Hello world!

I have been focused a bit on stripping things in my life down to the essentials. In this way, I am zeroing in on what’s important and worthwhile.

🔖 My Favorite Stuff from the Internet This Week

• Gourdlets by aunty games
• About Bricking your phone

🌱 Gardening

With June winding down, I am focused on keeping the big sunflowers hydrated and getting the last few seedlings into the ground. I’m running out of containers and soil so I planted a seedling in the ground Saturday evening. As I did my sounds Sunday morning, I noticed that it had been chomped! Based on previous experience, I suspect a groundhog. I audited all my sunflowers: I have 49 of them growing in containers. We have a heat wave coming so I’m preparing for that this week.

📘 Books

I have been continuing to read Shogun for book club. It’s excellent and I am excited to be able to continue exploring the universe through multiple available miniseries.

I keep track of my reading in various places across the Internet. I track every book I read as @bbrie on Hardcover and as brie on Rambling Readers. I also track each IRL Book Club pick.

🍿 Movies

• Mary Poppins, 1964 (Watched: 2026-06-27)

I watched Mary Poppins this week. The story beats were familiar but this was the first time I watched the movie from the beginning. I did not expect the feminist message. It gave the movie a bit of nuance though it was a bit unresolved. Mary Poppins was the fourteenth feature-length film I’ve watched towards my goal of watching at least 26 movies in 2026. (Over time, I have been treating that as a goal to watch exactly 26 movies. I’ll keep it flexible and decide based on how things go during the rest of the year.)

🎮 Gaming

I bought a few games since Steam’s Summer Sale is happening. I played a good bit of one of the new games, Gourdlets. The game is super cute but I think I’ll exhaust by interest in it within 24 hours of starting. The game is a bit too simple for me to be interested in grinding all the way to 100% completion. I am happy with the trophies I added to my collection while playing this game and I am happy that this game got me playing something.

🏆 Steam Achievements

Every achievement I got this week was in Gourdlets:

• Gourdtropolis
• City folk
• 100m freestyle
• Population growing
• Zookeeper
• Now you see it…
• Mail time
• A gift? For me????

🐾 Movement

• Time Split: Foot 58% ████████████░░░░░░░░ Bike 42%

• Distance Split: Foot 27% █████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ Bike 73%

• Thursday: ☀️ Montour 🚲

• Sunday:

  • 💪 Biceps and Shoulders
  • ☁️ OpenStreets PGH 🐾

I am so glad I made it down to OpenStreets PGH today. It was super cool to see so many people biking safely in my city.

🎶 Music

I only listened to 56 tracks this week.

🦄 Unique tracks: 53 | Unique albums: 15 | Unique artists: 15

Top Genres This Week

1. 🎤 Hip Hop (5 plays)
2. 🌊 New Wave (4 plays)
3. 🍿 Pop (2 plays)
4. 🛹 Alternative R&B (1 plays)
5. ✨ Trap (1 plays)

📯 Social

I posted a photo of Plop plopping for Caturday.

Thanks!

— Brie