Casual Friday

First I'd like to thank you for all of your support in helping me identify the little bug I found and featured in the previous post. Since you are probably dying for an update, it didn't take long for me to find out it is a black carpet beetle. They lay 40-114 eggs per litter. They eat carpets. Later I found like 7 more in the bathroom. Where are the other 100? How I miss Manhattan, where the landlords legally had to spray for bugs TWICE a year! How I sometimes love and miss the USA's liberal use of toxic chemicals!

In other news, another company around these parts seems to think I'm worthy of working for them! Companies in Sweden love hiring me on a very temporary basis, a few days at a time. This financial company has an unusually long list of people to contact, so I get to help them for about a week! It's in the center of town in a nice building, on the top floor. While Christoffer has been doing some work in the famous "lipstick building," (red/white building shaped like lipstick. Maybe I'll post a picture sometime) we have been trying to decide whose workplace is more "posh." We both have espresso machines (and hot chocolate) with your average IKEA dishes and a dishwasher, but I think I have him BEAT.... We have a roof terrace WITH deck furniture all to ourselves,  not one but TWO dishwashers, and here's the kicker- a shower in the employee restroom. A NICE shower, you know the modern all-glass ones.

I thought I was going in for an interview on Thursday, but they put me right to work... Luckily I was dressed nicely because nobody was wearing jeans. So for Friday, after having canceled my afternoon coffee date, I showed up, double-wearing my slacks from Thursday. Almost everyone was wearing jeans. It was Friday, and a half day at that. Everyone was leaving at 1, including me. "Why half day today?"

"Tomorrow is a red day. So tomorrow is a holiday and automatically so is half of the day before it"
"So, how do you get in 40 hours?"
"You don't!"

Oh, Sweden! At first I misunderstood though, turns out not every Saturday is a red day, just some. Red days are special holidays of some sort. I think this one has to do with the day/week? of the dead, you know...  Halloween/All Soul's Day... So most of the time they do work all day Fridays (though some people quit at 3 or 4 every Friday- Oh, Sweden!). The thing I ask myself is, if I'm still working on Friday, do I wear jeans? Is it every Friday they wear jeans, or just the Fridays before a red day? So much to learn...

When I'm unemployed again in a week's time, I won't have to worry about that anymore!

Now for a story about red wine... Actually, about its bottle.

One October, in a small town on the east coast of Sweden where a person named Christoffer is from, there was a wine bottle that simply could NOT open. The cork was of a strange plastic, and it was the third occasion the wine bottle tried to open.

The poor wine bottle had had enough. At its wit's end, the last thing to try was to be drilled.

...And then filtered! It worked! After a looong pour, the wine bottle's contents could finally be enjoyed, and after fulfilling its goal, it lived happily ever after.

Tonight I really wanted some red wine. And you know what? The liquor store closes at 2PM on Saturdays. Closed Sunday. You Kansans are so lucky!! You can enjoy all your alcohol at home any day of the week, while I will have to visit a bar later...