Labor Day Heat

I believe a good Labor Day weekend was had by all-- I especially enjoyed getting a day off of work to go out shopping, one of the perks of working at the bank.

We spent a lot of Saturday enjoying video games, then by Sunday decided we need a little outside air. So we went to a few of the local bike shops and picked out new shiny bikes. Selecting one was harder then I thought it would be. Apparently bikes are manufactured for those of 'normal' height, and I being short had little variety to choose from. Hmmm, children's bike, or easter colors? By the second shop, we were able to both pick out bikes that we liked. And in the end-- biking happened to be one of those childhood experiences that Charles was lacking, and he had a little trouble picking it up. We soon quit all efforts of outdoor activity since it was so hot outside, and instead went to a movie.

Monday was even hotter. I didn't know it got that hot here. I think the natives are surprised as well. We drove most of the way to LA to see a very promising shopping center with all kinds of cool stores in it. On the drive there I was certain something was wrong with the AC-- at full blast it had trouble keeping up. And the sunshine was unrelenting. When we finally parked the car and got out we suddenly realized that the fault was not in our AC. The heat was so intense, just opening the car door sapped away all of my energy, and it was all I could do to walk the 50 feet from the car to the safety of indoors.

I figured that my poor reaction to the heat was due to me acclimating to Santa Barbara weather-- but I went ahead and checked the weather channel to see how hot it really was. The area in which mall we spent the day at had gotten up to 108 degrees that day, and at 6:00 it was still at 103!

So we've been keeping the windows open as much as possible, despite the threat of little buggies entering the house. We have a resident skunk near the apartment-- it's an adorable small fluffy creature-- but every once in a while something spooks it and then the air outside stinks. But the smell would never compare to how hot this place gets when all closed up-- so we were forced to just bear it.

But in all I had a good Labor Day. I had plenty of time to read and decided to pick up "Pride and Prejudice" and read that. Charles and I played DDR, our dancing video game until we wore ourselves out, and he made Gumbo, which was delicious. No complaints here.