Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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It is March 9, which means that it is Random Act of Kindness Day for Thomas (Facebook group link). On this day, Kristin asks people to do a random act of kindness in her son’s name because he is no longer here to put good into the world himself. I love this explanation from a few years ago:

Sandy once said that all these acts of kindness help write Thomas’ story, since he’s not here to write it himself. I’ve always loved that idea because it means that by encouraging participation on March 9 we can still parent our invisible child—and he can still change the world.

It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be good. Take a moment today to do something for someone else. To pay a compliment. To give someone your time or expertise. To go out of your way for another human to make them feel seen in this world. And then tell the universe that you just did that for Thomas.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

I know there are still many more games to go and anything can happen, but I have a terrible feeling that our beloved Spurs are going to be relegated. Soccer is the only sport I follow, and we decided to go all-in with the Spurs as part of filling our time after the kids have moved away. So this feels like particularly poor planning on our part because it’s painful to watch games, and watching games is what I’m supposed to be doing to take my mind off the fact that it’s painful for the kids to be away.

The Spurs were last relegated in the 1970s, so this didn’t seem like a possibility prior to this week, when they’re so close to the drop zone. But now it IS a possibility, and it is very difficult to watch non-Premier League games in the US. Oh, and did I mention that I literally just renewed my yearly access to the Premier League stream? I don’t want to watch games if my team isn’t in it. Why are they breaking my heart and taking away my weekend activity?

I’m going back to fretting. Please, Spurs, stay in the league.

Every night, I sum up my day in one sentence in my bullet journal. I have a separate one for work, so I try to keep it about non-work things. But because work takes up such a large chunk of the day, I sometimes stare off into space, trying to think of something remarkable to put in that space.

Each notebook spans one or two years, so sometimes when I’m stuck, I’ll peek back and see what I wrote on that day the year before. That happened this week, and I realized it had been almost one year since I lost Beorn. March 2025 was marked by vet appointments, worry, small wins, and big setbacks. He died in April.

I miss his furry face every day. Quentin has a very different personality, and I love that personality, but Beorn was my pandemic pig. He was cautious and quirky. He was my best companion.

My heart hurts when I think about it too much.

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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 to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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

• “Twenty Years Since the Glacier Taught Us to Breathe Again” (The Next 15000 Days)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Finding a Different Path is going glamping. The post is about the vacation, but it’s also about finding and trying something new that fits who you are and stretches you into new spaces. This made me laugh: “It’s something different, but not too scary. It sounds like all the best parts of being in the woods and being in a fancy hotel. I’m excited to try the least rugged camping ever.” Have a great trip!

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled writes about being childless and motherless. It’s a very moving post. She writes: “Mom’s funeral reminded me of just how precious it is to be surrounded by people who share your memories and experiences… not just parents and children and siblings, but extended family members and friends too.” She give me a lot to think about, and I’m holding her in my heart.

The roundup to the Roundup: Almost a full year without Beorn. 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 February 27 – March 6) 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.

I try about 3 – 5 new recipes per month, depending on the month. Sometimes I find a recipe that looks interesting, and I try to make it. Other times, I reverse-engineer something we liked at a restaurant. Last month contained three of those types of meals.

The first was a phở chay we liked from a restaurant. I was able to get it pretty close. Josh rated the first attempt an 8, and I know what I need to do to get it to a 9 or 10.

The second was a vegetarian ramen we liked, also from a restaurant. My first attempt was already nearing a 10, but adding shredded pickled ginger and baby bok choy pushed it over the line. We will make this one again and again.

But the final recipe, which I will not link to here because I still shudder thinking about it, wasn’t even rateable. It was that bad. It was a recipe for tofu shawarma.

Wait, Melissa, you’re thinking. Isn’t shawarma meat? Well, yes, it is. But this recipe told me that shaving down the tofu and adding spices would make a close facsimile of the real thing. I made my tehina and salad and got to work.

The end result looked nothing like the photo, and the texture was something akin to a scrambled egg. We had to trash the leftovers because neither of us could face eating it a second time and use the leftover tehina and salad with some falafel.

Tofu shawarma has earned a spot in the top three of my worst recipe fails.

The same article kept getting shared in various places, and I finally clicked over to the Cherwell to read it. Strange posters were seen around Oxford advertising events at Kingswell College. Oxford does not have a Kingswell College, and the dates were set in 2011.

A QR code brought you to a website where you could download the first few chapters of a story, sign up to receive new chapters when released, and an email address.

I love this sort of thing.

I’ve read a few pages, and it’s the sort of story I would decide to buy after sampling a chapter. Would I maybe regret that decision four or five more chapters in? Perhaps. But by then, I would finish it anyway.

If you haven’t read the article or heard about this story, I pass it along to you. It has already brought me at least a half hour of solid wondering time.