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

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If you are a fan of retro re-creations and music and the world, then you will probably like Radiooooo, the musical time machine.

You choose the decade, you choose the country, and then you listen to what was on the radio during that time. I went back and forth through time in Israel and found new (to me) songs.

Enjoy!

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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.

As I lay on my side, shivering under the blankets after my booster shot, all I could think about was that I had to close my rings.

Every day, my watch gives me three goals: a calorie-burning goal, an exercise-minutes goal, and a stand-up-and-move goal. These goals are all fairly simple to hit on a daily basis because I do yoga every morning and walk in the afternoon. I’ve hit these goals for over 260 days, and I was not going to let a freakin’ booster shot ruin everything.

I exercised through the first shot, and I exercised through the second shot, and I was going to exercise through the third shot if I had to lie on the floor and pretend to swim on the carpet for 20 minutes. (I’m not certain the watch would believe that I was in the water and give me credit, but in my feverish brain, this felt like a solid plan.)

I ended up getting up and walking in place with my eyes closed for ten minutes, the smallest goal you can set on the watch. I faced the bed just in case I fell over in the middle of it. It was torture, but I did it. And I won. I beat the booster shot that tried to make me break my ring-closing streak.

Not on my watch, booster shot, not on my watch.

[Get it?]

I would describe my booster shot as really-really-not-good. I mean, when I first got it, I felt invincible. If I had been in a game of Super Mario Bros, I would have hit my head on every brick wall and coins would have come out.

About ten hours later, I had a sore arm and chills. I took Tylenol and slept. And then I spent about 24 hours after that feeling like complete dreck. I had a low fever, my arm hurt, my body hurt, I was freezing, I couldn’t get comfortable.

And I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Because 48 hours later, I’m fine. And I know that wouldn’t be the case if I got COVID-19. So thank you, science, for inventing vaccines that protect people. And I don’t take it for granted that we are so lucky that it is easy to get vaccines here.

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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. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “It’s Not You” (Infertile Phoenix)
• “The Welcome Table: An Annual Online Thanksgiving Meal” (Stirrup Queens) — thanks, Jess!

Okay, now my choices this week.

Don’t miss the MSNBC article about the Childless Not by Choice community. It’s a great write-up featuring some bloggers you know and love.

Dubliner in Deutschland writes about life in Germany. I love reading a little slice of life in another country. She writes: “December 6th is known as Nokolaustag. This is a tradition that was new to me as we don’t have it in Ireland. The evening before Nikolaustag the children are meant to clean their boots and leave them out and Nikolaus comes around and fills them with little treats/presents.” This sounds exactly like Befana Day on January 6th! Which means I totally have to celebrate it next year because that will give me two chances for chocolate.

By the Brooke marks Eliza’s 11th birthday, starting with a beautiful quote from Redneck Mommy. She writes: “Any day is a day without her, and I’ve already had a thousand days. 4,015, to be exact (or not exact, because I’m not figuring in leap years). And yet this is the day where my throat feels tight and my temper feels short and my heart feels heavy.” Go abide with her as she remembers.

This teeny tiny post by Movable Type is exactly how I feel in this moment. And like her: “It’s just too much. I don’t know where to start in on my work today. Maybe I just need to make a list.” Amen to lists.

The roundup to the Roundup: Booster complete. 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 3 – December 10) 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 found a lot of comfort in this study that found that people are thinking about you. It’s the opposite of that false-sounding platitude we tell people that they shouldn’t worry because no one is paying attention to them. We’re all paying attention to ourselves.

Except we’re not.

We know that’s not true because we are thinking about people. And we can’t be the only ones doing this while everyone else is not doing this. We are wondering about people. So it is comforting that I am not the only person thinking about (and googling) old friends and wondering how they are or thinking about past conversations.

Vice unpacks the study:

Across eight experiments involving over 2,100 people, social psychologists Gus Cooney, Erica Boothby, and Mariana Lee found that we regularly underestimate the frequency with which others are thinking about us. People assume it’s one-sided when they dwell on social interactions and conversations; in fact, others are thinking about them, too. The researchers called this gap between how much others actually think about us and how little we assume they do the “thought gap.”

I found the whole article both interesting and, at times, comforting.

I’m usually not into voting for best of lists, but I saw a friend had voted in the Goodreads Choice Awards and I decided to make some choices, too. I thought she had opted to share her voting record, but after I made a choice, I realized that MY vote had posted, too. There was no way to opt out — if you wanted to vote, you had to be okay with everyone knowing how you voted.

Talk about low stakes knowledge.

I mean, I am not shy at stating what I read. I am not even shy about stating how I vote in political elections or ballot questions. But there was something about Goodreads taking the choice away from me — forcing me to state my choices vs. choosing to announce my choices — that made me make no choices. I stopped voting in the Choice Awards.

Whomp whomp.

How do you feel about platforms making your behind-the-scene choices public?