First one in Sweden

Okay. Not really sure what happened the last time I wrote something here and I'm too lazy to look up the last thing. So I'm gonna just get going with this and update stuff a little and hopefully they don't overlap too much. So I'm happily married to Sara Anna Fransson. She's awesome. She's my best friend and we have shit loads of fun together. We lived in the States for a few years and helped with my family while my went through the process of having cancer and eventually dying from it. It was a sad time. Got to see my family though. My older brother, Nick, was down in Salt Lake City for a month. Which is super cool cause he hardly ever gets down there. My Mother died on September 11. And if was aweful. The night before was one of the most tramatic in my life. Not going to talk about it but it was hard and life changing. Any way, not long after that we decided to move back to Sweden and start a family and take advantage of what Sweden has to offer. Sara moved sometime during the fall. I moved back to parents place where Aled and Blair still live. It was cool to be with family a little bit before I move across the ocean. It gave me time to save up some money and get things ready. After I quite my job I went to Vegas with Greg, Seb, Nick, and Wade for 5 days. Best Vegas trip yet. Those guys know how to have a great time. So not long after that I moved to Sweden. I've been here for a little over a month now, living in Lidkoping, and so far I really like it. I now have time to really ride my bike with is great cause I gained a bunch of pounds around my body. Rode my bike only like 6 miles a day and ate microwaveable food for four months in a row. Not quite the picture of health that we were living before. I'm also meeting Sara's family again, which is fun. Although they all have their own ways of talking. Sara's dad has a hard time hearing and talks really loud. Jacob talks really fast and mumbles. Berto is by the far the worst. I should say hardest to understand. Telephones scare me to death. It's not easy to get going with a new language. I have to think of everything twice, if not more times to make sure I understand. Sometimes it doesn't go at all. Anyways, it can be hard. I did want to mention some things that I've noticed that are a bit different than the great United States of America. At least I wanted to try to remember what I had been thinking of. I've been wanted to write this shit down but just haven't. Lazy I guess. So here in Sweden the humidity is very high. Okay, so went for my first ride outside on my bike out to a small castle that was 25 kilometers away. It wasn't rainy out there but it was cloudy and the roads were wet. I figured that they would dry up. It was fucking day time. But Sweden was a different beast. I didn't put my rain pants on. So I go out to ride and the wind is pushing me away from home. Nice and fast ride out there. On my way back the wind was pushing hard and my ass got soaked with the freezing water off the road. This ride was goes up on the wall as one of the most miserable rides that I have ever done. It was so so hard. I was wishing I was home at the 2/3 part of the ride and the rest of the way was fucking hell. I was cold, tired, not sure how far to go against a relentless wind that did not want me to get home. Eventually I got there, which felt like an eternity. and stipped off all my clothes. while I was riding my bike my ass hurt but I thought that it was because it was cold and wet. It turned out that somehow it broke the skin. Not really sure how that happend. Maybe it was a small case of frostbite or something. When I was showering my ass hurt really bad. The hot water stung like a bee in the sape of a the saddle on the bike. After the shower I got to see in the mirror and I could see there was a white mark on my ass in the shape of the saddle and on the lower left and right sides there was some scabs on the outline. The white marks cleared up the day after, but the scabs took a week or so to go away. So my point to all this is that the humidity in this country sucks when you want to ride your bike and it'll bit you in the ass. I've also noticed that I have yet to find a bar to hang out at. Here they like to have nice places were you can feel a bit of luxory. So the places that I have been to so far aren't that expensive, have been nice places, but not the type that you would sit with your friends and really laugh. It's sort of hard to explain. I guess one way to explain it is that you would feel the need to dress sort of nice to go to these places. Where at a normal bar you could just go cause you wanted a drink with your friends and relax. So here you have to choose between a fancy bar which I feel is for adults of all ages, or a dance club if you wanted to pick up on people. No place in between. So if you don't want to do those two things then there are dinner parties. I got to cook for one of these not long after I had arrived. I made some kick-ass general tso's chicken and noodles. But these seem formal in a way. I'm at my own place (our own place) and I have to put on a nicer shirt and serve people. What the hell happened to just relaxing with people. I feel things here are a little too formal. We'll see how I deal with this or how crazy I'll become. Who knows. An update might be written here. Who knows indeed. I can't think of anything else at the moment. I had lists in my head, but now it's too late. Laziness strikes again. You may be wondering how I finally took the time to start writing these things now. That is a great question. the answer to this is because I'm sitting in a cafe at the moment waiting for Sara who is now undergoing an interview for a job a little ways down the street. I'm here in Stockholm now and it's March now. And no one told this place that it can stop snowing. For reals. Come on. Winter sucks, and I know I moved to a nordic country, but really? Back in Lidkoping it's about spring now. No snow and the weather gets up to 10 degrees Celcius. I was going to walk around Stockholm a little but all that damn snow pushed me into this nice little cafe with internet access. So yeah. If Sara gets this job we'll be moving to Stockholm, which I am over the moon over if she gets it. Firts of all, it's a bit more international here so I would hopefully find some North Americans. Also I would have a better chance of finding a job. And there's just more shit we could do. There's also the public transportation here that rocks. We wouldn't have to buy a car for the foreseeable future. I hate taking care of cars. They cost soo much and the expenses never seem to end. I love bikes. They're simple, I can fix them, great exercise, you can never take life fast and strenuous, and life seems more fun and enjoyable on a bike. Unless it bites you in the ass, which it very well can do. Be careful. The company that she's applying for is called Fritiden, which is one of those places that provide labor for companies. The place people in jobs for companies. I can't for the life of me remember what they're called right now. But what she would be doing is to get companies on board with them. Say a company needs an architect to architect stuff or a butler to butle. They could go to this company and say what they need, get the peronel that they wanted for the project, pay the Fritiden for what they got, and Fritiden would pay the wages, the benefits and all that paperwork to the proper authorities. Which replaces some of the stuff that HR would do, including the interviewing time and advertising the empty slot, etcetera. So she's in a unique position where she's a swede who hs some good selling experience. Hard selling experience. Sweden doesn't really push stuff on customers so much. So whe n they are asked to, I don't think many swedes would be comfortable in such a position. Sara's good on the phone and knows how to get to people, on a personal level where she can convince people of stuff. Anyways, she'll be great at this job if she gets it. I'm really hoping she does. It'd be nice to get going with life a little bit. Things would be going a little faster here. Here at this cafe Total Eclipse of the Heart is playing and it's the second time I've heard it today. I havenb't hear that song in years. Just wanted to mention it. Also I'm seeing some spelling errors on here and that's partly due to the thing in the corner that where I can't see what I'm typing. It just covers it up and sometimes I make mistakes and I can't see them when I'm writing and when I get passed it I don't want to go back and fix it, although it does piss me off a bit. So I think that may be good for now. I feel that you are a bit caught up now. Ask away if you have any questions.