About five years ago, we went to Montreal during a cold snap. It was painful to walk outside, so we had to use the underground city to get anywhere, and we vowed we would go back in warmer temperatures to walk around above ground.

We traded super cold temperatures for super hot temperatures.

I’ve driven over the border crossing several times, and it’s usually a large operation — almost like a line of tollbooths on a highway. But when we drove up, we went through a tiny town with winding streets and finally pulled up to a single booth in a rural neighbourhood. The kind agent asked question after question about our trip, what we do in the US, and finally, why we were passing over the border in this random town that wasn’t a direct route to Montreal.

“Oh!” I said brightly. “Have you ever heard of the Three Pines books?”

With that, he rolled his eyes and waved us through. He did not want to hear about our Three Pines trip to see Gabri’s B&B and Myrna’s bookstore. Or that the town that inspired the books — Knowlton — has planted three pines on the village green where the Three Pines kids search for Easter eggs beside the pond.

I may have blurred fact and fiction.

We then spent a week in Montreal and Quebec City (the twins planned that part of the trip for us!), climbing to the top of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours chapel, learning everything we could about hockey, and eating St. Viateur bagels.

Did you see my squirrel friend in the picture above?

A final trip before they leave for college.

We took the twins to orientation last week. Or… really one kid. The other didn’t have orientation at their school, so we hung out and read by the river while the other child learned how move-in would work and their way around campus.

There was an optional program for parents, but the kid worried that no other parents would attend and we would look strangely overprotective. We dropped them off with a breezy promise that they would take tons of notes. We watched a few parents go upstairs to their separate sessions; it was too late to join them because registration was closed.

I felt myself starting to hyperventilate, so we went outside so I could fall apart.

It’s a strange balance of being proud that I raised them to be self-sufficient and confident but also an empty feeling as they leave behind two they-shaped holes. The pain is physical along with emotional. I feel this horrible ache as they peel away.

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

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I’ve been playing two new games: one from the Washington Post and one from the New York Times.

Keyword gives you words missing a letter, and filling in the missing letter gives you the center word. It’s not difficult, but it’s on a timer. So you’re trying to work quickly with the smallest amount of guesses.

Connections gives you sixteen words. You need to group each set of four that go together. So a perfect score is that you group the correct four together four times. You also get four chances to mess up.

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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.

It has been ten years since Google Reader closed. Social media is often blamed for the decline in blogging, but I think closing Google Reader contributed to the mass exodus to Facebook updates. Make it hard to read blogs, and people will stop reading blogs. Alas.

I have been happy with Feedly for the last ten years — maybe even happier with Feedly than I ever was with Google Reader, despite all of my fears ten years ago when Google made their announcement.

The Verge had a retrospective on the feed reader: Its life and death.

This is the anniversary — the 17th anniversary, to be exact — of the very first Friday Blog Roundup. I didn’t know how to do hyperlinks back then, and there are probably older issues that weren’t tagged correctly and, therefore, don’t show up under the Roundup tag. But this blog has 951 other Roundup posts, mainly following the same format, week after week.

I still think all of the same things I said back on the 15th anniversary, two years ago.

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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:

• “Is a No Kidding Life a Radical One?” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Next 15000 Days has a post about being okay. She explains, “A young woman who is accepting her childless life finds comfort in reading my old posts. She wrote that she wants to see in my posts that I am OK. Because if I am OK, she will be too. Am I OK? I think I am!” It definitely sounds like more than an okay life (nature + ice cream = time well spent). But I especially love this reason for why people read blogs; why we connect to another person’s story.

Lastly, Finding a Different Path writes about medical imaging and finding photographic evidence of happy moments or problems. She writes of those early ultrasound pictures: “In more hopeful times, I saw these photos as the earliest possible baby pictures ever. I saw them as proof of the inexplicable medical miracle that was possible.” But I love love love this post for this: “All of them remind me that I’m a survivor. I can come out the other side of something traumatic with more strength than before.” 100% yes.

The roundup to the Roundup: Happy anniversary, Roundup. 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 June 30 – July 14) 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.