Shelter In Place and eRacing

What a strange time it is, with the unexpected advent of the Covid-19 pandemic the majority of people are working from home and have restricted movement. For the last two three weeks I have not left the house. I'm hoping this ends soon and we start to seem some signs of "normality" return, I think some things will change, but I suspect once its over, people will revert to type, pretty soon...

Decided now the media room / home office is tidy and organised to take virtual racing a bit more seriously, actually joining online races and trying to improve my virtual racing skills... (Racing And Grumpy Expat)  or R.A.G.E for short...
It is quite difficult to get started as lower ranked players generally don't take it seriously and just punt you off into the weeds, frustrating, but then if you get better you should be nearer the front of the grit and racing with more the experienced and faster drivers, this make the challenge worth the effort (so far). Just in my first week of joining online races, so lets see if I can keep up the commitment.
 

Low Carb Life...

Amazing as it may seem, MrGrumpy is still here... (in sunny California...)
Things have changed recently as I was diagnosed as type 2 diabetic (A1C of 7.4) and therefore decided as an engineer I needed to see what I could do to fix it...
I knew it would involve diet and exercise and after some research decided on a mix of low carb and intermittent fasting to start with...
Well we are 7 weeks in and I have lost 24lbs and blood sugar is averaging about 100mg/dL will go for some lab tests in about a month, hoping the A1C is reduced significantly.
It's pretty hard to stop eating everything that you have grown up eating, bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, crisps, crackers, beans... it takes all my will power to ignore these and find something alternative. At least I can still eat bacon, eggs and cheese...
The hardest still is eating out and finding something that is not too high carb, sometimes it's just easier to fast for a few more hours and ignore the hunger (it does go away, eventually). Water and black coffee are my saviors...

Something new...

After a long time, looks like travel will be back on the agenda... Next week will be a quick trip to China. It will be a first for me, not the first time to China, but the first time I will have crossed the International date time... all this assumes that my Visa / Passport arrives back from the Chinese embassy on Friday afternoon...
Would have preferred more notice and chance to prepare for the work I will be doing in China, but that always seems to be a luxury that is never achieved.

I will be difficult to keep in touch with home as there is a  +15 hour time difference.

Year 6...

So MrGrumpy has survived 6 years in California, he is less Grumpy, well most of the time. The exception is during his new commute to / from Mountain View on the 101 (a road that has a parking lot like rush hour for about 16 hours a day!)...

OOps, seem to have missed last year...

Wow, my last posting on here was 2016... well it is now 2018 and almost 6 years since I started this blog.
I don't expect anybody still follows it, it's more a place for me to remember what has happened now.
Well 2018 is becoming an interesting year, during 2017 we finally got our green cards and now Little Miss Naughty has a little job to keep her busy.

Ms Spooky (Aka Smokey) is still doing nothing and her attempts at emulating the world's most idle cat are as good as ever.

London calling...

Well not long now and we will be heading from San Jose to London Heathrow...

It has been two years since we were back in the UK, it only seems like a few months, it will be great to catch up with friends and family, the three weeks will be gone before we know it.

Not looking forward to the long flights, airports, security and immigration, it has been nice not to travel for a while, you soon forget how painful and slow everything is that involves air travel. But at least it is not quite as bad as visiting the DMV...

The Past Year...

"Time passed, stuff happened, things broken, things fixed..." is MrGrumpy's executive overview of the past year...

Wow it's been almost another year...

Not long now and MrGrumpy will have been in the US for 4 years... Maybe MrGrumpy will get around to posting an update to cover some of the things that have happened over the last year...

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.

As if he needed another hobby...

Well MrGrumpy has taken on a new hobby / project / DIY, even after posting recently that he does not have enough time for his existing ones...
This one is driven in part by wanting to get some furniture to replace the not so stylish "Pickfords cardboard" bedside tables.
If your interested then you can follow his disasters progress on http://minionmade.blogspot.com (there is a link on the side of the blog)

Time wasted thanks to technology and idiots...

Just to really cheer MrGrumpy up, on Sunday LittleMissNaughty and MrGumpy decided to tidy up the garage, so off to the DIY store to buy some shelving. For a change they went to somewhere other than HomeDepot, they went to OSH (orchard supply hardware) as LittleMissNaughty had a $5 voucher and it was a "No Sales Tax" weekend.
It was all fine to start with, they ambled around finding what they needed (and some extras like plants and a solar lit bird feeder), now onto the checkouts. There is always quite a queue, but  it seems worse than normal, once they got to the front they were informed that the "System Was Down" and Credit/Debit cards were not really working... MrGrumpy thought "That information would have been useful before we wasted the last hour in here"... They did try checking out, first till, not a chance, card reader seemed to be stuck in a diagnostic mode. Next till, they just rang up some of the items, as credit card transactions below $50 may work, so why did they try do $55? You can guess the outcome, no link, no authentication... By this time MrGrumpy's patience was wearing pretty thin, so when asked if he wanted to try again or come back tomorrow, he decided to leave...and let them put his goods back.

Too Many things too little time...

MrGrumpy has a bit of a dilemma, he has too many things that he would like to do as hobbies and too little spare time to do them. OK this is not a world ending problem to have, most of his spare time is eaten away just keeping the technology in the house running smoothly.
Now that LittleMissNaughty is doing more of her Cardmaking, that is requiring MrGrumpy to provide additional technical input, so you could almost class that as one of his hobbies.
Next up is Photography, well that has been neglected quite a bit in the last few months, it has not helped that MrGrumpy was feeling under the weather and could not find the motivation to go out and about with the camera.
The list of things he would like to be spending time on goes on, but with limited time and money he will have to juggle both as well as he can, maybe he should write and app to decide for him... (oops that would be another time taking hobby)...

MrGrumpy plans to go square for a while

Firstly as promised, here is the picture of the latest elephant acquired by LittleMissNaughty.

And on the note of images, MrGrumpy has decided that the classic 4x3 landscape and portrait decision is one he no longer wants to make when taking photos. So his plan is to change to square format for a while. OK it's pretty simple on the "iFoam" to change to square but on his Nikon he will have to "guesstimate" when framing the shots.

Chasing the sun(set), the end to a busy weekend

MrGrumpy and LittleMissNaughty had quite a busy weekend, it started off on Friday with an evening visit to the coast, where LittleMissNaughty found a little shop where you acquired another MrElephant for her collection. (Photo to follow)

Saturday morning began with MrGrumpy fighting with his internet / technology to enable him to watch the England vs Ireland rugby, it turned out after disabling IPv6 on the new router and a reboot of everything he was able to get the BBC sport app on the PS3 to work, but only for the Olympics, as soon as he chose the "live" rugby it would just lock up (and even reset the PS3 once)... You can imagine how happy this made MrGrumpy... Anyway with a few moments to go he was able to get the streaming to work and was able to watch the game (except for a couple of min just after half time, where Ireland scored and the stream dropped out)

After the rugby (a close game in which England prevailed), they put the cycles on the truck and went up towards the bay for a bit of exercise and to reacquaint themselves with the pain of cycling again. They had a pleasant 10mile (ish) ride on a nice flat and quiet trail that leads to the edge of the Bay.

In the evening MrGrumpy and LittleMissNaughty were meeting up with a group of ExPats to discuss the rugby (oh and have a pint or two...)

Sunday, well that began quietly, MrGrumpy expected to have a bit of a hangover, but to his surprise that was not the case. He did really fancy a FullEnglishBreakfast, but that turned into MrGrumpy making a curry for lunch (due to watching Saturday kitchen on iPlayer).

After lunch they headed of to the coast again, this time with MrGrumpy's camera, they were attending another meetup, the intention to get a sunset by Pigeon Point lighthouse. At the lighthouse, the fog was rolling in off the sea, the chance of a sunset was remote. The decision was made to head south and try one of the beaches (before the fog caught up).

The did catch a sunset, but the fog bank off shore cut it short.