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 never really understood the allure of Trader Joe’s. I’m someone who likes consistency, so the idea of a system in which favourite products come and go in the store isn’t something that makes me happy. Prior to the pandemic, I probably went two or three times per year and bought a few items.

Mostly tea.

But since the pandemic began, I find myself drawn more and more to picking up treats at Trader Joe’s. Our latest find: Bamba stuffed with hazelnut creme. I’m aware that it’s just Osem Bamba in a different package. I don’t care. I’ve changed. I’ve become a Trader Joe’s person.

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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.

You begin by making one paperclip.

Then you make another.

And another after that.

And by the end of the game, you have undecillion paperclips.

I am very deep into Universal Paperclips, and it’s up there as one of my favorite games ever. It moves from managing a paperclip factory to sending drones out to explore the universe. No, that doesn’t make sense until you play, but since you have enjoyed the last two word games I’ve told you, I’ve decided to drop this little math-y game onto your plate as well.

If I was a clever person, I would write a blog-focused version of Twas the Night Before Christmas, but I’m not clever, and I would need to Google for the original words to that poem.

So instead I’ll tell you that I hope you have a wonderful holiday if you’re celebrating tonight. And if not, we’re marking the night with Jólabókaflóðið, the Icelandic book flood. So there are at least books to celebrate.

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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.

The Road Less Travelled has made it home for the holidays. She didn’t know if she’d be able to go (and there was some chaos with uploading the vaccine cards), but she got there. I really appreciate these posts — not just to know how people are celebrating the holidays but because they become a time capsule of the experience. Glad she gets to celebrate with her family.

FinallyMyLinesNow continues the story of her child’s birth with more details about her hysterectomy. She writes, “So that whole uterus thing? Yeah. It’s gone. I’m not really in a coherent place when it comes to my feelings on the subject. I’m angry and sad and guilty.” It happened a few weeks after the birth, and she asks: “How do you grieve losing something you no longer needed, but still deeply wanted?” No good answers, but abiding with her.

Lastly, Baby With a Twist continues to process her grief. She ties together her personal loss to the season: “In some ways, there is an inherent loneliness built into this time of the year that our celebrations are trying to stave off. Safety in numbers at the very least. But there is a part of me that has always been attracted to the darkness and that feeling of being alone (not that I want to be alone).” A moving thought and a lot of love sent out into the universe to her and anyone else grieving right now.

The roundup to the Roundup: Have a wonderful holiday (if you celebrate). 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 December 17 – December 24) 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.

Last year, I set an aim of reading 20210 pages in 2021. As of December 13th (which is the date GoodReads last updated my reading stats), I hit 22,402 pages with 64 books. I will probably finish two or more books before the end of the month. Not mind-blowing but not too shabby.

The interesting thing is that my job changed mid-year, which meant my reading habits changed mid-year when I started work earlier. I didn’t have time to read for 15 minutes in the morning, so I stopped reading non-fiction. But I clearly moved some of that time to the night because I was able to read more books overall.

I guess I should set 20220 as a goal for 2022.

My favourite things I’ve read this year:

• Finna (Nino Cipri)
• The Wife Upstairs (Rachel Hawkins)
• The Echo Wife (Sarah Gailey)
• Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro)
• Good Neighbours (Sarah Langan)
• Bruno, Chief of Police (Martin Walker)
• People We Meet on Vacation (Emily Henry)
• The Other Black Girl (Zakiya Dalila Harris)
• The Guncle (Steven Rowley)
• Moonflower Murders (Anthony Horowitz)
• The Secret Bridesmaid (Katy Birchall)
• Still Life (Penny Louise)
• Tokyo Ever After (Emiko Jean)
• In the Woods (Tana French)
• For Your Own Good (Samantha Downing)
• My Lovely Wife (Samantha Downing)
• The Great Godden (Meg Rosoff)
• Dial A for Aunties (Jesse Q Sutanto)
• Rock Paper Scissors (Alice Feeney)
• Under the Whispering Door (T.J. Klune)
• The Man Who Died Twice (Richard Osman)
• The Hawthorne Legacy (Jennifer Lynn Barnes)

What is on your list of favourite reads this year? (Feel free to list movies or television shows if books are not your thing.)

I started reading a newsletter, only got a paragraph or two into it, and already started saying, “YES! To all of this!”

“I’ve been frustrated by some of the dismissiveness on social media, people saying you shouldn’t worry about it if you’re vaccinated, because ‘we’ll all get it at some point, it will be mild, and you’ll be fine.’ That might be true for people who are otherwise healthy and vaccinated. But it is not necessarily true for many other at risk populations.”

First of all, I still don’t want to get COVID, even if it doesn’t land me in the hospital. If my choices are sick or healthy, I would choose healthy. Every. Single. Time.

Friends who have gotten mild cases have seemed miserable — happy that they’re not in the hospital but still achy and exhausted and frustrated that they can’t smell or taste anything. And then there are the emotional side effects: missing events, missing work, or worrying that they got another person ill. I am happy to get creative so I can keep living life but not put myself or other people at risk if it means also not getting sick.

And then there is everything else Nisha says: What about our shared humanity? Caring whether or not other people are in the hospital? Caring about whether medical staff is overworked from overflowing hospitals or whether hospitals are unable to treat other people because they’re so busy dealing with COVID?

I care.