Last weekend, we drove to Canada for my best friend’s child’s Bat Mitzvah. It would have been over six hours to fly, and under eight hours to drive, so we opted to drive to give ourselves more flexibility. I had to keep remembering that as the hours dragged on the way to the border.

But then we were there and having a great time. It was so good to have this simcha amid all the terribleness in the world. There was also a Viking convention happening at our hotel, which added to the awesomeness of the whole experience.

We drove home eating a bag of All Dressed chips (bad idea) and candy (really bad idea), and we spent Monday with a nutrition hangover. The weekend was a small, good thing.

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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.

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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.

A Separate Life hopped on the idea of recording what she knows. You live life. You pick up understanding along the way. It’s kind of a brilliant way of capturing a point-of-view, and reading it is like temporarily inhabiting another person’s mind. Can’t wait for the series to unfold.

Lastly, Slaying, Blogging, Whatever… captures the catch-22 of blogging. When life is difficult and you could benefit from writing out your feelings, you also have very little time to sit down and unpack your feelings because people need you offline. Sending a hug for a hard time.

The roundup to the Roundup: Happy occasions. 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 November 3 – November 10) 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.

Along with people who cannot visualize an apple, I find it bizarre that there are people who enjoy other people coming over without warning.

(These are probably the same people who are thrilled by phone calls they didn’t expect to have.)

364 comments later…

This one cracked me up:

“This is such a modern question. I wonder what today’s introverts would have done 100+ years ago before telephones! The only way to talk to people then was to go and see them. I imagine introverts back then hiding behind the door, pretending not to be home.”

Where do you fall on the spectrum? I’m a hard no.

Do you ever feel like the universe keeps bubbling up the same post for you to read because there’s a message in there that you didn’t retain the first few reads? Every so often, the universe bubbles up this amazing essay that appeared in the Guardian a few years ago. It happened again this week.

The author died the day the Guardian published his essay about lessons learned, knowing that he wouldn’t reach middle age.

“Knowing that my life was going to be cut short has also changed my perspective on ageing. Most people assume they will live into old age. I have come to see growing old as a privilege. Nobody should lament getting one year older, another grey hair or a wrinkle. Instead, be pleased that you’ve made it. If you feel like you haven’t made the most of your last year, try to use your next one better.”

Every time I read it, I try to remember it. Maybe putting it here, I will stumble over it more and more often until it becomes rote.

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

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Yesterday, I wrote about something I found on Kottke. Today, I bring up something I found via John Green, who was writing about something on Kottke. That feels meta.

It’s about how your brain pictures things. I’m a 1. I’m beyond a 1. I can mentally conjure up how things smell or feel or taste. And see it play out like a movie in my head, or feel my mouth water, or breathe in deeper.

So it’s so interesting to think about someone experiencing 5. Maybe as interesting as he thinks experiencing a 1. Where do you fall on the scale?

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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.

At the risk of sounding not that bright, I’ve never truly understood inflation. I mean, yes, I get the idea that the price goes up; therefore, if you have the same amount of money, you can buy less. But, I found a great visualization via Kottke that shows the cost in eight categories over time.

So, let’s pretend your groceries cost $1 in 1999. They would now cost $1.84 today. But groceries never cost $1. Let’s make it a more realistic $189.36. To buy the same bag of groceries today, you would pay $348.42. That is a huge difference, especially because it’s unlikely that your salary will increase by the same percentage.

Only the cost of clothing has remained the same or decreased in price.

Mind blown by this visual explanation of how far your money goes changes over time.