hartvigsen on June 5. They totally get a summer break. It'll be my last day of work for a long time; I don't know when my next job will be, seriously. In a couple of months I'll be off to Sweden for 2 years and I don't know if I'll work there. I would like to, but only Sweden knows for sure. So yeah, I'm unemployed. It feels wonderful. So what am I going to do with all my extra time, you ask? Well, I'll get to that later. I'm still writing about June, remember? Another glorious thing that happened on June 5 was that it was my two year anniversary for when I dangerously hit a van and severely injured myself. I was feeling pretty crappy that day with a headache so I didn't do anything to celebrate. I should've the next day (yesterday) but that day was another special day. It was my brother's last day here before he left to go report for active duty or something. He recently graduated from the ROTC and now he has to do real work. June 21 is also my birthday, btw.

Back to my brother. His name is Greg. And since he'll lose a few freedoms doing army stuff full time he wanted to do some stuff before he got reeled in. One of those was to go to Boise to visit his best friend from high school. His name is Robby. So one Sunday Greg left and I wanted to go with. We have a brother that lives in Boise to. His name is Nick. Got all the names straight yet? good. Cause I'll stop all that. It's annoying me too. Alright. So we drive up there Sunday night, we see Robby first, then I get dropped off at Nick's cause that's where I want to sleep. I got the couch which really screwed up my back, just a little. But most people work Mondays, but not Robby, so we go dirt bike riding that Monday. Here's some pics:



That's Greg and Robby.



Robby



This is me, and let me explain some things. I was not expecting to go dirt biking that day. That is the reason that I am wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I had to borrow shoes from Robby cause I didn't know what we were doing. All my stuff was at Nick's and we didn't want to go back to his house to my stuff. I didn't even bring pants. Anyway, check out the wicked air I got on that little bike.



Okay. I crashed once. I was going off a jump, hit the breaks a little hard because there was a turn a little after one lands, and I hit some loose dirt right there too. I'm also not that experienced on dirt bikes. I had a ton of fun though. There was something good that came out of my fall. Because I didn't want to ride anymore I was able to take a bunch of pics and video of the other guy's stuff. We made a movie out of it too. We did it on Greg's computer and since it was his he made it crappy. I got the same clips on my computer and I'll make it super awesome and I'll post it here later. That is, if I have time.

That day after the dirt bike riding we also did some awesome stuff. We got cleaned up and went go kart riding. Something that I could do well. Not as well at Robby; he was a member at this place, but I kicked Greg's butt pretty hard. I also got some of the top lap times in that place for the month and stuff. It was fun and we were the only three riding. We didn't see anyone else go through those doors. After that we went to old childhood favorite PoJo's. It's an arcade place where we used to go when we were kids. Oh, yeah, I should mention that my family used to live in Boise for a couple of years. We were like the only people there at PoJo's too, which makes it kinda fun too. We all put $10 down and it lasted a couple of hours. I got a stuffed dolphin with my tickets. I think I left it in Greg's car, and now he took off with it (son of B!tch).

The day after that it was raining, and hard at that. But that didn't discourage us; not at all. We went frolfing (Frisbee Golfing) at a course they got there at a park. We hadn't done it before so we did then. We went and got the special frisbees, which are a bit different to throw than normal frisbees. So I really sucked at it. the worst by far out of the three of us (Nick is still working). I'd like to blame it on the fact that I crashed the previous day and my arm was a bit swollen and it hurt a little to throw the thing. So this park has ditches and things where our frisbees went a few times. It was all good though, it was part of the fun:



That's Greg getting his frisbee.

We all got emergency ponchos on too. I'm Red, Greg was Blue, and Robby had Yellow. What better way to attention as newbies. robby kicked butt at frolfing, btw.

After that we were hungry and what better place to go than a place that serves 1 pound burgers. You know, one of those places where if you finish your meal you get your picture on the wall. And yes, I finished my burger, but sadly didn't finish my fries.







Notice the difference in my brother Greg before and after. I think I could've finished my fries if we sat there long enough, but Greg wanted to do more dirt bikin before we left, that day.

Let me remind you that it was raining hard most of the day. So we got to the place where we were to ride, almost got stuck in some puddles, started heading back, got blocked by some cows crossing the road, see an opening in the clouds, and head back to the spot. I need to explain that Greg used to have a dirt bike but recently sold it and bought a bullet bike. He really missed his bike and really wanted to get it back but knew he couldn't ride much in the military or the base he was going to something. So he was a little more excited to ride than anyone else. There was some cool rainbow action going on too. No, not what you think. Well here:







Nick was there this time and he rode a bike for his very first time. I didn't ride though. We were heading back to Salt Lake and I didn't want to get muddy. There were more pictures takes but my battery died the pics were all on Robby's camera, we gave it back to him through windows of two moving cars. Awesome.

So we dropped Nick back at his place, I borrowed the first season of Dexter on DVD, which I finished last night. And left for Salt Lake. Good trip.

Good news all around

Again, it's been awhile since my last post and I apologize. There's been some really great things that have happened but I'll start where I left off. I believe the last chapter in this series was when I was down in St. George going to see a WMMF show. So here it goes. We drove to Vegas for the show. Nice drive. We were all prepared to find where the show was going to be at. We were totally expecting a concert with a lot of people being there and according to google maps we drove into this little coldisac where there were a few people standing around and hardly any parking. This couldn't've been the place. So we scramble to find an internet connection which led us to a casinio where I had to dish out some money to one of those kiosks that charge an insane amount of money for the time you get. So I'm looking up the concert and I'm not finding a thing. No where was it posted that What Made Milwaukee Famous was playing in Vegas that day. so I keep checking and clicking on everything that led me to believe that there was a show at all and the more I read the more I thought that we were at the right place that that this was going to be a special show. We head back and we see a group of people dressed in black and we talked to them to get the down low. It turned out we were in the right place and the show was going to start in an hour or so. The show was actually a live internet broadcast. About a half hour before the show we go in and we were the only people there not the band or the stage hands. It felt weird. Others showed up a few minutes the thing started but the total fans not working or playing on stage was 7. SEVEN! It was awesome. It was like a private show just for us. We were standing feet from them playing with no chance of people standing in our way (except for the camera people). The best show ever. They played for about an hour, all their best songs, and afterward they all came over and talked with us that were watching the show. We had real conversations with them. The drummer took me on stage to show me his drum set that he bought a few months before, which was his first pro drum set. Here's some pics:





After the show Ashlee puked at In & Out Burger and we headed back to St. George where my car hit the 100,000 mile mark.

My grandfather's wife finally showed up after about a 2 years wait. She had to get her citizenship stuff in order cause she Filipino and they got married in the Philippines. Lots of forms and what not. When she got here she was really shy. It must be a big culture shock to move like that. I'm sure this was her first time here in the US of A. They stayed a few days then left for the warm weather of Las Vegas. The same day they moved out I took over the room. I cleaned and painted it the very same day



and it so far looks like this:



It's cozy and I like it.

There was an 80's party last weekend that was fun. My neighbor, Ashlee, graduated from college and this was part of her celebration:



check out my jacket. I got it at savers and look a bunch of white out to it. The skull on the back turned out amazing. I even surprised myself it was so good.





After the party we wanted to strut around in public so we went to a local Leatherby's to show us off. The whole place was staring at us. It was fun. A great night.







Some good news that I've been looking forward to for a while now was received last Wednesday. I was accepted to grad school in Sweden this fall. I was super nervous about it, but I got in and all is well. I'll be heading there in August. But first I need to apply for a student visa which can take months to get so I really need to send stuff into the Swedish embassy as soon as I can. But yeah, I'll be living in Sweden for a couple of years. You all have to come and visit me while I'm there.

Well, I'm off to a soccer game in a few hours and then to a comedy show. Should be another good weekend.