This week was another routine week with the exception that we went to a museum.  Mario says I'm not educated enough in history so yes we went to the Military Museum of Sweden.  The whole time Mario was explaining things to me as well as reading every single sign that could possibly be read in the museum and he even got the few that weren't in English translated.  All I know is that there was an abundance of guns in there and we got to handle some of them so in other words Mr. J.E. would have been in heaven.  After 2 hours of touring the museum Mario felt better educated and I felt like I paid money just to get my back tight and calves sore, but I guess that's why they say 2 people can look at the same thing and see it differently.  The one thing that worries me is that Mario found out that there is a medieval museum as well as a museum where they recovered a sunken ship.  I may get in on one more tour, but that will be my limit though.  Spending money to be educated...come on.

This past week we still worked out and ran in the mornings and there seemed to be an abundance of attractive females out while we were running and biking on the trails.  The first few days of the week were dedicated to recovering from the previous week's beating.  Mario, Coach Wikstrom, one of our lineman ( we call him E-man ) and his girlfriend and I ate barbeque ribs and chicken at Coach Armstrong's house and we did go home on a full belly.  Coach Armstrong is from Jersey and so his grilling skills aren't as good as we are used to in the south, but they were good enough to get by.  We also received a package in the mail that gave us some mid-week momentum.  We broke bad and went shopping a little bit too.  We also watched Top Gun with Chief Swift Cankle Rauge so he would have some 80's American movie knowledge.   We also went over to Coach Wikstrom's house to watch film.  Mario and Pearl had an NCAA 2005 tournament and I think its tied as of right now.

We also did something that we don't normally do at home.  We have been saving up our cans and so we recycled "Cans for Crowns" and made a pretty good tradeoff if you ask me.  I also talked to Neil this week on IM and they had installed web cams in the labs so it was good to be able to see him.  I  designed a web page for Ken Belk with new software so that ate up my time a lot this week.  I had to learn it and do it so you know that goes. Feel free to check it out at www.pineneedleexpress.com

In the previous game I won MVP and they give out like small prizes ( just as they did in Finland ) and I won a double Cd titled "Power Summer Party Hits 2004 ".  It has a bunch of Euro songs on there mixed in with American songs and if any of you download music you should download any songs by a group named " Gunther & The Sunshine Girls" because it will be absolutely hilarious.  The one song on this Cd is " Teeny Weeny String Bikini " and the song doesn't do the video justice at all.  I may have to try to record it.

It has also been unique to watch the Olympics from another country.  The coverage we see has featured Swedish athletes instead of the US (obviously) and everyone over here is very aware of the fact that Sweden has won 3 gold medals and those guys (and girl) are all in the news and newspapers.  Another tid bit is that Shawn Crawford was running in the Olympics.  Shawn Crawford played football with Mario and attended Indian Land high school and for all you IPTAY people he did graduate from Clemson.  Yes South Carolina was representing.   So we watched Olympic coverage of one of Mario's high school classmates in Swedish.  It was micke bra.

Game

This Saturday, at what would be 9 am eastern standard time, we played the Solna Chiefs again on the worst field in Europe.  This game was the first round of the playoffs.  Since we last played Solna they had signed 2 more imports and these guys were from Canada and they still had the same Qb from Cali.  So our team wore as many wristbands and underarmour as possible and anything to cover body parts and went to play.  My lower back had been tight and I couldn't move like I wanted to, but I managed through the game.  We had more guys this week and so it was a better game for us.  The defense finally came out to play and we won 64 - 39.  I threw 6 tds and ran 1 on a sneak.  It seems that over here these guys don't take the season too serious or just serious enough to make it to the playoffs and then when they start then everyone wants to jump on board.  By winning this game we advanced to the semi-finals where we will play Carlstad again.  I'm curious to see how many people will actually show up to take the long ride and go back and play again.  Carlstad seems to be a smaller town where football has some pride in the community...much like that of Turku and of Pageland and they have an American coach as well.

Also, I have also been nominated for " Import Player of The Year " which basically means " American Player of The Year ".  They will give the award out on Sept 4th at the league banquet so I'll let you guys know if I get it.

Since we won like half of the team wanted to go out downtown.  I was able to talk one of the guys here into letting me use his digital camera since my web page has been lacking of pictures this year.  Since I had the camera we took as many pictures as possible and I can not post them all because some were very blurry due to motion, nights, and lights and so fourth.  One neat place we went to had an " Ice Bar " .  We got good pics of it, but we did not go in as we had a crowd and the place has a limit on how many people can get in.  We would have had to wait forever but I may go back to see what its like.  I think it would have been Big Franks kind of place since you would always be " cool ".

These girls went crazy at the sound of Mario's name

Mario and the Liberty Point

Regards,

Clint