Because we cannot go anywhere, I have put all of my “new experiences” budget into making new recipes. I go for about two or three new ones per week, and I repeat whatever people are in the mood for on the other four nights.

Because we only go shopping once a week or once every other week, we need to plot out ingredients well in advance. So I can look back to March and see what we’ve eaten every week of the pandemic. Isn’t that bizarre? I’ve seen recipes grow in popularity and then disappear altogether, and other recipes pop up in almost every single two-week PDF.

Every once in a while, we’ll plan for a meal and everything will fall apart. We’ll be left with an ingredient that has no culinary home. For instance, I misread a recipe, asked Josh to buy ricotta, and had to figure out how to use said ricotta in something else.

Someone brilliant made a database where you can put in an ingredient, and it will tell you recipes that use said ingredient. Like two million different recipes.

So I put in ricotta. You can narrow things down by using the options on the left sidebar. For instance, I knew I wanted a pasta dish, so I started choosing other ingredients that would be in a pasta dish (olive oil) and skipping ones that may go into a dessert (vanilla). And a bunch of good options bubbled up to the top.

Brilliant.

We have joined the double masking club. We don’t do it all the time (and I rarely do it at all because I’m not really of the leave-the-house set), but Josh uses two masks if he needs to enter the grocery store or donate blood. Somewhere he will be inside for an extended period of time. The paper mask sits tight against his face, and the cloth mask goes over it. It’s a hot look.

So I felt pretty damn good when Dr. Fauci gave double masking two thumbs up. (One thumb for each mask.)

While I rarely leave the house, I do have three favourite masks, and it has turned me into a little squirrel about hoarding the best masks. Once they’re dry, I grab them off the drying rack and hide them in my room so no one else can take them. The twins always ask, “How do you always get the soft grey one?” Quick fingers, dear children, quick fingers.

This is 2021.

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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 in order 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:

• “#Microblog Monday 334: Not All Rest Is the Same” (Stirrup Queens) —thanks, Phoenix!
• “My Old Life” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Kveller has a beautiful piece about finding community with other infertile people. She writes: “It’s funny how when you’re going through something so very personal and challenging, you seek out people going through the same personal and challenging things. Misery — and infertility — love company … In many ways, these “cycle sisters” became my lifeline. I could talk to them about feelings I had that not even my best friends could understand.” The medium changes every few years: bulletin boards, blogs, Instagram. But the experience is similar: you find people who understand.

I have this post by Infertile Phoenix about her “old” life for this week. She writes, “In my old life I accommodated everyone. I did what was easiest for them. I did not value my own unique life and what it looked like and required. I ignored where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I assumed it was just easier for everyone if we went with their plans, their schedule, their expectations. Ex-husband, friends, and family alike.” Even better, she explains how she built her new life. I love this post.

No Kidding in NZ is cleaning out her in-laws’ house and wondering what will happen to her own things in the future. She writes: “We are about to engage a real estate agent, and put the house on the market. What then, I wonder? Will we feel empty, and need new projects? Will we feel ridiculously free? Or perhaps we will turn inwards, and begin some more ‘death cleaning,’ this time with our own belongings?” It probably will be a little of all of the above, as she says. You can’t have something take over a large chunk of your life and emerge exactly the same on the other side.

Lastly, not IF but Grumpy Rumblings writes about their hand sanitizer addiction. Let’s just say that I understood. Deeply. 2021 is looking a lot like 2020.

The roundup to the Roundup: Double maskers unite! 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 Jan 22 – 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.

Wired had an article about a group of risk experts and data specialists who set up a pandemic risk budget for themselves. Or, “Six nerdy roommates used public health data to create an online Covid-risk points system for every activity—and protect their pandemic pod.”

The point was to protect their group house because the actions of one person affected all six of them. (Just like any home with more than one person.)

Living was simple at first. The government had ordered everyone to stay home, so the housemates stayed home … Then the world started to open back up. This was accompanied by the reemergence of a thing called “desire.” In its wake came strain. Olsson describes what happened next as the “everyone-needing-exceptions problem.”

Sound familiar?

Because everyone had a different comfort zone with taking risk, they returned to the concept of the micromort and the contact budget. Everyone got the same budget (a yearly budget broken into weekly amounts). How they chose to spend their risk time was their choice, but each activity had a cost. Some activities were over budget—such as hanging out at a party without a mask—and some used very little budget (walking a dog). But everything used some budget. Once your budget was gone, you stayed at home. They worked to “develop a system for weighing and budgeting viral risk. Olsson called their risk points microcovids, in a tip of the hat to Howard, and one microcovid equaled a one-in-a-million chance of catching the virus.”

Because they were working with a budget, they thought about ways to lessen risk so they spent fewer risk points on activities they didn’t really love doing—such as grocery shopping—and found ways to see people they wanted to see. Calculating risk and making decisions became as easy and automatic as putting on your shoes before leaving the house.

And now they’ve opened up their tool for anyone to use.

While we’re not counting activities because we don’t leave the house often enough or see anyone beyond my parents from afar (and always outdoors), the tool gave us ideas for lessening risk even more. It’s brilliant, so I’m passing it along to you, too.

We are at the point in the pandemic where I have bought Beorn a 10-square-foot guinea pig playpen. This means that we don’t need to leave each other’s side. I can sit next to his habitat while working or reading, and then we can move into the kitchen when it’s time for me to cook. I showed him how to make pita, dry-roast garlic, dice tomatoes. I’ve walked him through my favourite cookbooks, showing him recipes that I think he may enjoy watching me make. I shared green beans and slices of cucumber.

Without human interaction beyond the Zoom screen, I expected myself to arrive at this stage at some point. I didn’t think it would happen so soon, before the one-year mark.

Along with the playpen, I got Beorn a ball that you fill with treats. When he pushes it with his nose, the treats drop out of a hole. He learns that playing with the ball yields treats. So far, he has stared suspiciously at the ball and then suspiciously at me, looking between us until I move the ball and he gets the treat sans work.

I want to build him a guinea pig playground.

I tell him 38 times per day: “You are my best friend, Beorn.”

He says nothing in return.

But maybe he’s thinking it.

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

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Modern Mrs Darcy posted about how she works her way through her TBR list. It involves a shortlist on a post-it note, which wouldn’t work for me with library books—I’m at the whim of the holds list—but is a brilliant way of working my way through my book guilt list. These are certain books I purchased that I haven’t read yet, and I feel guilty that I haven’t read them.

I walked around the house, constructing my list from various book piles. I ended up with 18 paper books and 18 e-books that burn a hole in my stomach. 36 books in total.

I decided I would read one per month. It wouldn’t cut into my new library holds, and it would only take me three years to work my way through these 36 purchases. By that point, I could start tackling another 36. But I would only worry right now about these 36 and choose from this list.

How do you choose what you read or watch next?

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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.