Forecast

10-day forecast for Minneapolis

Mar 24                  Partly Cloudy     56°/29°

Mar 25                  Partly Cloudy     45°/25°

Mar 26                  Partly Cloudy     55°/37°

Mar 27                  Showers             54°/36°

Mar 28                  Partly Cloudy     54°/33°

Mar 29                  Partly Cloudy     58°/38°

Mar 30                  Sunny                 61°/39°

Mar 31                  Mostly Cloudy   61°/42°

Apr 01                   Partly Cloudy     59°/43°

Apr 02                   Mostly Cloudy   62°/43°

10-day forecast for Uppsala

Mar 24                  Snow Shower                28°

Mar 25                  Snow Showers               38°/31°

Mar 26                  Rain / Snow Showers     43°/31°

Mar 27                  Showers                        41°/31°

Mar 28                  Rain / Snow Showers     40°/30°

Mar 29                  Rain / Snow                   38°/27°

Mar 30                  Rain / Snow Showers     39°/27°

Mar 31                  Rain / Snow Showers     39°/27°

Apr 01                   Rain / Snow Showers    39°/28°

Apr 02                   Rain / Snow Showers    39°/28°

The punishment massage

I've been seeing a chiropractor here in Sweden.  One of the nice things about the chiropractor here in Sweden is that she isn't trying to stretch out the treatments to milk the insurance money; she fixes all of the joints that need adjusting, she shows me stretches to do to make the treatments more effective, and after adjusting my back she massages the trigger points that are causing some of the problems.
As is my general habit, I tend to run about 5 minutes late.  Then last week I missed an appointment.  It was the first night that King Gustav starting waking me up at night to pet him, and I was so tired that I slept through my alarm clock and missed my appointment.  I called a couple days later and rescheduled the appointment, and thought everything was cool.  Apparently it wasn't.
During that make-up appointment, instead of doing the trigger-point massage, the chiropractor did a different type of massage.  She said, "I'm going to do a [Swedish word] massage instead today," and started in on my back.  I don't know what Swedish word she said, but I'm pretty sure a rough translation is "painful punishment for doing something inappropriate."  It basically consisted of yanking, twisting, and pinching the skin on my back.  It was terrifically painful, and my back was sore for the next 3 days.  When I went back this week: "How did your back feel?" "Sore." "Yeah, I bet."  It was effective though; I was 5 minutes early to this appointment and definitely won't miss any more.

I've created a [love] monster

One of my goals when I adopted King Gustav was to train him to be very friendly and affectionate.  Unfortunately, I think I was TOO successful.
It started out with King Gustav sleeping at the foot of the bed and jumping on me in the morning to wake me up to feed him.  That was nice.

Soon, King Gustav was jumping into bed with me anytime he wanted some attention, waking me up a few times a night.  Then he started licking my nose and face when he wanted attention.  That was cute.  Except that he has whiskers that tickle my face.  (By the way, I now have a whole new appreciation for girls who don't like guys with facial hair.)

Now, he won't leave me alone.  He wakes me up at least 3-5 times a night begging for attention, and there is nothing I can do to get him to leave me alone.  I move him off the bed, he jumps back up.  I turn over, he jumps to the other side.  I pull the sheet over my head, he tunnels under the sheet.  All the while whisking me with those annoying whiskers. 

Absolut!

As you may or may not know, Absolut Vodka is produced in Sweden.  The Swedes are pretty proud of this fact.  According to Google Translate, the Swedish word absolut means:

adjective ABSOLUTE UTTER TEETOTAL IMPLICIT ULTIMATE IRRELATIVE ESSENTIAL UNQUESTIONING STRICT DEAD UNQUALIFIED

adverb ABSOLUTELY UTTERLY POSITIVELY DEFINITELY QUITE HEART AND SOUL FLATLY MUCH RATHER EVERY TIME VERY

Most of these make sense (in fact, adverb #6 makes you wonder if the Absolut marketing department has an inside connection at Google Translate) but adjective #3?  That doesn't seem appropriate at all.

Swedish people say "Absolut!" quite regularly, the same way that Americans would say "Exactly!" or "Perfect!"  I don't know when that started...but I wouldn't be surprised if the phrase and the vodka both became popular around the same time.

Here's the beef that I have with Absolut, though:  The picture of the bottle at the top of the page is exactly what the bottles look like here, too.  Notice anything off?  That's right, it says "IMPORTED" in big block letters at the bottom.  I mean, sure, "PRODUCED LOCALLY" doesn't have the same stylish look to it, but saying imported is a lie.  A big, bold, blocky, all-caps lie.

You know what it means when a label says "Imported" in America?  It means it was imported.  Maybe not from where you think, but it was imported.  Take, for example, Sapporo beer:

It's a little blurry, but if you look closely at the bottom line, you can read, "Brewed and bottled by Sapporo Brewing Company, Guelph, Ontario, Canada."  Why not just brew it in America?  Because we have advertising integrity and only write imported if it is imported.

On the flip side, find a can of Foster's ("Australian for beer" or, more recently, "Get some Australian in you"). You know what it doesn't say on it?  "Imported."  Ever since Miller took over the domestic brewing operations in 2007, "Foster's is freshly brewed in the U.S. at MillerCoors under the close supervision of Foster's Australia." (millercoors.com)  And since it's no longer imported, the cans no longer say imported.

A handful of random

This is the book based on the movie based on the novel.  People usually think the book was better, but what about when they write a book about a movie based on a book?  How do you even write a book based on a novel?  I'm all kinds of confused by this recursion.

I don't get it.  I mean, obviously it's a blatant contradiction in terms, but how/why did it happen?  Did some Swedish entrepreneur, about to start a restaurant, just like the sound of "soul food"?
Did he forget to do any research on the meaning of the name at all?  Or is the idea that Swedish people have no idea what "soul food" means, and so would think it's enchanting and intriguing?


There are a lot of little things that I can't find in the grocery store here.  Like malt vinegar.  And frying batter just isn't quite the same with white wine vinegar.

I made deep fried pickles today.  I don't have a deep fryer here, so I just heat up a pan of oil on the stove.  The only problem is that I don't have a temperature gauge on it, so I don't know how hot it is.  I think the oil is getting a lot hotter than usual and that's why my battered pickle slices exploded.  I don't remember that happening back home.  On the other hand, the scalding spatter from the explosion didn't seem to sear my bare arms as badly as some other times, so maybe it's the white wine that made them explode.

One of my corridor-mates came in near the end of my dinner.  I had already made and eaten a hamburger, fries, and onion rings.  She asked what I was making and I showed her that I was deep frying pickles.  I'm sure she's writing a blog post tonight about how a traditional American meal consists of fried pickles and a big pile of salt.

A very frustrating thing about building address numbers on streets here: they are not divided up by block.  In America, a block will have, say, 4100-4200, with 4110 roughly across from 4111, and if there aren't 100 buildings, they skip some numbers in between.  Not so in Sweden.  They start with 1 on one side of the street and 2 on the other side.  If one side has more buildings than the other side, the numbers are soon way out of sync.  For example, one of my classes is in Ekonomikum at 10 Kyrkogårdsgatan.  I found 9-13 Kyrkogårdsgatan but couldn't find 10 anywhere (the other side of the street is a cemetery.)  Finally, after almost an hour, I found 10 Kyrkogårdsgatan... around 4 blocks away, across from 35 Kyrkogårdsgatan.  That doesn't make sense.  Not only does it add a lot more confusion, what if they add a new building?  10 1/2?  What if they add several more buildings?  I shouldn't have to figure out whether 10 3/16 is bigger than 10 5/8 to figure out which direction I need to go.  For a people who are supposed to care about order and efficiency, I'm not being impressed.


Speaking of not being impressed, for a welfare state, why are the buses so expensive?  I mean, really?  You can afford socialized healthcare, but a bus fare costs $4.50?


Speaking of buses, if a bus is scheduled to stop for more than about a minute, they shut off the engine until it's time to start again.  I feel like that's taking energy efficiency a step too far.


Speaking of energy efficiency, the central square and several of the main sidewalks are heated, so they are always dry and free from snow and ice.  At the same time, there are crews of city workers who go around the city knocking large icicles off of buildings.


My nickname around Vastgota Nation is now apparently "Mr. Fantastic" because I have a tendency to answer the question, "How's it going?" with "Fantastic!"  And now that the word has spread, if I answer anything different, people are disappointed and say, "C'mon, say 'fantastic' for us!"


"Fantastic" is one of the things I picked up while selling vacuums a few summers ago.  It's toned down from the "Super-Fantastic!" we were required to say.  We also had to sing songs about vacuums to get us energized for our day of sales calls.  There was a vacuum cleaning hymnal with around 100 different songs.  If you made a sale the day before, you got to choose one of the songs to sing (otherwise the boss chose.)  If you were late to the meeting, you had to stand in front and sing a solo.  I wish I was kidding about any of this.