Thursday, September 9, 2021

Welcoming Friday Favorites!

I'm starting a new monthly post of Friday Favorites!  This will be a series of Top 5 or Top 10 of some of my favorites in a variety of topics, and they will appear on the second Friday of the month.  

Some of these lists are inspired by the discussions I have with the most excellent Dan Zehr and Cory Clubb on the podcast CWK Pourover.  If you are ever up for some great conversation with an even more wonderful community of listeners and participants, check out this fun group.  We can sometimes be pretty serious, but most of the time craziness ensues for some great laughs.  Some of these Top 5 lists come from conversations with my daughters.  I often pose this question on car rides or at dinner, "What are your Top 5..?"  Most of the time that question is met with eye-rolling, but sometimes clarity and meaning come from those moments.

Anyway, to kick-off the first Friday Favorites, here are my Top 5 Mobile Apps: 

5. Marvel Unlimited - 10,000 Marvel comics at my fingertips?!?!?  Yes, please.  I can download 10 at a time when I don't plan to be connected to wifi for a while.  Take a look at my 2021 Personal Stats posts to see how often I use this app.  I can tell you, my library grows a lot faster than my consumption.  At least they don't stack up next to my reading chair!  

4. Twitter - This is my favorite way to keep in quick contact with everyone and to keep my ear to the ground of what is going on in my favorite communities.  It is my most wide-open social media in that I follow the largest groups of people and organizations.  All my other social media is much tighter and curated in what I follow.  Twitter is my ear to the ground.  

3. Instagram - Instagram and Twitter would have been tied for my consumption time until my family introduced me to Instagram Reels.  Those have caught my fancy.  I laugh, ogle at the cute animals, and am amazed at some of the dancing talent!  Oh, then there is the Instagram feed.  I love the visual aspect of Instagram; it allows me a quick view of the groups and people I enjoy.  It is a much tighter group than Twitter and Facebook. 

2. Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes - I just love games. I somehow found a good group of people to join who are super positive and help each other out.  There is something I have just enjoyed about the challenge of collecting heroes and villains of the Star Wars Galaxy, powering them up, and creating odd teams to do the fighting.  I probably dedicate 30-45 mintues a day building up my characters, ships and profile on this game.  

1. Topps card trading apps - I realize that this is kind of cheating (my blog my rules), but of the four Topps apps that I collect, at least one of them would always be number one with my phone apps.  I have told the story many times, but I will never forget my first introduction to Topps Digital cards.  I was at the Indiana Comic Con with my Coffee with Kenobi friends, Dan Zehr and Cory Club, when they introduced me to the Star Wars Card Trader app.  This led me to discover Marvel Collect, Bunt and Disney Collect.  I collect, trade and drool over these cards.  I am in real trouble when all four apps have sets I am chasing at the same time.  It happens...often...

These and other apps can be really consuming, and I just wanted to be clear that I most certainly do use the Digital Wellbeing function that my phone offers.  I limit the time I spend on each app every day, and the Wellbeing feature will just shut the app down once I reach the time allotted.  Please do me and yourself a favor and set those boundaries, because these apps are awesome, but so are the face-to-face people in our lives.  

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