I have the saddest discontinued product story. I once bought a box of Wilhelmina mints on impulse when we were checking out of Trader Joe’s, simply because it had a picture of Queen Wilhelmina on the box, and I thought the ChickieNob would like it. Fast forward to today, and all four of us are addicted to these mints. We go through so many boxes per month.

We were running low, so Josh and I ran out to Trader Joe’s where there were zero boxes in stock. Panicking, we went home and looked online to see if we could order them. There were two versions — a blue box that is not vegan and a white box that is vegan. We ordered 12 of the white boxes and waited for our shipment of mints. Crisis averted.

OR SO WE THOUGHT.

The box arrived filled with the non-vegan version. We were able to get our money refunded, but poking around the internet, we discovered that our mint has been discontinued. They’re still making the non-vegan version with gelatin, but they are no longer making the kind stamped vegan.

It’s a heart breaker.

We’re currently sampling vegan mints from various stores, trying to find one that makes us happy. Perhaps not as happy as the vegan Wilhelminas but happy enough. The candy world is a hard space for vegans.

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Speaking of creating things, Life from Scratch is still on sale. Just 99 cents. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your neighbours. Buy a copy for everyone you know and love.

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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.

Finding a Different Path has a story about her recent mammogram. (Asking a fantastic question: “Why must everything women’s health be squashing and poking and stretching and undignified?“) But moreover, it was a great moment where a conversation that could have gone sideways stayed on course and the technician said (or didn’t say) all the right things. Here’s to good mammograms. (Or, at the very least, not bad mammograms.)

Infertile Phoenix rested in January. She writes: “Who cares, I keep reminding myself. It’s a pandemic. It’s burnout. It’s existential fatigue. Who cares about my made up plans for myself. There is no To Do list police.” She is still processing her CNBC story, and it’s a good life, she reminds herself. I liked this quiet, snowy post.

Lastly, the pandemic has gotten us thinking about our social networks. The Road Less Travelled loops through this topic, too, pointing out that even having family nearby doesn’t necessarily buffer you completely. COVID has interrupted our social lives and all the channels we would have tried to make connections. It’s an interesting topic, and everyone has a slightly different take as they look at their surroundings.

The roundup to the Roundup: No more mints. Life from Scratch is on sale. 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 February 4 – 11) 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.

I’m still thinking about Ina Garten’s commentary on doing less. We’re all clearly feeling it, though it feels like a lot of the grace we were feeling toward ourselves and each other at the beginning of the pandemic has dried up.

There was a great piece in the Atlantic recently on productive leisure.

“On the scourge of “productive leisure” and the very American conviction that even our free time should generate — at the minimum! — an enviable Instagram.”

Free time doesn’t feel very free when it costs a lot of mental and emotional energy.

And yet life is short. And there are so many things I want to try. So many things I want to learn. If this all ended tomorrow, would I be happy with the time spent staring at the ceiling? Scrolling through GoodReads? Going down random Googling rabbit holes such as: “How long does it take to get from New Zealand to Antarctica?”

[7 days. I was thinking Mali was so lucky to live close-ish to Antarctica. It turns out that it’s not that close. But still.]

Maybe I should turn off the computer. Pick back up my book.

There is this man who worked at the post office, who watched my kids grow up and always chatted with me while I mailed a package. I didn’t know him well — for instance, until this week, I didn’t know he had a kid a little older than the twins — but I saw him every time I got the mail.

He died this week; a heart attack a few months before his retirement. I read about it on a town listserv; following the story from his hospitalization to the funeral announcement.

I told Josh that I felt unreasonably sad. Why unreasonably? Because he wasn’t a close friend or really any friend at all. He was just someone I liked. Someone who added to my day. Who was amused by the twins when they were little and calmed my fears when my passport went missing in the mail. He was just a good person, and the world was a little colder without him in it.

I felt it would be unreasonable to ask for time off to watch the livestream of the funeral. Again, how do you say that you want an hour to watch the funeral of a town member? I could imagine the question: “Oh, were you close?” And then the answer is no. We weren’t close. I just cared.

I will have the funeral playing on mute; off to the side of my computer, known only to me. I would like to say goodbye, even if I can’t hear the speeches. I kind of know what they’re going to say. That he was a kind guy, full of patience, who made the world better. And now he’s gone.

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

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I have never watched a football game, and I don’t plan on starting, but I really like the name DC chose for the football team — the Commanders. It fits. I will likely call them the Commies. And like Josh, I will always think of Commander Salamander — a now-defunct DC institution of my childhood.

The naming sent us down a rabbit hole of Commander Salamander memories. The Manic Panic. The stud bracelets. The racks of leather pants. I miss that store so much.

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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.

There seems to be an explosion of fun games at the moment. Some are inspired by Wordle. Others are their own thing. This first one is one of the latter.

You have to put events pulled from Wikipedia into a timeline. Put three things out of order and the game ends. I’ve gotten to seven points. Which is probably not that great, but I’m pretty proud of my score because it is pulling from every. single. wikipedia. event. From Juan Perón’s birth to the Serbian empire established in 1346. It is tough.

If you are still loving Wordle but are more numbers-oriented, you should try Nerdle. There is a daily equation, and it’s delightful.

Consider this my weekly game PSA.