Fitness, Freebies and Fireworks

Ag, ja, man, the time has come to face the facts. The McCarthy family in the USA are unfit and we have decided to do something about it! This week Liesel, myself and even Nathan have joined a gym. Well, Nathan and Liesel have signed up at My Gym . It's a place that has different programs for different age groups, much like Mom's and Tot's in South Africa. So Nathan now will be going to gym once a week! Liesel has found a gym that she liked and which is pretty reasonable. She has her first workout tomorrow! And finally, I had to give in to peer pressure ;-) and I joined the fitness center at our work. I thought that if its at work then I would work out more regularly, since I don't have to get up and go to another place after work! And they provide you with towels, soap, shampoo and conditioner, so I only have to take my workout clothes with me and they provide the rest! I went for my fitness evaluation where they had me walking on a treadmill, seeing how many crunches I can do in a minute, how many bench presses I can do of 80lbs, leg extensions and then finally a flexibility test. I think I passed and they will give me the results on Wednesday. So hopefully in a couple of month's time, my photographs will have fewer double chins in them........ Time will tell.............

On Saturday, we travelled about an hour south to an Outlet mall. This mall has a variety of factory outlets from brand name labels such as Reebok, Adidas, Levi's, Jockey and Gap. Liesel and myself now obviously need some workout clothes for our new hobby! As we turned into the mall complex, Liesel pointed out a real ife Amish person to me. There are Armish communties in the area and one family had set up a stall selling hand crafted baskets and home baked goods in the parking lot of a MacDonald's. We didn't stop there, but it was interesting to see! One day we will venture deeper into Armish country to see how they live.

At the mall, our first stop was the Reebok factory outlet. Now the prices are already cheaper than in other shops, but they had a sale with another 40% off their prices. But we also had a coupon that entitled us to an extra 20% off, so that means 60% off! And now for the freebie part - when we moved into our apartment in Cleveland, a website offered people $100 if their name was mentioned on the lease as the referrer. Well I did just that, and sometime last week, a debit card arrived in the post with a $100 balance! Our Reebok total came to $93 (after the 60% discount) so it did not cost us a cent. The remainder of the debit card paid for my lunch meal as well! So not a bad deal then!!!

As you may know - that the 4th of July is just around the corner! This holiday is second only to Christmas here, and Americans know how to celebrate. Last night, the shopping complex adjacent to usput on their fireworks display to celebrate liberty! I only caught the last 5 minutes of it, but even then, WOW! The Americans always have to be bigger and better, and they didn't disappoint! There will be other fireworks displays on Tuesday, which hopefully we will be able to see from our place. Since Nathan goes to bed around 7:30pm and it only gets dark here after 9pm, we didn't think that we could keep the little guy awake for an extra 3 hours! I head off to work tomorrow, but then am off on Tuesday for the public holiday! So check back on Wednesday and I may have another update for you.