My week summarized into 3 highlights, 2 discoveries, and 1 anticipation.

3 Highlights

Eating in
My wife and I have a chronic problem with being unprepared when dinner time rolls around, so we often end up ordering food or going out. My belt and my bank statements would attest that this is not a good practice. But this week we did much better eating in for most of our meals. I found the Tasty app and have been using that to plan our meals each Saturday so we can pick up groceries on Sunday. Since writing this, I’ve switched over to the Paprika app so I can get recipes from more sources (I’ve enjoyed Budget Bytes, but I am taking recommendations). I like that the interface is bare-bones, with no fluffy advertising or bright pictures/text. Cooking and eating together has been a delightful time for our family. My daughter has been using the toddler tower that my parents got her for Christmas to help while cooking. She likes taste-testing ingredients as we cook and watching hot pans on the stove from a distance.

Helping Hands
I didn’t have to work on Thursday since federal agencies were closed in remembrance of President Jimmy Carter. Instead, I spent the whole day working on the house with my wife, while each of our moms came over at different times to help watch our daughter. It’s amazing how much can get done on a free day with minimal child watching responsibilities. And it was fantastic getting to see and talk with each of our moms.

Green Owl
This week I got back on DuoLingo to try to revive my Spanish skills. I nearly minored in Spanish in college. I dropped my minor during my last semester, with only two classes left, so that I could focus on my internship. It feels a bit tragic to have been so close and not made it across the finish line, but I would make the same decision again. Since then, I’ve been noticing my Spanish comprehension slowly slipping away year by year. I’ve been having a lot of fun this week dusting off the cobwebs and experiencing “Aha!” moments as the intricacies of the Spanish language slowly come back to me. Also, I’ve noticed DuoLingo has changed a lot since I last used it a couple of years ago. I read an article about how they are big on “gamification”, but it’s crazy all the tricks they use to make it fun (and addicting) to learn a language. I guess dopamine reward circuit hijacking is okay if it’s for a good purpose?

2 Discoveries

AI App-Building Platforms
I’ve known about these AI coding platforms for a while, but just started playing with them this week and I can’t believe how good they are! The main one I’ve been messing around with is lovable.dev. You just give it a prompt, and it will build an app for you in seconds. Then you can tweak the app with more prompts. Once it’s ready, you can hook up a database with Supabase and deploy with Netlify or Vercel. Gone are the days of people saying with a straight face, “I have SUCH GOOD app ideas! I would be a millionaire if only I knew how to build them!”. There are no excuses for not building now. Check out this post if you want to learn more: A guide to AI prototyping for product managers

Wesley Huff
Wesley Huff is a biblical scholar with a personal website packed with resources on biblical history. I came across him this week on a podcast. His knowledge on original source documents for scripture is impressive. I can tell that he is very well studied from listening to him, and his website has a lot of great infographics that he has made himself on the bible, manuscripts, archaeology, translation, and more.

1 Anticipation

Fitness Challenge
I signed up for a twelve-week fitness challenge through NASA. The main reason I signed up is that I will receive three free body composition reports via calipers and InBody tests, each spaced six weeks apart. I just started intermittent fasting and regular exercise a couple of weeks ago, so I’m excited to use these reports as extra motivation to stick with it and see how my body composition changes over the next twelve weeks. I’ve already lost 5 pounds in the last week, if my scale can be trusted! I’ll have my first test on Tuesday.