* 📕 Leo read his first new English word by himself, or at least that I've witnessed. He was looking at his iPad and the was some text (no icon) that said "Zoom", and he said Zoom. I looked at him and asked him how he knew that and he explained, well Zoo is z-o-o and there's an "m" at the end, so it's "zoom", that's how I knew. Color me impressed. English class is working. * 🥶 The week of spring was a false alarm and it's back to winter for a week. Booo! * 🎣 I went fishing...sorta! For a work social we went to Zauo, a sushi restaurant where you can fish in the restaurant! If you catch one they'll prepare the fish however you'd like (sushi, sashimi, cooked in a variety of ways)! I did not catch anything, but my mates did. When you catch a fish they celebrate with a Taiko drum, so it's quite lively around dinner time.Definitely need to visit with the fam at some point. * 🏋️‍♀️ I started lifting weights again. Deciding on a plan, writing down/remembering what weights I used felt like an insurmountable problem, preventing me from even starting. I know it's not, but that's a lot of decisions to make. A co-worker suggested I use an app called Alpha progression. You put in your basic info, the equipment you have, and it will generate a plan for you, automatically setup timers and such like. 2 sessions in and I quite like it. The yearly price is a bit much, but if I compare it with working out with a trainer at a gym or just the gym, if it's able to keep me going and getting stronger, it's an absolute bargain. Bonus points for prominently including RSS icons with their social icons. * 📵 These past few weeks with all of the 💩 going on in the old country, I've been doom scrolling on Bluesky/Mastsodon. To be fair to Mastodon, the doom portion of the scrolling was mostly on Bluesky, but scrolling nonetheless, I turned my iPhone into a (mostly) dumb phone. Mostly it was done by: removing all icons from my home screen, turning on grayscale mode, and setting up a text-only app launcher widget with 4 apps (messages, line, apple maps, and phone) (as per the instructions in dumb phone app). I didn't go all in and delete all-the-apps (yet). I think I like it? It's only been a day but the pull of my phone feels like it's less. I want to see if I can use this as a bridge to start taking photos using a _camera_ when I'm out and listening to music on my iPod (besides when I'm on a plane). Thinking about the camera aspect specifically, the reason we tend to use our phones, besides having it with us, is because it's quicker. But if something is really so important that we want to capture an image of it – what's the harm in spending an extra 10 seconds framing? I imagine all of the processing that phones do these days will be hard to replicate, but alas. Point is, dumb phone? Hell yeah.

ALT: a close up of a clown with a yellow wig and red nose .