Hello Internet,

No idea when I posted something last so here's a quick update on what's up now: thesis work is going on with Amin, a Moroccan guy, who is assigned as my thesis partner cause JIBS is too cheap to let me write it by myself (probably a good thing, though), I'm dating a very lovely Swedish girl, Sara, with whom I'm madly in love with, and I found out my mother is in the hospital with a blood infection and double pneumonia. I think my mom will be okay though. It was really bad; she almost died cause her oxygen levels were dangerously low. She's been in the hospital since friday (now tuesday) and hopefully she was being released today if some of her test's results turned out the way they are supposed to. These types of disorders usually happen to really old or really young people, or people with cancer or aids or some other immune system bad thing. I found out that she was there yesterday from my brother, greg, while he was driving from SLC to Colorado. A little upset that the news didn't come to me sooner, but I'll live with it.

As you know Easter is coming up soon and I'll be celebrating it with Sara and her family up in Lidkoping. Her dad will be back from Afghanistan with his girlfriend, Suzanne. I'm trying to get Mike to come up with us but he's needing time to decompress so he might not come even though there will not be many people left in this town that know him. It would be a nice relaxing vacation away from people though. And he could walk the lake to his hearts content and hopefully earn back a few belt holes. Which reminds me that I'm on a challenge to loose 5 kgs in 4 weeks. It seems like a lot to me now but I think I may pull through it. Sara and I are doing it together and if we succeed then we both will get one wish fulfilled. I still don't know what I want but it's gonna be good.

I started writing a song today, not sure if it'll go anywhere but I like it so far and the music is just about written. I hope the subject I chose will stick. I need to start writing again. That outlet needs to be re-opened. Too bad my guitar sucks here. This summer I'm trying to stay here in Sweden with Sara and maybe start a life here. If that happens then maybe I'll have my stuff shipped out here, at least my guitars. My other stuff can stay put at moms and dads, like the tv and speakers, although I would really like them here, but there that whole electricity thing that's not compatible. Stooopid voltage change.

That's that update, hopefully it was filling. I'm about to start another episode of weeds after I take my contacts out and brush my teeth.

Good night internet.

From Christmas Eve

Alright, so it's Christmas eve right now and I chose not to go home mostly due to financial reasons even though, now that I look back, I could've been back for like a month, which would've been cool, but anyway, I like it here in Sweden and I never really have any time by myself. So now I've been writing songs, cleaning the apartment, and doing what I will here. It's nice. And I'm not that lonely. I still have friends here. I'm dethawing a turkey right now for a Christmas party tomorrow. People drop by and we hang for a little while, plan trips and things. But this is the day that everyone celebrates Christmas in Sweden, meaning the Swedes. So those friends of mine that are Swedes or have Swedish boy or girl friends are out of town celebrating. I received such an invitation as well, but I chose to stay behind cause I don't want to be the guy in the corner, if you know what I mean. But I'm realizing that I miss my family, and I want to wish them a Merry Christmas! I'll call them tomorrow and see how everything's going. I hope they upload or at least share some pictures for me. Chatting with Blair now. Merry Christmas everyone!

check, it's cool

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Save Chuck!

Mystery Girl, where are you?

Hi Internet. So it's Friday and I'm fairly hungry now. On a normal Friday at this time I would usually be pretty full from going to an "after work" (a cheap buffet starting at 4 o'clock offered at a ton of restaurants and bars around town). It's 4:30, btw. But today I'm waiting for my bud, Mike, to finish his accounting exam which I really hope i soon. The test started at 2, so lets all wish him knowledge and luck.

So yesterday I was at the grocery store with my bud, Mike, looking for his dinner. I had already eaten fresh tortellini with red pasta sauce, olives, and cheese and went with friends to get an after dinner drink. We stopped at Hemkop and while there I saw this girl who kept making eye contact with me. She looked a little familiar; maybe I've seen her in my building; not sure though. Anyway, Mike and I were chatting about whatever while walking around and we saw her a bunch of times which I didn't think much of till we were leaving when I realized that I was really attracted to her. Since then she's been in the back of mind. I've got to find this girl again.

Sports Week?

Dear blogosphere. I haven't had any class this week nor will I have class due to a Swedish holiday called sports week. Not really sure it's a holiday, but I'm loving it. It seems my program is the only one who's celebrating it though, which means everyone else has class which also means that there aren't many people who are celebrating with me. Not that I'm doing anything for this week besides being lazy. I would like to imagine that I would sport it up were it not due to a bad right knee. It's been seriously annoying. Some days it hurts like a m@therf#$ker, and some it's fine. It's been acting like this since Paris (i.e. New Year's); very frustrating. I'm on a good streak and am being careful not to re-injure myself so I think it's best that I let myself get back to full form before I prance about doing sports like badminton and pounding shuttlecock.

But today I felt particularly lazy and feel that I need to change my ways. I was up a little past 8 this morning without an alarm clock, had a nice hot shower, and am still determined to use this day wisely. I'm going to go to the library and get some reading done and other stuff that I've been prolonging. I think I've got an appointment in the light room today, my first ever.

It is, however, snowing outside so we'll see how long this resolve lasts.

Later skater.

Missing America a Tad

A huge blow happened today. Okay, so they've got a Subway here and it's the only restaurant in the whole of Sweden that I know of that offers free refills. I love free refills. It reminds me of America. But today I found out that because of the damn taxes in this country it costs more to have fountain drinks than to sell bottles of soda. So Subway is going the cheaper route. It sucks. Free refills is probably the biggest reason I go to that restaurant. My life crumbled today.

So I cut my goatee off. Yeah, there were a group of slightly drunk people in my room that were simultaneously chanting "Cut it off". I had no choice. Right there and then it came off. The result it mixed. Everyone at the party said I looked 2 times better, but they had to. If they said anything else they would look extremely cruel. Others say I look the same, where others say that I lost my identity. As for what I think...I'm not sure. I liked it there. I liked to stroke it when trying to look contemplative. But now I don't get toothpaste on it every day. I won't grow it back. It took too long to get it where I liked it and it would be pretty ugly up until that point.

There's a bunch new people on the floor. Mostly Americans, which makes it not so cool to be an American anymore. I liked being an ambassador of some sorts but now there's a bunch of undergrad aged students from Penn State here. Yeah, they came as a group, so they came with pre-made friends. So it's been about a month and we still haven't fully integrated friendships. There a girl, Lisa (she asked for a name drop on this blog), who's cool. she's sitting on my room mates bed right now. She's one of the few who've come over to the dark side. Everyone's nice, but still acquaintances.

Classes are pretty straight forward this term. Lots of reading; need to do more, but I've been watching the Office, the American one. You know how that is. We just downloaded it. It things like that made it super hard to do homework at home. Did I tell you we got a couch in our room? People are here all the time now. It's awesome. Really, it is, most of the time. I haven't slept much in the past few nights. But one of those reasons was because we watched the superbowl which is broadcast live, but it starts at midnight and ended at 4 in the morning. We went to a sports bar to watch it. But you know how Superbowl commercials are awesome? Well, they don't broadcast them here. Instead, in place of commercials they put on three Swedes pretty much explaining the slang terms of American announcers. And no, it wasn't Ed McMann (can't spell it), they were random dudes I've never heard of. One thing about this Superbowl was that I watched most of the playoff games. I finally found a way to watch American Football. There's this torrent community that's only for American Football. It was great. I rejoiced much when I found it.

Rock band 2 is here. It only took a little over a month for it too come. But we play it tons, and piss off lots of people on our floor as well as the floor beneath. It's awesome. We've got at least 200 songs on there. It's great.

That's it for now.