Hibernation

So I've been hibernating, regarding the blog, all throughout winter.  I just have not had any motivation whatsoever to write anything on here!  Luckily, the winter has been surprisingly mild.  We have had very little snow.  We've also had very little freezing temperatures.  My home state of Ohio cannot say the same!  It seems we switched winters, this year.  Even though it's been mild, it still gets depressing having only a few hours of daylight each day, and that daylight only consisting of a constant greyness with no hope of seeing the sun any time soon.  Luckily for me, as I was watching the news last week, the weather man said that it's now officially spring in the southern half of the country!  Yay!  They determine seasons here based on temperature averages, and not based on dates the way we do in the US, following the equinoxes.

So last time I posted we had just ended the summer, and I was settling down into a heavy fall and winter workload.  That's a quick sum up of what I've been up to!  Fall came, with lots of working and mail-slinging, as did the winter time.  I will say I caught quite an evil cold in the beginning of January which knocked me out of working for a week.  I rarely get colds where I actually need to be home, but something was going around the entire country because I knew several people with the same symptoms.

I do, however, have several highlights to mention regarding my hibernation.  First of all, I am now a Swedish citizen!  In the beginning of November I had officially been living here in Sweden for 3 years, and so was eligible to apply for citizenship.  Moving here on a "sambo visa" (aka relationship visa) makes it easier to become a citizen, you only need to wait three years.  If you come on another sort of visa, work or student related, you need to have been living here for at least 5 years, if I recall correctly.  Anyhow, I forked out the 1500 Swedish crowns for the fee to apply, and settled in to wait the 10 months that the website said it would take for them to process the application.  Surprise!!  One week later I received a document in the mail stating my citizenship was granted!  Woohoo!  A few weeks later I took my butt downtown (during my super evil cold of death) and applied for a Swedish passport.  I received the passport 3 work days later, that easy!  I am now a dual citizen of the USA and Sweden, with passports from both countries.  Not bad, eh?

Another super highlight of my winter - my brother came to visit for two weeks in January!  I took a week off of work so that we could do some fun stuff together.  I showed him Gothenburg, of course, and we also took a train ride to Stockholm (my mom loved Stockholm so much when she visited, I figured it would be mean not to take brother there when he'd made it all this way).  The sad part was that I was still recovering from the evil cold of death, so I don't think I was as fun as I could have been.  It's just hard to trek around a cold, windy city like Stockholm (at least this time of year), when you're coughing up your lungs as well as blowing your nose every other minute.  I really do think he enjoyed himself, though, as I did!  It was just great having another family member able to come visit and see my life here in Sweden.  I have, after all, been living here for about 3.5 years now.  It was about time.

Today I've got to clean and get the apartment ready for a little get together (pre-party, you could say) that I'm having before heading out to my new favorite thing to do on the first Saturday of every month.  On these Saturdays I like to go out with my girlfriends from work to a place called Röda Sten (the Red Stone) which by daytime is actually an art gallery.  They open up their small restaurant area, though, on these Saturday nights as a club for a dubstep artist group called Dubstep Bastards.  If you have no idea what dubstep is for music, here is a link to Wikipedia for a quick explanation.  Back in August I happened to be going out with said girlfriends, and we ended up at Röda Sten.  It was love at first sight (or experience?).  Dubstep, I think, can only truly be appreciated if you experience it live.  We haven't been since November, so I'm really hoping the Bastards bring in some really good artists tonight (they always invite guest artists in).  Here's a video of one of my favorite artists / songs:

You've gotta stick with the song, it always takes a little time for it to get going.  I won't be surprised if you don't like it.  As I said, you've almost got to experience it live to really enjoy.  Or at least just have really loud speakers, with a lot of strong bass.  If your speakers are fritzy, you just won't get the point or experience.  There are so many different kinds of dubstep, too.  I've really enjoyed the reggae kind of dubstep, some people like the video game kind.  It's up to you!  If you do some searching, I'm sure you'll find out what I mean.  If you already are familiar with the genre, good for you!  It seems like it's really catching on in the US, as when we were watching Breaking Bad while my brother was here, he was like "Oh yeah, that Bonfire song is super huge and popular now in the US!"  The most well known US dubstep artist is Skrillex.

Okay, I'll stop going on and on about dubstep now.  Time to get cleaning!