Queen of Rambles

One of Mike’s long-time co-workers is getting married and we were invited. It’s actually quite an honor to be invited to this wedding because they are both from here and have tons and tons of relatives and life long friends so there wasn’t a lot of room for co-workers to attend. In fact, only two people from the company were invited.

I’ve been informed that I’m to take a picture of the bride and groom so it can go in the company newspaper. I’d been debating taking the camera so I guess this settles the debate. On the one hand, I want to practice my photography skills and take lots of people pics. I much prefer people pics. On the other hand, I’ll only know 4 people at the wedding so why do I want pics of perfect strangers? Then I was thinking I could just be a good Samaritan and take lots of pics of everyone, upload them to a place that makes digital prints, and e-mail the address to the happy couple so they could get print outs of any that they want. Maybe that’s a little forward of me, but I am a pretty good photographer (better than your average untrained Joe Schmoe with a camera but certainly not professional). Then I decided not to do that since I don’t like the bride.

I really don’t want to go to this wedding simply because I don’t care for the bride (and I know the evening will be conducted in Swedish so that’s pretty boring). Mike says she’s just a shy woman but I think she’s a snob. I’ve met here on a few occasions and she’s never said so much as “boo” to me. One time they were at my house and she wouldn’t speak to me. I even tried to speak Swedish even though I suck at it, but she just stared at me like I’d grown a third boobie that was popping out of my shirt. That was the moment I decided I didn’t like her. I was making the effort and I’m very shy, especially around Swedes. She couldn’t even respond to my comment? I know my Swedish sucks, but generally my words are understandable (except when I’m trying to say cow. For some reason it always comes out “cock” so now I refuse to say “cow” around anyone other than Mike).

Plus I think I’m a little petty. These people were invited to our wedding and didn’t even send us a card! Now we have to go out and be polite and buy them a nice gift? I guess we don’t have to, but I would feel like a heel if we didn’t. I told Mike he would have to take care of it himself because I was going to give them exactly what they gave us. It’s not that I’m a materialistic gift monger, but I just feel like if we aren’t even important enough to send a card to why should they be important enough to buy a nice gift for? Luckily Annica saved the day. She’s totally into glassware and had picked up a few half-price fancy-schmancy glass bowls on her vacation with the intent of giving them out as gifts. She sold me one at cost so we have a very nice gift that was pretty cheap. Yes, I’m petty. It’s a nice bowl though. In fact, I contemplated keeping it and getting them something else, except it will not be easy to transport a big glass bowl over to the US.

On a more positive note. . .

Another long-time worker buddy of Mike’s came over to visit tonight. He quit his job and started university about the time I moved here so I never really got to see he and his wife much. His wife doesn’t really speak English and she’s a busy woman (3 kids and a full time job) but even so I really like her. I think if they would have lived in town we could have become friends. Not hanging out type friends like Annica and I do, but couple friends that have little get togethers on occasion. We had a really good time tonight with a mix of languages. I’m sort of scaring myself because I was able to follow along with everything that was being said without too much confusion. I just wish it didn’t take so long for me to express a thought in Swedish. I understand the vocabulary but don’t do well at thinking up the words I need right away. Add that to the pressure of conjugating verbs, adding the right endings, figuring out the word order, and just generally being grammatically correct and I’ve got a big problem when it comes to speaking. Apparently I was calling Mike “she” all night.

And finally, a follow-up. . .

Remember when I wrote about all sorts of graffiti about rape and sexual sadists? Apparently the person doing all this writing is out on a mission. Every day we run across more and more little snippets written by this guy (gal) and every day they make less and less sense (assuming it’s the same person. They have the same handwriting and same style). I can’t remember all of the new ones, but one says that the maternity ward question (they took the maternity ward out of Kiruna and it’s a huge issue) is all the fault of “GB f*ck ice cream” GB being a brand of ice cream. There’s another one that says everyone who works for the social services is a sexual sadist. And finally we have one that says the big hotel here in town has secret toilet videos available at the front desk. Now I’m walking around looking for graffiti just so I can try to puzzle out what the person is talking about.

That’s about it I guess. I didn’t do any exercise at all today and now I’m mad at myself. I was feeling feverish and sick so thought I could skip a work out but now I’m not convinced I’m really sick. I think maybe I’m lazy. Or maybe I have a bladder infection. I’ve had to pee every five minutes all day today and that just doesn’t seem normal. I guess if that continues I’ll have to visit the doctor. They’ll probably just tell me I drink too much water since they don’t believe in drinking water here in Sweden. Even Annica was telling me about the evils of drinking too much water. It will throw your salt balance out of whack and you’ll pee your pants if you drink too much water. Whatever. That would have to be a heckuvalota water intake me thinks.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2003 at 11:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.