Think of Durban in January during a heatwave!!

That is what is was like here this weekend. The heat index today was 36C and even right now as I write this blog at 10pm, its 28C outside! Praise God for central air-conditioning!!! I have said to Liesel that sometimes when I leave for work in the mornings, leaving the air-conditioned apartment and going into the warm, humid summer air, reminds me of being at the coast! I suppose I should enjoy it while it lasts!!!! The days are already getting shorter as the sunsets start creeping earlier and earlier!

It was a pretty "run of the mill" weekend again. On Saturday we went shopping for some work trousers for myself. I have found the perfect make, one that is wrinkle-resistant (no ironing!!!) and has Stain-Defender. They were on sale so it was a good time to buy. For those of you who don't know the USA too well, you can basically find anything on sale at any time, just keep an eye on the adverts. Its unlike SA where there are a few sales events throughout the year. Here, if one shop is not having a sale, then another is.... you gotta love it, becuase the consumer is the one who wins!
We also went to a grand opening sale of a electronics store (similar to Stax) in our area. There I was tempted to buy a flat panel TV but then common sense prevailed ;) however I did pick out my Birthday present. We decided to get it today because of the grand opening sale, and we saved $150 off the regular price. It is a JVC Digital video camera, that uses a 20GB internal hard drive instead of a video tape! That means I can record up to 4.5 hours of DVD quality movies, or if I reduce the resolution I can record up to 27 hours! Then I download it to my laptop and I can make my own DVD's to share with my family! Slightly more useful than a 32 inch LCD TV ;)

The rest of the day we spent at the playground and then into the pool to cool off! We also got a chance to chat to Liesel's parents using Skype, as well as my sister! It is good to hear South African accents, and really makes our weekend!

On Sunday - headed off to Church. Afterwards we stopped at the grocery store to buy a few necessities, like chocolate milk! We also got a Sunday newspaper, becuase we were told that if we want to save money, the sunday papers are loaded with stacks of coupons that you can use when doing your next grocery shopping. You should have seen Liesel's eyes light up as she opened the paper and found the coupons. It was like an early Christmas for her. Using coupons here in the USA is very common practice unlike SA where it is not really practised. But we could easily save around $15 to $20 on a grocery shop if we used the coupons! So buying Sunday papers will become a McCarthy family tradition! That afternoon we got to speak to my sister again and Liesel called her folks again. My mom also gave us a call, so it really was a family contact weekend! Of course, we also headed to the pool again to cool off in the 36C weather! And that's our weekend, and our 4 month anniversary of being US residents!

Finally, I wanted to let you know that I have been asked to substitute for someone in a 4 man beach volleyball league tomorrow evening! There is a guy I go to gym with and he knows I love volleyball, and he asked if i was available to play for his team for a couple of weeks!! Of course I said "Heck, YES!!" Really looking forward to that, even though the temperature at 6pm tomorrow is expected to be at 34C and that is NOT taking the heat index into account........