I was 5 or 6 when he read the Hobbit aloud to me. The trilogy is a bit denser so I read that jointly with him I think when I was 10. My daughter and I did all the books as bedtime stories when she was 8, and she liked them all, but the Hobbit is definitely her favorite.
Possibly considered a bit basic or boring, but definitely Tolkien for me. It’s a classic for a reason, and personally it is still so special to me
One of my earliest and dearest childhood memories was my dad reading the Hobbit to me when I was quite small. We later read the trilogy books as well. Loved them all. Recently read them all with my daughter, creating a whole new set of precious memories.
The things I appreciate the most about my life, are the ones that took me off plan and by surprise. The unscripted unexpected shit, that’s my real happiness.
My partner and our wonderful daughter first and foremost. And at the moment, I really appreciate my job being flexible, and still letting me work from home - even from another country than where I’m supposed to be.
I am also a terrible cook - but my husband is cooking up a Thai red curry with pork. Super fragrant with galangal, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass and coconut, lots of chili of course. I’m looking forward to it.
Witcher 3 is perhaps a good option. The combat style is relatively complex I’d say, and quite fun. The story is very engaging and super well written. And it’s available on both Steam and in fact on Switch too. I’ve played the whole game on Switch, and it runs well.
In the Voyager app, I can long press on the community name on a post, directly from browsing in All, and select block from a pop up. It’s super quick and easy. Same pop up also has the option to subscribe.
As a gaming mom myself, I’d second the Steamdeck recommendations. I love mine! Best thing I have bought in years honestly.
I can play in the living room, while hanging out with the rest of the family, and I take it with me on work trips as well. I don’t have Valheim on it, but I do have No Man’s Sky and it works well. I’m currently playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on the deck - there are so many great options.
It’s perhaps not a fully fledged fitness tracker, and it’s certainly not a smartwatch - but my favorite health tracking device has turned out to be my Oura ring.
I used it alongside my Apple Watch for quite a while, but I’ve found that the Oura ring gives me plenty of insight on my sleep, recovery and (more limited) activity. And the form factor is just awesome! I don’t even notice I’m wearing it, and I only charge it every 5 days or so.
I’ve stopped wearing the Apple Watch altogether now, and I find it freeing not to have all those notifications available on my wrist, while still having the health tracking I want from the Oura. Obviously it’s not a good fit for someone who does want the other features of a smartwatch, but solely as a health tracker I really like it.
I am not at all from a tech background. I have a humanities/ social science educational background, I work in the organizational management space, for a humanitarian organization.
I do not enjoy a lot of social media, but I had been using Reddit for 8+ years, as my only social media platform really. I enjoyed it for the specialist communities focused on niche interests. I’m hoping to replicate some of that with Lemmy, which is much more aligned with my value set than a large corporate run social platform.
For five days a week, I do an upper-lower split. I tend to do lower body Monday, Thursday and Saturday, and upper body Tuesday and Thursday, taking Wednesday and Sunday off (I may do cardio stuff those days).
My priority at the moment is legs, due to a bad knee which I’m focused on keeping stable and strong. You could switch this to having three upper days per week with two lower, if you’re more focused on upper body growth. Or you could even do a push-pull-legs, but then you’d only maybe hit legs once a week, which I think is too little personally - again, all depends on your goals.
With any split, you can easily find a free starter program if you look around. Then you can tweak it based on your own needs. As an example of the content: for my upper days I focus on hitting upper back, lats, some lower back, chest, front, side, rear delts, as well as biceps and triceps. And I add abs at the end. For lower body days I do glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves, adductors and abductors. Sometime o add abs on leg days too.
Which exercises you specifically want to do for each muscle is really down to preference. If you’re very new to it, you could start off with machines, and over time you can tweak your programme to be more varied e.g. with free weight, cables etc. The main thing at first is to learn the form of each exercise, and to track your reps and weights, so you and progressively increase those over time, for growth.
That you’re never far from the ocean. Also it’s very safe and clean, and highly walkable and cyclable.
A PPL split is a great choice, so no need to switch to full body unless you want to.
I also find doing full body takes too much time on a given day. My current approach is an upper-lower split instead. That way, on weeks when I can only hit the gym 4 days, all muscles are still getting stimulation twice in that week. When I can more consistently go 6 times per week I tend to do PPL.
The main comment I would have, which has also been mentioned by others, is you probably need to specify your goal (e.g. hypertrophy vs strength?). Then you can research the ideal rep ranges for that goal, as they can differ.
And most importantly, you need to plan for progression - you need some form of creating ‘progressive overload’ in your programme. If your sets and reps are always static at 3X15, then how will you do that? It may not be realistic to increase weight each time, but you could increase reps over time, up to a higher limit, and when you’ve reached that, you then increase the weight and start at a lower rep number - rinse and repeat. There are many other approaches to this too - so find what makes sense for you.