Posts from — September 2022

ChickieNob and I had our own London Bridge, a plan for Queen Elizabeth’s death if it should happen while she was at school. I’m glad she was in a class with her brother when their teacher told them the news.

Even though it was a half hour to the end of the school day, I jumped in the car and drove over to get her. We drank tea and cried and watched the BBC coverage. I convinced her to take a brisk walk — I think her majesty would approve — and finally released her to sit quietly with her thoughts. She’s sad, but she’ll be okay.

*******

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…

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.

Dubliner in Deutschland muses about things that have changed (or not changed) about the pandemic. I feel the same way: “It feels strange not wearing a mask after being so used to wearing one!” Sometimes I think about how the masks have changed — how we can look at old pictures and think, “Oh, I wouldn’t wear that type of mask anymore. I now wear this one.”

Lastly, Jewish IVF explains why she started a blog while going through infertility, and how the space has become a refuge. She writes, “I can take as little or as much time as I want to formulate thoughts. I can abandon thoughts if I feel like I’m finished thinking about them. I can look back at old pieces and see how I’ve evolved.” Yes. To all of that. Tell her why you write.

The roundup to the Roundup: The loss of Queen Elizabeth. 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 September 2 – 9) 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.

This wins for best dek of August (and maybe all time): “If you knew the birth date, time, and place of your soul mate, how far would you go to find them?”

Followed by this line: “Floaty-scarved wingnut astrology lady or not, Stephanie Jourdan suddenly had my full attention.”

It is a fantastic set up for a story, but the punchline at the end is what makes it really perfect. Please don’t skip ahead to it. Let the story unfold from beginning to end. (Or, beginning to end of excerpt.)

I need to read this book.

So how far would you go to meet your soul mate if you knew the birthday and birthplace of your soul mate?

A made a thought-provoking comment on this post about photos:

“I look at my mom’s scrapbooks with photos and stories, and I love them, but they’re not comprehensive. It was a special occasion only thing, because film and development wasn’t free. I have a lot of great pictures of everyday things that are, to me, more valuable than my vacation pictures.”

It’s true — the candid, non-posed, I’m-so-glad-I-captured-that-moment mean more to me than the posed pictures taken at events. They may be blurry or off-center; people may be looking somewhere else or have their eyes closed in silent laughter. Some of those have happened on trips, and I can think of one that came at an event. (I snapped a picture of the twins dancing with each other at the end of their B’nai Mitzvah.) But for the most part, it’s the photos from everyday life I would miss more than the thousands I take so I don’t forget a trip or event that mean more to me.

What about you?

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

*******

There is only one Wordle, but there are 439 Wordle-like games on this list.

It’s so funny because my friend and I were playing Wordle before it hit the mainstream, and at that time, we kept looking for other games like Wordle. “Why aren’t there any other games like Wordle?” we lamented back and forth in email. “We only get one Wordle puzzle per day — what do we do with the rest of the time?”

The answer is now here in the form of 439 other games.

*******

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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Many years ago, I went to Shepherdstown, WV for the first time. When we got out of the car and looked around, I remarked that it was as if they made a town just for me. Teahouse? Check. Coffeehouse? Check. Bookstore, movie theater, great restaurants, nearby river, sundial? Check, check, check.

The town has changed a lot over the years and lost a few things that we loved during that first visit — teahouse, toy store, and many restaurants — but I never forgot that feeling of stepping out of a car and feeling like a place was designed solely to be filled with my favourite things. Even if I knew it was just a happy accident.

I recently thought the same thing as I was reading a book series — Death and Croissants by Ian Moore. It’s not just that I like the books. It’s that it feels like the books were made solely to make me happy. To appeal to all the things I love. Which, again, is a happy accident because I don’t know the author.

It’s hard to pinpoint how it is fine-tuned to appeal to my tastes. It just hits this perfect note, and I fall into such a happy space reading the books.

The last time I felt this way was the first time I read The Magicians by Lev Grossman. It feels special to feel it again.