If a genie granted you three wishes, what would you wish for? Earlier this week, something I read prompted me to make a list of my 3 magic genie wishes and share them with you today.

Welcome to the 136^th edition of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a simple living challenge for the week. Along with my magic genie wishes, this week’s edition has a battery saving hack for your phone, information about the surprising evolution of potatoes, and a reminder about Polar Bear Week.

On my mind this week: What are your 3 genie wishes?

Earlier in the week, Jay-lyn from The Wonderful and Wacky World of One Single Mom published a blog post entitled If I Had a Genie where she shared her three magic genie wishes.

Reading Jay-lyn’s post, I gave some thought to my own list and shared them in a comment. Not surprisingly, our two lists were very well aligned, with both of us putting larger societal needs ahead of our own personal wants. We decided we need to go shopping in search of antique lamps.

I’m sure none of these will come as a surprise to my regular readers, but here is my list:

1. A fair and just society where all citizens are treated with respect.
2. Less concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few ill-intentioned individuals.
3. The ability to teleport myself to spend time with my daughters who live far away.

Thanks to Jay-lyn for the inspiration.

I’d love to know what would be on your list of magic genie wishes. Please share them in a comment below, or in a post of your own.

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• On Sunday, Laura and I had time to visit the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver before leaving for the bus station and airport. Although the peak of flower season is long past for this year, the fall colours were beautiful.
• The Blue Jays and Dodgers have been putting on quite a show in the World Series. On Monday evening/Tuesday morning, we stayed up until 3 a.m. to the end of that record-setting marathon of a game. Regardless of the final outcome, this has been everything a World Series should be—with excellent pitching, powerful hitting, terrific defensive plays on the field, and some record-setting moments.
• I wrapped up the work for my curriculum development contract at Conestoga College. I’m looking forward to turning my attention to other things.

Things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are three things I learned this week:

Battery saving hack for your phone

Prolonging the battery life of your iPhone can be as simple as putting the phone face down when you’re not using it. When you do that, the iPhone’s light and proximity sensors will keep your screen dark even when you have texts and notifications flooding your phone. The Google Pixel phone has a similar feature.

Apparently, this feature has been in place on iPhones since 2015. How did I not hear about this before now?

(Source: Huffington Post)

You say tomato, I say potato

Here’s your fun fact for the day. A team of evolutionary biologists and genomic scientists has traced the origins of the beloved potato to a chance encounter millions of years ago involving the tomato.

Given that both species are pollinated by bees, we likely have a bee to thank for adding the potato to our diet.

(Source: CNN Science)

It’s Polar Bear Week

November 2 to 8 is Polar Bear Week—an event to raise awareness of the serious implications of a warming Arctic on these beautiful creatures.

As the planet warms, sea ice melts earlier in the spring and forms later in the fall. This means the polar bears have less time to hunt and build up the body fat they need to last through the summer months. Many bears go months without eating properly. This leads to malnutrition, lower birth rates, and even death.

Interestingly, polar bears evolved from brown bears 1 million years ago. They are solitary animals—preferring to be alone until they need to find a mate. And their cubs are born in dens hidden under the snow.

(Source: Happy Eco News)

This week’s simple living challenge – Limit screen time

Simplifying life is a big part of living more intentionally. With that in mind, I kicked off the year with 52 ways to simplify your life this year, including a downloadable checklist of weekly tasks.

This week’s challenge is to cut down on screen time. Earlier this year, I did a 6-week social media detox and have significantly cut down on non-productive screen time ever since. Although I still have work to do, it has definitely helped support my theme of intentionality.

I’d love to hear what you think about any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.