592nd Friday Blog Roundup

Pesach starts tonight.  It’s a little easier this year because for the first time in hundreds of years, Conservative Jews are allowed to eat kitniyot.  You see, there are the things you definitely can’t eat during Pesach, such as pasta or bread — anything with wheat, oats, or barley — but then there is another category called kitniyot, which contains things like rice and beans and corn and lentils.  You can’t eat those, either, which made it very difficult to eat during Pesach if you’re a vegetarian.

It has always been a holiday that has made me fairly miserable.  I’m better at fasting for a day than giving up rice and beans for 8.

But this year, Conservative rabbis overturned the rule, which means we can have garbanzo beans in the salad and rice and beans during the week.  It makes things a lot easier.

Still, I was thinking about MLO Knitting, a child-free after IF blogger who died back in 2013.  I can’t link to her blog anymore because it looks like it has been taken down, but she had a corn allergy, and she loved Pesach because it was a chance to stock up on corn syrup-free products.  It’s food for thought: every change that makes things easier for one group of people may make it harder for another.

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On the other hand, I finally, officially, beat gluten’s ass.  My friend’s child needs gluten-free cookies, and I tried to make her hamantaschen this year.  What a freakin’ mess.  I hadn’t accounted for the fat in the almond flour when adding the butter and the end result was a gooey mess that spread across the cookie sheet.

This time, I got the ratios correct, and I managed to reverse engineer a Twix-bar and figure out hamantaschen.  Oh, it’s on, gluten, it’s on.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “What Infertility Did to Me” (Ever Upward)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Notes from the Ninth Circle has a tiny, breath-holding post about hope.  It’s really too tiny to even describe without ruining the effect.  Just click over to see what she has done with 4 lines.

A+ Effort’s post about her foray into Whole30 cracked me up, especially: “I’ve been mostly gluten-free for almost two years, and I still cannot pass up a donut. I mean, I pass them up in the store, but if a box is sitting in the office, you better believe I’ll be there napkin in hand.”  As someone who struggles against cravings, too, I raise my mushed up banana to her.

It Is What It Is is back with a post summing up life before she turns 50.  I love this: “At my last birthday, I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of turning 50 in just a years time, yet, here I am and I must say I am thrilled to be approaching this mid-century of my life with such gusto and gratitude.”  It’s a great post about marking the milestone.

Outlandish Notions has a post about a run.  It’s almost poetry as she passes through her town, first forward and then in reverse.  My favourite part: “The air conditioners, all of them, already.  The cars, all of them, rushing by on the street, the sound dipping and sliding around walls and fences and trees and earthworks, weaving in and out of the background noises of living things.”  I felt like I was there.

Lastly, A Half Baked Life has a post about bridgetenders that made me smile, not least of which due to the online project eons ago that I ran called Bridges (remember that site?) bringing together various niches of the blogosphere.  As a watcher, I love the idea of sitting in the same place, day after day, observing the water and surrounding area.  The whole post just made me feel good.

The roundup to the Roundup: Rice and beans on Pesach!  Take that, gluten.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between April 15th and April 22nd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.