Busy busy busy

Should remember this...

Its been a while...



Been busy

 

New jobs for us both (good and bad), new people, new car, new adventures. Change is good, however it works out. 

 

 

Happy Easter!

Easter means a 4 day weekend! Time for a visual update and a vow to get back to this with more useful content more often.


Thats me. I got a new camera, an Olympus OMD EM10. Its awesome. More soon on that...


First sunshine cider of 2014 (and an afternoon of six nations rugby)
February storms brought us a beautiful sunny sandy beach in Southsea

Wine tasting evening at Kitsch n Dor was epic

More board games
Springtime bike rides

Loving Southsea in the sunshine
Happy Easter weekend
Peaceful Southsea Beach
Blue skies
Pastels
Back to the New Forest for wedding meetings and portraits

Also- More space lectures, an Ignobel Awards evening at the uni, groupon dinner at Steki greek restaurant in Southsea, amazing Turkish dinner with the girls at Istanbul in Southsea, chilled out evening at the Garage Lounge, Brighton catch ups, and going on stage with Derren Brown.

Sounds alright yeah? Its also been stressful, crappy and worrying, but hoping some good news is on the horizon next week (though the way things have been going it could just as easily be bad news)

Spring update

So what have we been up to recently in the quest to do more happy.

- We are slowly converting all our friends and family into board game geeks, this time actual girls came to board game night at our house. 

- We watched the rugby again at Fat Fox. I'm still not really bothered, but there are friends and cider.

- Interesting Space Lecture at the Winchester science centre on the history of astronomy

- We tried to go to the new Icelandic bar '101 Rekjavik' opened in Southsea on Castle road. We walked there from Albert Road in the pouring rain and discovered they weren't serving food and we were hungry so left again. Another time, hopefully they will get busier and get some more atmosphere, I love the ethos of the place on their website.

- We also tried to try the new ice cream parlour Scoops on Elm Grove but its still super popular and busy and getting some bad reviews so we'll leave that one for a bit.

- We had a good go at the pub quiz at the Eastney Tavern but were way off the scoring zone. Its a challenging enough quiz, good mix of trivia and Aspall Cider on tap. We'll be back.

- March pub night was at the Bridge Tavern in Old Portsmouth. Probably nicer in the summer when you can sit out by the fishing boats, but on a chilly evening it was a long walk out of Southsea for expensive beers.

- We had an impromptu trip up to London and went to the Science museum and the beautiful Natural History museum. Originally our friends planned to go to take advantage of the £10 train tickets offer, but we were too late booking and ended up driving and parking for free right behind the museums. So easy! More London trips to plan, its so much cheaper to drive at the weekend.

- The weather is better, Spring is here and I've been out on my bike again down to the seafront and around. It's a simple thing that makes me happy.

- Finally, we took our nephew to see the Lego movie, possibly the most awesome movie ever. 

Weekend Wander

Southsea is best in the summer, the faded seaside resort buzzes in the sunshine, with families, students, hipsters and chavs alike, all laid out on the grassy common and strolling on the seafront, the smell of barbecues on the breeze. Winter is mostly angry traffic, foghorns, discount shopping and crashing waves. But a break in the weather pulls everyone out, a cold sunny sunday and we hit the prom again, dogwalkers, kids and runners drawn out for the fresh sea air. We all love living by the sea.

Our seafront has been battered these past few weeks, the winter storms bringing waves smashing over the seawalls and shingle up onto the road. The beach is sandy, the bandstand flooded and the benches, shelters and pier beaten up. The rain stopped today and the people came out again, picking through the shells, starfish and sponges washed up onto the pavement, fighting against the determined winds.

We went ourselves, to explore and take photos, blasted by sand and an abundance of sea air. We met friends for a pretty good carvery lunch at the Jolly Sailor (thanks Groupon!) and then came home again to a log fire and TV catchup. Ace Sunday. :)

Myers-Briggs

It's much easier to be happy when you understand what it is that makes you happy. Sounds easy right? There's lots of big obvious things which you can say make you happy, from a cute kitten video to getting a pay rise. But actually what makes you happy day in day out, what do you get satisfaction from doing, what motivates you?

A link on facebook led me to a quick personality profiler site which led to a more insightful result than you might expect from a 5 minute free questionnaire.  Myers-Briggs is a psychometric test designed to measure psychological preferences based on the theory laid down by respected brain doc Carl Jung. It's something I've done a bit of before at work, but I haven't really seen it in this way before.

The questionnaire puts you into one of 16 personality types, whether you have a preference for Extrovert/Introvert, Intuituve/ Sensing, Thinking/ Feeling, Judging/ Prospecting. I came up ENTP- the visionary, the innovator, the explorer. It made so much sense I was actually quite excited about what I read, and stayed up late reading more (we do that, us ENTPs)

My (ex) boss looks at me like I'm mental when I say that I'm bored, that I just do not have the attention span for the work I am doing, I hate routine. I feel like some disruptive school kid. I'm not a troublemaker, I am ENTP. I argue to understand and challenge existing rules and routines. I love to learn and do new things, I have a billion new ideas which rarely go beyond my notepad, and I get distracted easily.

I'm really excited about my new job now. I've been in a few meetings this week and this project has momentum. A real change of pace, some huge challenges and high profile. Its bigger than I realised, with a chance to work with some clever people from one of the world's most respected consulting firms. And it's such a good fit- room for ideas, lots to understand and challenge, brainstorming.

This is the profile:

 http://www.16personalities.com/ENTP-personality

February Fun

First pay day after Christmas and first of many fun weekend's of February. The plans made in January start coming into effect this month and it looks like we are going to be busy (in a good way!)

On Friday we went to Sant-Yago, a Tapas restaurant in Southsea, with a Groupon voucher. I've decided to live life through Groupon this year, and take advantage of the deals to try new restaurants and activities at bargain prices. Sant-Yago is on the must try list, and with 7 dishes for £13.50, we were able to tuck into a variety of dishes for a steal. The independent restaurant on Clarendon Road was bustling but has an intimate atmosphere good for a date. The food was lovely, we especially enjoyed the baked Camembert, paprika crisps and Albodingas and we'll definitely go back to try some of the other Tapas treats. Yum!

On Saturday it was the first monthly pub night- a plan formulated from the Facebook group. We extended the plans a bit and went early to the Fat Fox to watch the England- France Six Nations rugby, a game where I'm still not completely sure what's going on. Good to have some cider and chat with the boys before a visit to the best curry house in the world T&J Mahal on Elm Grove. A swift Balti chilli chicken massalla and on to meet the rest at the King Street Tavern to try a pub we wouldn't normally go to. For good reason, there were no tables and so we went back to Elm Grove to the Honest Poli for old times sake. Just a good fun unpretentious evening, something we have not done enough of in the past year.

Where to in March?