1070th Friday Blog Roundup

I know it’s boring to read about someone else’s dream, BUT in my dream, all newscasters around the world had stopped reporting on the news and were reporting solely about what I’m about to tell you. So technically, the dream-you already know all of this.

In my dream, the ChickieNob got a new, lemon-yellow guinea pig named Pepper, which was one of a new breed of guinea pig that were born without hair but covered entirely by the clear side of velcro. So about the size of Quentin when he was three weeks old, lemon-yellow body, no hair, clear velcro. The plastic tips on some of the loops were burnt, leaving a smattering of what looked like black dots through the plastic; hence the very uncreative name of Pepper. (Come on, dream-ChickieNob. You can do better than that.)

But all of that wasn’t what made Pepper newsworthy. What was so amazing about Pepper is that if you lined up a row of normal guinea pigs, all facing forward, Pepper would crawl underneath each one and pause to touch noses (which is how guinea pigs actually kiss) before crawling underneath the next one. And his Velcro body would never stick to the other guinea pig’s fur. Newscasters could not get over this fact. They kept running report after report about how Pepper had crawled underneath another row of guinea pigs.

This is how badly my brain is begging for a different story when I read the news.

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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.

A Separate Life took an amazing trip to Egypt, and she brought us along through a post and photographs. I am most impressed that she did the trip piecemeal, pulling together lodging, transportation, and tickets herself. I know that smartphones make a lot of things easier these days, but it’s still a huge undertaking (Cairo is enormous), so I was extra impressed. Click over to see Cairo and Luxor.

Lastly, Finding a Different Path writes about giving away the glider. Goodwill and a consignment shop felt wrong. An individual felt right, but it still hurt to give away an object that was symbolic of a larger dream. She writes: “It doesn’t negate the love that I had for a nonexistent, completely elusive child. But there was something about that glider being gone that reopened a long-shiny scar, at least for a couple of hours.” Sending a hug.

The roundup to the Roundup: Pepper the velcro guinea pig. 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 January 16 – 23) 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.