In answer to emails about Canadian Halloween candy, we got it at Canadian Costco. I love going into grocery stores when we travel to see what is different and what is the same. We often grab dinner there when we’re in a hurry, and those are my favourite meals outside the country.

My friend commented that her mother always visits Costco when she comes because they have different things from the US. We didn’t need anything, but it’s hard to resist the siren song of seeing a whole aisle of bulk hockey equipment. They have poutine in their food court. They have enormous bags of All Dressed chips.

We went up and down every aisle and ended up getting the Halloween candy, an extra box for the kids, and six-packs of Roots socks. No hockey equipment, unfortunately, or the 18-bar Kit Kat. But still, happy things to bring home.

But the best was that we also went to a normal grocery store and they had real De Cecco stellette pasta, which we can’t really get here anymore. Our store carries acini di pepe, which is close, but not really the same thing. I bought six boxes so I could make my favourite Mary McCartney soup.

And now I’ll get to think about that weekend every time I eat it.

What is your best out-of-country grocery find?

I love this essay about the spaces that actually get used in a home, and how we all have a different home map from the other inhabitants. For instance, I like to work in the kitchen, and I usually sit in the Wolvog’s chair because it’s next to the window. And then I move back to my chair for an actual meal. I only sit on the side of the sofa in the living room close to Quentin. If someone is already in that space, I’ll usually sprawl across the floor. And I love spending hours in my bed. It’s the only place to watch television in the house, and I can surround myself with my books and notebooks and lounge about.

And obviously, other people in the house spend time in other spaces, such as their room or their side of the bed. Josh usually works in the basement. The ChickieNob works at her desk or on the floor but never on her bed. The Wolvog moves between his desk and a chair by the window.

Shangrilogs writes: “We rarely make a conscious decision that we no longer use a part of our house. We stop going there because something about another place is easier, warmer, closer, brighter, quieter, more convenient. We make that choice a few hundred times and eventually stop experiencing it as a choice. Then the kitchen counter becomes where I work. The chaise becomes a superstition.”

I love everything that comes after that about how our choices reveal big clues into who we are or who we wish we were. It will make you look at your home in a different way.

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

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Last year, a kid came to my house for Halloween and couldn’t accept any of our candy because the nut-free candy had been mixed in the same bowl with nut-full candy. I told her I would do better this year, and I made a note in my calendar to get nut-free candy AND nut-full candy next year.

We want the leftovers to be stuff we want to snack on through the fall. Which is, sadly, Snickers. But we also want to be the house that has candy options. So we’re keeping everything separate, and the nut-free candy is in its original box stamped with a “made in a nut-free facility” stamp. Plus, it’s all super yummy Canadian candy (e.g., Smarties, Aeros, Coffee Crisps), so we’ll be happy to have those leftovers, too.

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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.

We had an event in Canada last week, and we decided to drive so we could stop off and see my cousin along the way. It’s an 8-hour drive to my friend’s city, and my cousin lives about 5 hours into the trip. It had been 8 months since I last met up with my cousin on the Massachusetts/Vermont border because we both happened to be in the same area on the same weekend.

I have Zoom lunch with my cousin every other week, so it’s not as if I hadn’t seen her face in the last 8 months, but I hadn’t gotten a massive hug from her in a random strip mall parking lot in those 8 months. I hadn’t gotten to bury my face on her shoulder and let out a few sobs of happiness. I hadn’t gotten to sit across from her in perfect weather, drinking a steamer and talking.

And then I got to see my friend and her whole family and lots of people I know from high school or college or life beyond. And I got to be in Canada, which just makes me happy.

My mother commented that I did a year’s worth of socializing in a single long weekend, and she’s correct. But it made me feel lucky to be invited to things and to have such cool people in my life.

My site went down this week for about 12 hours. I noticed around noon, and I immediately closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. I googled to see if other people’s sites were down. I looked at my account, and all seemed to be okay. I just couldn’t access the dashboard or site.

I decided to wait. It had to be server-related and not site-related. These things would work themselves out. But around 6 pm, I decided that I had to call customer support. They confirmed my site was offline, and they thought it might be malware-related. I closed my eyes again and took some deep breaths. This would definitely be above my head.

I had to wait an hour for the report, and it came back with one infected file. Could I just delete it? Googling brought me to a bulletin board where one post said I could definitely delete it without destroying my site, and another said deleting it would destroy my site.

I wrote an old web developer friend to ask if I could buy an hour of his time to clean up the site, and while I waited for him to write back, I downloaded the file and looked at the code. It looked fine. Not strange at all. I could just delete this… right? And if it ruined everything, I could upload it back into the site… right?

This is the problem with knowing a little but not knowing enough.

In the end, as I was moving to delete the file, my site came back online. And my friend wrote back that he would be happy to help for free. But now nothing needed to happen. We could just catch up.

So all’s well that ends well?

P.S. I was only mildly panicked because I happen to have made my backups a few hours before the site went down, and I keep the last few backups. Have you made a backup recently?

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Finding a Different Path sends herself a reminder that she always feels the same way (overwhelmed) at the same time of year (start of the school year), so she doesn’t need to be surprised. It means a lot of brief updates in a single post, but it was good to see her words in my feed reader.

Lastly, I love All & Sundry’s post about becoming a more interesting person by becoming a person at peace with her life. I love this so much: “I feel like a person who is not incomplete when I am by myself … I feel buoyed by the simple good times I have had lately and I feel like those are the things that are important in my life, rather than milestones and accomplishments.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Is it okay to push this button? 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 October 9 – 16) 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.