The twins have never been to an internet cafe. They were a staple of my post-college travel world. Finding the internet cafe in a new city, paying the fee, buying a coffee, using the hour to try to log in and see one or two messages while chatting with the person next to you, who was also waiting for their email to slowly load on the screen.

We now travel with portable wifi, and while slower than the internet speeds at home, the twins have no clue what life was like in the late 90s and decade beyond.

It was slow communication even though it was technically fast communication because there were long pauses between messages. Now, you expect people to get your message instantly or within a few hours. Back then, it could be days before I ventured into an internet cafe, plunked down the money, and logged in to see what was waiting in my inbox. Emails were closer to letters than text messages. You had to prioritize how you spent your time online because it was so expensive.

We’re planning a trip, and I thought about how we used to plan our itinerary, noting where the internet cafes were in a country. And now we can FaceTime someone across the Atlantic, whenever we want, wherever we want if we can get a signal. It’s a bizarre world.

I am a little over a month into life with a new computer. I got it before we took the Wolvog to college so he could set it up for me. He took my old laptop, placed it next to my new one, and set up some fancy tool that transferred all of the old laptop’s bookmarks, documents, and settings to the new machine. After an hour or two, he handed me my new computer, and it was exactly the same as the old machine except that the keyboard worked and the battery held a charge.

I hate change, so while this tool may be commonplace for most people, it was the most miraculous invention I’ve ever witnessed. I felt like Paul Simon singing about lasers in the jungle, “staccato signals of constant information.” Except it was happening in my living room.

These really are the days of miracle and wonder.

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

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I saw this article of clothing in Quebec City. I tried it on, but everything fell apart when I attempted to get it over my head. The employees at the store watched in amusement, and I put it back and slinked out, embarrassed. When we walked by the store again, I snapped a picture so I could figure out how to wear it.

But I can’t even figure out what to call it. Is there a name for this type of wrap? Where did I go so completely wrong trying to slip it on? How can I purchase something like this now that we’re at home when I can’t even begin to think what to call it to search online?

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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.

As part of my slow slip into elderly lady land, I dragged Josh to the yarn store to purchase supplies for a blanket-like wrap. It had been a long time since I had entered a yarn store, and I realized I had no clue what I needed or how much.

I showed the woman working there a picture of the blanket, and she commented that it was knitted, not crocheted. There was no reason it couldn’t be crocheted — it was just a rectangle. She argued it would be so much nicer knitted, and I should take a knitting class at the store instead of purchasing the yarn that day. Instead of making the sale, she nudged me out of the store with a list of upcoming classes, cheerfully telling me that she would see me soon.

Ten minutes after we got home, I realized I didn’t want to learn something new. I didn’t want to feel frustrated. I just wanted to mindlessly create row after row, filling up space until I had a tri-coloured blanket to use as a wrap this winter. We took my sister’s advice to head to Joann’s the next day, and we walked out of the store with nine skeins of silky cotton/bamboo yarn in shades of blue and grey.

It’s slow-going because the piece is so large, but I do about a row per day while I talk to the twins on the phone or watch television. It’s nice to have a project again.

Mali challenged me in the comments to kick off our nightly conversations with the twins with boring stories, and that is exactly what we’re doing. While I don’t think any have been as impressive as the rubbish bin story, this one got them to roll their eyes.

Josh ordered a medication refill. When it arrived, I picked up the bottle and said, “There are not 90 pills in this bottle.” I just had a feeling. So we counted them. Twice. And there were 89 pills in the bottle.

And that was our evening.

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If you live in the US, FEMA is conducting a test of the alert system on October 4 at 2:20 pm ET. It will be very loud — devices will all go off simultaneously with the message. Just putting this out there so no one is surprised. I put a five-minute warning in my calendar so I don’t startle.

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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 has a post about quokkas. Do you really need to know more than that to click over? There are pictures of Perth. And did I mention quokkas? Because quokkas.

Hopelessly Infertile and Surrounded by Fertiles has a tiny post that summed up exactly what I’m feeling. She writes, “Everyday we release our loves out into the uncontrolled world and hope they come back to us undamaged. Maybe not unaltered entirely, but essentially okay. It’s a hard thing.” I love this comparison to uncontrolled copies.

Dear John tells her late husband about their teenager’s request to bring her boyfriend to the cemetery. (Okay, I laughed at this: “She texted me ‘Can I go see dad with (boyfriend) for my birthday?’ I replied, ‘At the cemetery?’ She responded, ‘No – at the Ouija board. Of course, at the cemetery.’ I have taught the sarcasm well…“) These quiet letters always make me slow down and feel deeply.

Finally, The Road Less Travelled writes about how the pandemic impacted our sense of time; namely, the missing years. Initially, I didn’t think deeply about what I was missing because I was just trying to stay alive. But more than three years on and still masking, I am acutely aware of the can’ts, along with gratitude for the cans. Figuring out how to travel while masked felt like a win. Missing out on dining with people still feels like a loss.

The roundup to the Roundup: More boring stories. Alert on October 4, 2023. 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 August 22 – August 29) 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.