Quite Saturday Walk

MrGrumpy had no plans for today, he did not get up until about 8:30am, very late for him. When he went to get some breakfast, the milk was on the turn, so he gave up on that idea.
It was about 10:45 before he headed out, he was aiming for the bakery where he could get a coffee.

He toyed with the idea of getting some breakfast, but went with a coffee (skimmed milk and sweetener). While sitting outside in the sunshine he was contemplating what to do next.
As usual, what he intended to do turned into something a little more.
He walked up past the store and up to the next intersection, he headed left, no real reason, but it looked like there were more shops etc. that way and he was interested to see what was up there.
He kept walking, nothing very interesting after all, he passed over the freeway and carried on walking.
After a while he was on Los Gatos Boulevard so decided to carry on to Los Gatos downtown.

Outside the brewery

It was further than he thought, by the time he got to the Brewery, he had done 6.38 miles on the FitBit, so it was time for a couple of pints.

Instead of heading back the route he came, he carried on through Los Gatos and out towards the park were he went a couple of weeks ago. He came back along the Los Gatos creak trail, which is quite an easy walk and much more interesting than the roads.
It was pretty warm by the time he got back home, the temperature at Cambrian park was showing 88F (31.1C) at 4:40 ish.
In total it was a 13.8 mile walk, he was not rushing so his legs were not feeling bad at all.

He relaxed for a while then he then nuked his last $0.99 frozen meal and finished off his bottle of low calorie Gatoraid.

As he has to be up at 04:00am tomorrow he packed his case and prepared for the week away.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

Well it is Friday the 13th, MrGrumpy does not believe in paraskevidekatriaphobia, generally things just  go wrong when it is most inconvenient, not based on the day or date. Unless that date is the warranty expiry of a Western Digital hard drive, then they always go wrong a week or two after the expiry date.

Friday started just like any other, up around 6am, work by 7am. Unlike most Friday's MrBombsAway has arranged a lunchtime visit to a local French style restaurant to pre-celebrate Bastille Day (MrGrumpy has no idea why, but why not, a chance to socialise with some of his co-CubeFarmers / inmates).

With it being a Friday, MrGrumpy headed for the Cinema again, he did not want to wait until 5:45pm so went to the 4:10pm showing of Spider-Man in IMAX 3D. For a change the 3D was quite effective, he generally still tries to avoid the 3D and prefers just the IMAX (especially if something is showing on the duff screen 7 at the AMC). The new version of Spider-Man he thought was alright, he was pleased they did not just do a direct remake of the previous movies. The next few months have several movies that MrGrumpy wants to see, The Dark Knight Rises, Bourne Legacy, Total Recall, 360 to name just a few, his Friday scheduled movie looks to continue for a while yet.



MrGrumpy is visiting some of the other CubeFarms next week, he is off to Dallas for a couple of days and then onto Santa Ana / Los Angeles before returning to San Jose. His cab to the airport on Sunday is at 4:30am so he will have to ensure he is packed and ready by tomorrow evening.

Where is MrGrumpy?

It seems to be a little while since MrGrumpy has really had anything annoy him. (He is not including anything work related in this or it would be a never ending blog entry).
It may just be that he has become imune to the general day to day stuff that he used to find annoying. Or that his day to day life has so little interaction with others that the chance of him getting annoyed is reduced to a very low level.

He is very surprised at how tolerant he is when driving, maybe because generally the traffic is moving slower and he is still relatively new to driving on the wrong side of the road. Apart from the lack of indication from quite a few drivers, this does mean his telepathy skill are improving. In general he is finding driving much more relaxing than in the UK (where everybody on the road seems to be out to annoy him).

MrGrumpy is annoyed with the number of repeats on the Discovery Channel, the fact they repeat the same two or three episodes of everything on a the same day in a loop is pretty annoying. There only seems to be one new episode of each show per week, the rest of the week is filled with repeats. Even when there is a new episode at 8pm, it is then repeated at 10pm and 12pm, with another repeat in between... It is a good job he has NetFlix to break up the repeats.

After yesterdays flying experience, MrGrumpy is wondering if he can expense Flying lessons... He is sure it would vastly improve his ability to support all of his customer base and companies are always asking what training their employees need.

November 172 Hotel Golf

It was another busy day for MrGrumpy at the CubeFarm. Today was a little different as he was out and about a little during the day, that was much better than yesterday where he was in SolitaryCubefinement almost all day.

Normally he does not get chance to escape from the CubeFarm, so does not really know what the weather is like outside, it is generally a blue sky with sunshine. Today it was very hot as he drove back to the CubeFarm after meeting up with MrCrazyRunner for lunch, the weather forecast suggests 27C (80F) but he thought it felt hotter than that.

MrGrumpy left work early tonight, he had still done 10 hours (9 if you take out the semi working lunch). He went with MrBombsAway to Palo Alto airport, where they went up flying in a Cessna 172. Firstly they went through all the pre-flight checks, which MrGrumpy found quite interesting, bit like an MOT before flying.

Once in the air and clear of the really restricted air space around SFO they climbed to about 3500 feet and MrBombsAway demonstrated some gentle and tight turns. Then it was time for MrGrumpy to have a try, initially he found it tricky to turn and maintain a constant altitude, but after a few left and right gentle and tight turns he was very slowly getting better. It was a real challenge to try and take in all the info and also keep an eye out for other aircraft, it was pretty quiet towards the coast and the fog bank below made it easier to spot other traffic.

They were quite a way from San Francisco but visible in the distance, was the Golden Gate bridge protruding from the fog.
After what seemed minutes but was about 40 mins, MrBombsAway got MrGrumpy to turn and head towards Mount Diablo whilst descending from 3500ft to 1500ft ready to hand over control for landing. MrGrumpy was pretty nervous to begin with but really enjoyed the flight and was thrilled at being able to take the controls. Slow flight (about 60mph was the worst bit, he was much happier at 90-100mph).

Today has been the high point of MrGrumpy's time in the USA so far. Many thanks goto MrBombsAway.

Long Days and Short Weeks

MrGrumpy is constantly surprised and how short the weeks seem, it is probably due to the long 12 hour days (which also seem to be too short).
Even starting at 7AM, it is 1PM before he seems to have even begun to make any progress. Generally that progress is not positive, once through the deluge of conference calls and emails, by 1PM he has more things added to the todo list than taken off.
Every issue / email seems to explode into several actions, most of which involve getting info to / from people on the oposite side of the world, thus adding more to the frustration and delays to all concerned.

Today MrGrumpy has had a very bad fitbit day... too much sitting down, hardly any walking at all, by 6:30pm only 1600 steps and just 9 flights of stairs... about 1/3 of a normal day... OK, his plan for today and tomorrow was to rest the legs a little, but not that much...

It was 7:45pm before MrGrumpy left the CubeFarm today and he already knows tomorrow is going to be a challenging day, he wonders if it is even worth going home.

He did finally manage to cross a couple of items off his todo list, but this was only tiding up loose ends. With this done he might be able to concentrate on what he needs to while MrZee is on vacation. But not until at least tomorrow afternoon, and then only if the morning goes well.

++Week == (4 * Month)

Another week starts for MrGrumpy at the CubeFarm, no holiday this week so a full week ahead.

Tomorrow is rent day again, that means he has been out hear for 4 months already, only another month before he is back in the UK for a week.

After all the walking at the weekend his legs are a little tender, he might just to the minimum 10,000 steps today.

On the way home he called in at "Wendys" and got a couple of grilled chicken wraps, quite tasty and not a huge amount of calories.

He was still short on steps, so went out for a 3 mile walk to ensure his 10,000. He did it but his legs are suffering today, the next couple of days will have to be rest days or he will damage himself and slow down his progress.

Heading for the hills

This morning MrGrumpy was chatting with LittleMissNaughty and watching the wimbledon final (via the iPad pointed at the TV back at home), MrBBC would not let him even listen to the radio coverage (due to licensing restrictions). He had already missed the F1 by not being awake before 7am, so just looked at the result on the MrTwitter.

It was time for him to collect his laundry, while he was out he was trying to work out what else to do today. Back at home, he packed his rucksack, with camera, a drink and a serial bar and headed off towards the park off blossom hill road.
When he got there he took the ridge trail and followed it uphill onto the next trail and then back down to the road.

He was listening to music and tracking the walk with the Nike+ app, after just less than 9 miles he was back home.

Back home it was time for a shower and then relax, next problem was stay in or go out to eat. Finally he stayed at home and nuked a pizza (which he found was twice the calories that he thought, as they only show the numbers for 1/2 a one person pizza). Still even with that and a beer he was well within the budget for calories for today.