7/8 French, 1/8 Irish, but 100% American

So I’ve been working at my company for almost 1½ years. Same job, same office, same co-workers. So imagine my surprise when I received the following questions from co-workers yesterday:

Did you spend your summer vacation in Canada?

What a lovely scarf, did you buy that back in the UK?

Haven’t these people figured out where I come from yet? It seems that there are still random, made-up rumors floating around about my background. I estimate that I would find the following results if I were to poll my co-workers on my background:

30% Would tell you that I am from France
30% Would tell you that I am from Canada (29% would say Quebec)
30% Would tell you that I am from England
10% Would tell you that I am from the USA

(Well perhaps I’m exaggerating slightly.)

And in other news…We closed the sale on our house today. We are now homeowners!!! In about 30 minutes I plan to be standing on my very own little part of Sweden.

“It's proud I am that I'm Irish, and don't you be forgetting, Missy, that you're half-Irish, too. And, to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them - why, the land they live on is like their mother. Oh, but there, there. Now, you're just a child. It will come to you, this love of the land. There's no gettin' away from it if you're Irish. “

It’s Raining, it’s pouring

The weather is really grim today. It has been raining pretty hard since I woke up this morning and is still going strong…. Things got a bit scary on the way to work. I was in the left lane on a busy road and saw that the there was a huge (deep) puddle that went across both lanes. I braked a little, anticipating the huge amount of water that would shoot up from my car if I plowed through it. Unfortunately the guy in the right lane didn’t think so far ahead. He drove through the puddle hard and fast. The result was that he sprayed so much water onto my windshield that I couldn’t see anything at all, and it took several seconds for the wipers to clean it away. I had to brake hard and try to stay in my lane, but the road was curving and it was hard to know just where my lane was! It was like driving with my eyes closed! Plus, there were cars behind me and I was worried that I would get rear ended, or worse, that I would misjudge where I was going and end up sideways in the wrong lane. Luckily nothing bad happened, but geez was it scary! I was nearly shaking all the way to work. The guy that sprayed me drove off without acknowledging what he’d done. I gave him a few honks and memorized his license plate when we were stopped at the light, although I’m not really sure what good that will do me….

Office Rules 101

It would seem that some of my colleagues are not familiar with certain office rules that usually go unsaid, but should still be followed. The rules aren’t so strange really; I mean I would gander that they fall into the category of social norms and decency. In any case, it would appear that a few points need to be reiterated:
Today’s rules reminder: It is not OK to fart in the elevator! Seriously people. When I walk into the elevator as you walk out, and when the doors close behind me, and my senses are overwhelmed by your horrendous stench, I will know that it was you! I will understand why you had such a goofy, guilty look on you face! You can’t get away with it, and I will forever think of you as the guy who stank out the elevator!

Back to work

I’m back at work again after nearly three weeks of vacation. Most people are still on vacation this week, and as the weather is gorgeous for the first time all summer, I don’t expect to see too many people in the office until at least next Monday. Most people at this company get 6 weeks of vacation per year (plus whatever they have in their flex bank.) I get five weeks (since I am only contracting here) and I have already used them all up!

Rights, so plenty to report since I last blogged. P and I bought our first house the day before leaving for our honeymoon! It is here in Gothenburg (guess we’ll be sticking around for a while!) and is a bit more central than the apartment we have now. It shouldn’t take us more than 5-7 minutes to drive into the city, plus I think I will have cut about 5 minutes off of my daily commute. Right, so details then? The house is two floors plus a basement giving us roughly 150 square meters (1615 sq ft.) We hope to put an extension on the house, which will add about 18 meters (194 sq ft) to the second floor. The house was built in 1927 and has been remodeled a couple of times. The wallpaper and floors need to be changed, and the floor plan is a little weird (in some spots.) Anyway, we want to do a big remodel. After completing the extension we hope to have two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, plus a master bedroom, master bath, and walk in closet. Down in the basement we have a sauna and a jacuzzi tub. We have a decent sized yard for living in a city, a big deck, and a gazebo. Can’t wait to move in! Come visit!

Moving on…the honeymoon was awesome! We stayed at the Kanadburi Resort, which was really great. The room was awesome and the service was great too! The staff sent a cake and champagne up to our room on the first night. They also decorated our room with rose petals etc. I’ve uploaded some pics onto Facebook. Anyway, our hotel room was only about 100 –200 feet away from the beach! The beach was just lovely. In the evenings we walked along the sand until we found a good place to eat. Restaurants line the shore and the tables are in the sand, just a few feet away from the water! Fresh seafood was yummy and super cheap! I also drank tons of coconut shakes, and had a few coconut ice-cream sundaes. Yummers !

We also decided to try scuba diving while in Thailand, and both earned our “ open water diver “ certifications from PADI. We went on an overnight dive trip to Ko Tao and did four dives. Diving is awesome! There is so much to see! We had tropical fish swimming all around us! Some even tried to clean our ears (apparently they do this to big fish.) Anyway, the dive trip was incredible. I definitely recommend a dive shop called Blue Planet. It’s a smaller shop, which was recently bought by a young British couple. They have tons of diving experience and patience, plus competitive prices. We paid less at their shop than we would anywhere else, and still got private lessons and a private trip to Ko Tao !

So now we’re back in Gburg, where the weather has been real crap until today. We went up to Bengtsfors last Saturday and had our first auction of the summer. It went well and we had fun. Hopefully we will get one more auction later this year, but the business has been slow this summer. (Which is really just as well as we’ve been busy and away.) Now we’re just counting down the days until we can move into the new house! I guess I need to start packing…