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

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I blame Dear John for adding another game to my daily game sessions. Wordiply is from The Guardian. You get a few letters in a row, and you need to make the longest word possible that uses those letters in a row.

For instance, if the letters were CHIC, you could make CHICken. But you could also make hierarCHICally, which is 14 letters vs 7 letters. “Hierarchically” would win over “chicken.” The point is to make the longest word possible and when you think you have, reveal how close you are to the actual answer.

I am terrible at this game and usually settle too early. But it’s also pretty clever and not timed, so I like that I can think about it while I go about the rest of my day.

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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.

Because Quentin is super smart — he can find a timothy hay treat in record time — we got him two toys.

The first is a set of stacking cups. He loves to pick up things and throw them, and stacking cups felt like something he could spend hours stacking up and taking apart.

The second is a wooden puzzle with six circular pieces. You can hide a treat under the piece, and the pig has to remove the piece to find it.

We also bought him a new food dish because one of the things he loves to throw is his dry food dish. He flips it upside down immediately after I fill it, sending the food everywhere. He’s pretty good at snuffling around and eating the pieces off the ground, but it creates a mess, so we wanted to remove bowl privileges.

Unfortunately, the new bowl was terrifying. TERRIFYING. He cowered in the corner when I put it in his cage, shaking all over. Even after I removed it, it took him a good hour to return to normal.

The stacking cups last one hot second. I put a treat between each cup to teach him to stack and unstack them. He ate the top treat, then took the rest of the cups and threw the whole stack in the air. This released all of the treats at once, and we made the mistake of laughing when he did this. He ran around, collecting all of his treats.

But the wooden puzzle is a big hit. The first piece or two is difficult to get out, but once he creates some space, he removes them in order of most favourite snack to least favourite. He also cleans it up and puts the pieces back and removes them again, checking to see if something new appears. He can easily play with it for an hour without getting bored.

He’s ready for Guinea Pig Harvard.

We spent last weekend at the beach. We needed a break, but we also learned that the US Fish and Wildlife Service was dismantling the visitor’s center in January in preparation for the moving of the beach in 2027, and this would be the last time to see it. It was the site where the ChickieNob first decided that she needed a pet clam. And while we hadn’t been inside in many many many years, it was still sad to think about its demolition.

It was a little grey and misty on Saturday, and a small section of the building was already missing. But I was able to take a few pictures to remember the building. We found a park that allowed us to look out over the water once they close the current beach. And we ate a lot of ice cream, watched Taskmaster, and read books.

It was kind of perfect.

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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.

The Barreness asks the question many of us think when we catch a glimpse of ourselves in the mirror. She captures well the emotions of the moment, too: “It is a strange time we are living in, and being here in the states makes it even more surreal by each hour. I am heartbroken and exhausted and constantly worried about something or another.” I absolutely loved this truth: “Fear presents itself differently in us all.” Sending a hug.

Swistle captures how I feel when the kids leave to go back to college. She writes, “Having all the kids home reminded me that my main job (taking care of all the kids), which has long-since stopped being a full-time position, is ever continuing to diminish—which makes me look around at what is left.” Change is hard.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ is back from an amazing trip, and she recounts how children mostly didn’t come up as a topic or consideration during their travel. She compares it with another blogger’s trip and wonders what factor made their two experiences so different.

The roundup to the Roundup: Goodbye, visitor’s center. 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 9 – 16) 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.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from December.

The Rose Field (Philip Pullman): What a long strange trip with Lyra and Pan. I started in August rereading the series so I would be ready for this book when it came out. It was wonderful to cross the world with some of my favourite characters and know how the story ends. Or how the story begins, as I think Lyra would probably say when she gets to the end of a good, long tale.

The Shakespeare Requirement (Julie Schumacher): I skimmed the first book in the trilogy, and while it was nice to have a general sense of what happened in the first book before coming into this one, it isn’t necessary. I laughed and cringed through this book. I missed and did not miss academia in equal measure. I liked every character. It was just a great story. Go Payne! Especially Pup-Dog.

The Heir Apparent (Rebecca Armitage): Like The Royal We but maybe a little more think-y. I really loved this book and thought about it when I wasn’t reading it. I’ve read many thinly disguised royal family books, and this one had something new to say and said it well. I can’t wait to see what this writer does next.

That’s Not How It Happened (Craig Thomas): I loved this book. Clearly – I devoured it in three days. I didn’t know what to expect because I didn’t know the author’s show, but this made me want to see it because this story had big squishy heart. I laughed. My heart hurt for the valleys and cheered for the high points. Such a great story.

The Christmas Appeal (Janice Hallett): I didn’t review this book on Goodreads because it was a re-read, but the first time I read it, I wrote: “Janice Hallett is a gift to the world. I am not a fan of Christmas, but if she is writing the story, I am reading it. And this was so well done – funny and clever. Loved being back with the Players.” Still true.

Best Offer Wins (Marisa Kashino): I had a very hard time with this book. I liked the pacing and the plot. I disliked all of the characters. In fact, I considered stopping because the characters were all so unpleasant that I didn’t enjoy spending time with them. But it moved quickly and wrapped up neatly. I guess I was happy that I finished it. So 1 for characters and 4 for plot, for a 2.5 average. With an extra point for DC references.

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer (Ragnar Jónasson): It was my first Ragnar Jonasson, but I was deep in before I realized I should have read the first book in the series. No worries — it was easy to keep up with the characters. A great, fast-paced winter read. I’ll double back and read the first book, and then I have the third book on my TBR for next fall.

The Correspondent (Virginia Evans): I’m still thinking about this book, weeks later. I read this in two days. I didn’t think I wanted to read it, and then it became the only book I wanted to read. Heartbreaking, beautiful, frustrating, relatable, this story will stick with me for a long time. The only thing that bothered me were letters back from actual people. For some reason, that crossed the line for me, maybe because those exchanges were tied to loss. But that was a tiny thing for me. On the whole, this was incredible and a good way to end the year.

What did you read last month?

I usually do not use the toiletries provided by hotels. I like my shampoo and my moisturizer — why would I want to use an unfamiliar product with an unfamiliar scent? The one exception is soap. I’m a soap generalist, at least when it comes to hand soap.

But this fall, we were at a hotel we stay at several times per year, and I noticed that the sample toiletries were made with goat milk. I sniffed, I tried, I fell in love. Like hardcore begged Josh to take a vacation so we could return to the hotel, and I could get more goat milk hand cream.

We found it online, sold in a 1 gallon bottle. The version in stores has different ingredients, but this is the one we had in the hotel. I’m considering getting the gallon. It’s less expensive than continuously going back to the hotel.

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Do you sleep with earplugs? I am considering getting Loop Quiet earplugs, which are supposed to block out sound and be okay for side sleeping, with the idea that I could also use them during the day if I had to work out of the house.

But I don’t know anyone who has Loop earplugs. Do they work? Do you like them? And how do you hear your alarm if you sleep with them in?