Before Dwight gets to the subject at hand he must share a photo. This photo was snapped while dropping Motley off to be watched while we visited some friends in Leksand. This is one of things Dwight likes about Sweden. This is outside Olof’s family’s summer house, it has a traditional Dalarna look to it and the tractor added to the image.
Dwight thought perhaps the amount of new things would decrease after a year. However Astrid apparently has been keeping all sorts of activities up her sleeve. For instance today they went a little outside of town on a 5km look through the woods picking blueberries. Dwight didn’t even know blueberries grew on plants, instead believing them to come in cans with the muffin mix. Dwight found fresh blueberry to be preferable to that which comes in the can. Blueberry picking also introduced Dwight to the lingonberry out in the wild, which should be ripe later this summer. Apparently they are easier since they grow in bunches and you can use a claw scoop thing to gather them up.
Unripe lingonberries
Astrid out picking blueberries
The pick
The show
The eat
The woods with lots of blueberries
Motley loved eating blueberries and getting dirty
Recently Astrid has decided to do something about her American husband. She is determined to update his look to better fit in with his surroundings. Dwight is not opposed to this plan and has placed his faith in her. While Dwight is in Utah he is allowed to get cheap contacts, but when it comes to glasses Astrid needed to weigh in. In Sweden they have this foreign concept of taking home the trial glasses to try overnight, everyone can weigh in their opinion and you can see how it feels without feeling rushed in the store.
Current glasses which are probably from late 2002 or early 2003.
The ones Astrid loves and wants Dwight to get even though they might be too European for his tastes
The winner frames that will probably be the primary pair
Then the optician is having a deal to get three for the price of one Dwight will also get for the first time prescription sunglasses. Dwight previously relied on clip-ons for his eye shading, but even he can recognize it as less than ideal. Sadly unlike the suit Astrid bought Dwight today the glasses will not be ready in time for the trip to Utah and Jerry’s wedding.
Update: Astrid found the suit online, Dwight of course looks 43% better than this top half of his head missing model guy. Dwight hopes he doesn’t show up Jerry at his own wedding, but then it’s not exactly something he can help.
All those that were in the pool for Dwight not even making it a week in The Program have lost. Dwight is doing quite well with the program. His body is adjusting to this strange thing called exercise.
Dwight even has an exciting addition to The Program. The kommun recently installed an outdoor mini-gym at about the halfway point of a 5km route around a lake. It consists of an elliptical machine, rowing machine and pull-up bars. Now Dwight isn’t interested in most of those things, but the pull-up bars will allow him to work another muscle group he’d like to target. Even though she knows about The Program, Astrid might wonder what happened to her Dwight and who has replaced him when she gets back from her trip to England.
Two weeks ago Dwight saw his immunologist. It was a regular checkup scheduled a little early since Dwight is going to be in Utah July 23-August 11 for his cousin Jerry’s wedding. After checking Dwight out he asked if Dwight was getting exercise. He and Astrid both felt that sprinting over 100 miles in Call of Duty 4 does not count.
Astrid felt like this was the best doctor’s appointment that Dwight has ever been to. Dwight understands though the victory that comes from suggesting something to someone you care about and then their doctor tells them to do the same. She demanded that Dwight email his parents and let them know, and sadly Dwight’s mom joined the chorus.
Dwight ideally thinks swimming would be best due to the no impact on the joints and it works muscles all over the body. However it’s not easy to get regular exercise swimming in Falun. The local pool closes for the summer, probably due to competition from the many lakes around. On the other hand the weather is not always warm enough to go for a swim at said lakes. The next ideal is biking, since it is low impact. However the last time Dwight took Motley for a bike ride almost ended in disaster. Motley found something interesting in a cross walk on the other side of the bike then he had been running. Dwight was able to stop the bike in time to avoid the dog, but his lead still wreaked havoc on the front fender on the bike. Since then Dwight has been leery of taking the dog for a bike ride, but it’s hard to be doing something that could give the dog the exercise he needs, and not be able to take him.
It seemed that Dwight had no choice but to continue with his Call of Duty 4 sprints. Then he happened across the first part of The Program™. The first key is the hundred pushups training program. Dwight has always been weak in this regard, but easily qualified for the most advanced program. Dwight was unable to find a good one for sit-ups so he decided to adapt the numbers to sit-ups. This would form Dwight’s Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. After thought Dwight realized that he had no choice but to start running. It took much longer to find a good program that wasn’t too easy or too hard for Dwight’s level. The couch to 5k running plan has been adopted for Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Last week Dwight did the initial qualifying for the pushups and a test of the start of the running program. Both seemed doable and perhaps Dwight can keep the motivation going. Dwight is going to need to spend some time putting together running playlists on his iPod. Now he has committed to you his adoring fans publicly about his health. In two months be prepared for a meaner leaner Dwight. One that might actually be able to keep his wife happy with how much he eats since he is actually burning calories daily.
Update: Every now and then Dwight wonders what sort of mysteries Astrid is keeping from him. Apparently the indoor pool is the one closed (the simhall) but there is an outdoor pool (friluftsbad). Obviously to the untrained eye simhall which is composed of the words sim (swim) and hall (hall) is indoor pool. On the other hand friluftsbad which is composed of the words fri (free), lufts (air) and bad (bath) is what they call outdoor pools. How Dwight could miss that there is an outdoor pool when they call it that is a mystery. Look at this thing though, it has water slides and everything and Astrid didn’t tell him about it last summer or this summer until he was about to go to Utah. One might wonder how much Astrid wants Dwight to put on a few kilos of muscle by withholding such relevant information.
