Category — Microblog Mondays

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

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A testament to how much I love and miss my sister: I burst into tears and fogged up my glasses the moment she came outside and I saw her for the first time in over a year. She drove 8 hours to see my parents now that everyone in that equation is vaccinated. Except for me. Hence outside. And far apart. And it the rain.

I once had tickets to see Bob Dylan, and I gave them up because the forecast said it would probably drizzle. Drizzle! But before I went over to my parents’ porch, I saw they were predicting an inch of rain. Unlike Bob Dylan in a drizzle, my sister after over a year apart in a downpour sounded completely do-able.

My younger niece made me awesome stickers (with the cutest guinea pig design courtesy of her older sister). We took an 18-foot-apart selfie together. And we just talked for three hours. It was amazing and emotional, and I also cried on the drive home.

I have missed my sister so much, and I feel very lucky that I got to see her from far away.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

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

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Sometimes I entertain the idea that we could be vaccinated mid-summer and feel comfortable going to a beach, with masks. I know I am in the minority (maybe not?), but I’m not really comfortable with house rentals. I’m moderately uncomfortable with agency house rentals, and I’m more uncomfortable with AirBnB rentals.

I’m a hotel person. I like knowing what I’m going to get. I like knowing someone is on-site if things go wrong. I like meeting other people in the common areas. I just like hotels.

But rentals feel like a safer bet right now. It depends on the hotel, and it depends on the rental, but being alone in your own space feels safer than having a room in a much larger space.

I’m trying to not be such a hotel person in my head on the off-chance that we get vaccinated, can go on a short trip, but still want to mitigate risk as much as possible.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

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

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CNN had a piece last week about virtually opening locked letters. I was less intrigued by the software digitally unfolding the letters and more the concept of locked letters in general. It’s “a technique called letter locking — intricately folding a flat sheet of paper to become its own envelope.” The letter is sealed shut, and the person knows if the message has been read if the seal is broken. Just like a normal letter, except in this case, the letter is like a complex aerogramme.

(Aside: Did you ever send an aerogramme? I sent them all the time through the college years when email started to get popular.)

(Second aside: I didn’t realize until today that the post office stopped selling them.)

While it’s a clever way to ensure your words are only read by the receiver, the reality of sealed letters were they alway ripped strangely. And then you had to figure out what the ripped words said. And sometimes you had to remind a certain friend over and over again to stop writing right up to the edge.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

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

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I learned a new word thanks to the BBC: hiraeth. It is “a pull on the heart that conveys a distinct feeling of missing something irretrievably lost.” It’s a “blend of homesickness, nostalgia and longing.”

Isn’t that a perfect word?

It’s that realization that a moment has passed, and you can never get back to it. Like college—you can revisit the location, and you can visit individual people from that time period, but you can’t get the moment back where you were that age in that space with those people.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

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

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No Complaints (she makes the amazingly wonderful Shedunnit podcast) posted a story of using (and breaking) a special cup. She points to a sentiment that has been guiding a lot of behaviour this year: “Use the fancy stuff … Enjoy it all now, because who knows what trouble is just around the corner.” Everything feels so precarious: why save a bar of chocolate if you could end up with no sense of smell (or taste) tomorrow?

But she also points out the flip side: “If you use it, you have to be prepared to lose it.” Using the nice cup is wonderful, but in using it, you need to be prepared that you may drop it and lose it.

I am definitely in the latter group. I think more about the fact that I could lose it if I use it. Which group are you in? The “use it because there will never be a perfect time” or the “save it because if you use it, you could lose it” group?

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.