Well I am over my jetlag and over my sickness and Monte is gone although the hangover still lingers. Now it's back to finding a job and learning more Swedish.
Thursday was drunken and Friday was insanely drunken. I can't remember what we did Thursday but Friday Linda Monte and I went to a museum, The National Museum, which is more or less free and features some great design from the past 100 years plus paintings from Northern Europe over the past 500 years.
Monte and myself really seemed to like the Bacchus & Ariadne paintings the best because they all show people drinking and fucking. Linda seemed to like the ones with horses but that's no surprise (not because she likes to fuck horses although she did marry me, ha ha).
That night we went on a "cheap beer crawl" which went from 4:00 p.m to 4:00 a.m. and ended up not being cheap but very fun and scary so who cares. I am still shuddering over some of the things that transpired.
Saturday night I was hungover as a mother and Linda and I went out to Drottningholm to have dinner with the King's neighbor. If you recall its where we stayed earlier... almost four weeks ago. It's the large white house that has been to two World's Fairs... Paris in 1886 and the one in Rio (I don't know when that was and am too lazy at the moment to Google it).
Before when we stayed on these same grounds, we stayed in the guest house so we never got inside the main house. Well its like a museum. There are ivory sculptures, Chinese cabinets, and other worldly artifacts, fanciful woodwork, a wine cellar stocked with up to 300 year old wine, and my favorite thing of all, a wireless internet connection.
The man, whose name I will not mention by name for fear of embarrassing him, was absolutely funny and cool for such a successful international businessman. He made jokes and told anecdotes that were actually funny, invited his own friends and neighbors to meet us, as if we special people, and tried to plan out the rest of our lives in Sweden by making suggesting where to buy property and how to avoid paying more than one's fair share of taxes.
For dinner we had champagne and beer and for the main course a Mongolian Beef Stew which is served in a large charcoal-fueled copper pot which is filled with water. When fuel is added at the bottom a jet of fire five feet high comes out the top and scares everyone at the table (everyone was a bit taken aback by the host's enthusiasm for this unique feature of the pot). Inside the pot everyone puts meat and veggies and kind of eats them after they are cooked like a fondue... and at the end you eat the soup that the pot makes. Yum.
After dinner we had coffee and ice cream and cookies and brandy and whiskey and talked until 1:00 a.m. Nobody could believe how late it was and he drove us home because the buses were closed and it was not too far. He is going to meet up with my dad in Washington next week and apparently they are good friends so I will probably see him again. My dad just got a new job as a board member of an international sugar corporation in London (he has been retired for 7 years and now he has like 5 jobs, mostly honorary positions, at 63 and I can't even find one job and I am 34) so he will be visiting us in Sweden a lot which means more visits to the King's Neighbor. In truth we were already invited back so I must have done something right.
But I am torn between living a slacker life and getting serious and getting another 9 to 5 and try to make some money. I have completed a novel which I think is publishable but nothing is happening, not that I am trying very hard for it to happen. I am about to finish another novel which I feel is better. And there is the book of short stories. I need to get an agent and then get published... so I can travel and drink and do readings and then I wouldn't need to hang out with my Dad's friends who have somehow mistaken me for a serious person. Although that would still be great. Ah, but I am rambling now... so until next time.
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