3 years and counting

MrGrumpy's ICE bucket challenge...

Well it had to happen, MrGrumpy could see from the various social media posting that people closer and closer were doing the #IceBucketChallenge and donating to the ALS charity.
Here is MrGrumpy's one...

Look who just moved in...

MrGrumpy and LittleMissNaughty have some new house guests, MissSmokey and MissBandit... they have their own new blog where you can follow them

Another anniversary

So MrGrumpy and LittleMissNaughty moved into the house one year ago, again the lounge and kitchen are in disarray due to the ongoing kitchen update.

Year 2...

Two years ago today MrGrumpy arrived in the USA, he can't believe that the last year has gone so quickly. In only a couple of weeks LittleMissNaughty will have been here a year...

When it rains it pours, sometimes it rains in California... yes it really does...

Monday morning MrGrumpy had to head back home in the morning as LittleMissNaughty had called him because she heard a loud bang and then the power went out. Turned out it was not just their house, a transformer had blown up and the majority of the complex was off. LittleMissNaughty needed to go out to her voluntary work and with the garage door being electric they had to work out how the manual override worked. "It must be quite simple" MrGrumpy thought, as he dangled from the pull cord attempting to open the door. It turns out the door is actually quite heavy to open, easy to shut but heavy to open.
The power was back on by lunch, but there was continued work ongoing until late into the night.

So to MrGrumpy's surprise the TV weather predicted it would rain yesterday and today, low and behold it rained. MrGrumpy can cope with a little bit of grim weather, after all the past 40+ years of living in the UK he has become accustomed to it.
This morning after his wet drive to work (a little late due to the iPod touch alarm output being redirected to a nonexistent bluetooth device) he got another message from LittleMissNaughty, there was another loud bang and the power had gone again... So much for the fix they did...
Lucky LittleMissNaughty does go volunteering today as MrGrumpy expects she would not easily be able to open the garage door manually.

MrGrumpy's and DIY

We all know how much MrGrumpy likes to complain about DIY, he currently hopes that doing more of it will improve his results and abilities.
One of MrGrumpy's problems (yes he has many, but this is just one of them), is that he wants to minimise his spending on doing DIY, this is normally a false economy, either he has to do it twice or needs to buy something else to complete the job. It is not always him just being "tight", sometimes he is limited by time / storage space and skill (lack of). His background in programming does help him resolve these issues, but quite often is is after something has already gone wrong.
Currently this list of DIY project he has is increasing by the day, two bathrooms, a kitchen, lounge, furniture (bedside tables, headboard, bed frame), renew decking.