The fees are absolutely ridiculous, but I love this idea of building retirement communities on university campuses. You get access to highly walkable spaces, classes, activities, performances, and medical facilities (if the place has a medical school). It’s kind of the most perfect idea ever, and it’s what Josh and I have planned to do with our retirement, albeit in a much more informal way.

[Our plan is to either stay here and audit at the enormous university nearby, or move to a place that has numerous small liberal arts schools and audit classes there. In the summer, we wanted to do Oxford’s older student extension program each year.]

This part made me weepy:

She also volunteers twice a month with the school’s friendship bench program, in which older adults offer a listening ear to anyone who approaches. Those days have been especially rewarding.

I wish the twins had access to older people at their schools like this. Pairing the wisdom of each generation into something that benefits both groups. I would have loved this when I was in college. And I really hope we can do something like this in the future.

When Alexander Scriabin composed the piece Prometheus back in 1909, he wrote down notes for an instrument he called clavier à lumières. According to Wikipedia, “The instrument was supposed to be a keyboard, with notes corresponding to colors as given by Scriabin’s synesthetic system, specified in the score.”

The performance I went to last month hired a lighting designer to create tubes over the stage that accomplished this, so as the musicians played the piece, the tubes filled with the colours listed in the score. You got to see the music as well as hear it. It was so cool.

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Last winter, the day before we travelled, I was kneeling on the floor and then scooted back to be able to open the drawer underneath Beorn (and now Quentin’s) habitat. I immediately felt something pop in my foot, and within minutes, a knot formed on the top of my foot. I iced it until we left, and then limped along, thinking it would heal when we got home, and I wasn’t walking that much.

That didn’t happen.

The pain mostly went away, though it was definitely still there from time to time. And the knot was there all year.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I was doing yoga, and I was backwards in ustrasana, which is a back bend. Your weight goes onto your heels because you’re pushing down on them to hold it. I’ve done this back bend every weekday from the time that we returned to the trip until November — almost a full year — and nothing has ever happened. But this time, I felt something crack in the top of my foot, and when I came out of the back bend, the pain was gone, and the knot was disappearing. It took a few more days to disappear entirely, but now my foot is completely back to normal.

Strange.

*******

My body does not react well to junk food anymore. This is a sad discovery. But it’s not enjoyable to eat chips at the beach if I’m going to feel terrible for two days after.

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

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Erin McKeown’s musing on whether they have guts is very brave. I think any time you look internally and weigh your feelings, it is brave; sharing them with others adds another layer of bravery. I thought this was profound:

“i know my gender, i don’t care if the government recognizes it. or do i? because i certainly made the effort to change both license and passport to X when i could. frankly, i feel naive for even wanting my government ID to reflect my actual self.”

And later, when speaking about the actions of a friend: “my gut tells me i wouldn’t have an ounce of her courage. but maybe you don’t know until the circumstances force you into action. maybe there will be a moment when all these thought exercises and essays and pods and gut pangs just will not matter. when the only choice is action, and i won’t think twice.”

I thought the whole piece was gutsy, but Erin is always a brilliant writer.

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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.

This is a monthly series, published near the end of the month summarizing what I found, ate, watched, googled, and felt this month. New categories added from time to time.

Books Added to My TBR (e.g., books I just learned about that I’m excited to read… maybe)

• Lost Lambs (Madeline Cash)
• Country People (Daniel Mason)
• The Viper’s Nest (Mark Edwards)
• Esther Is Now Following You (Tanya Sweeney)
• Town & Country (Brian Schaefer)
• The Award (Matthew Pearl)
• The Silent Appeal (Janice Hallett)
• And the Corpse Wore Tartan (Stuart MacBride)
• It Could Have Been Her (Lisa Jewell)
• How To Get Away with Murder (Rebecca Philipson)
• Beth Is Dead (Katie Bernet)
• The Heir Apparent (Rebecca Armitage)
• This Is Not About Us (Allegra Goodman)
• The Rest of Our Lives (Ben Markovits)
• The Castle (Jon Ronson)
• It’s Not What You Think (Clare Mackintosh)
• The Parkwood Murders (Chris Chibnall)
• I Can’t Believe I Don’t Have a Boyfriend (Harry Trevaldwyn)
• Sophie, Standing There (Meg Mason)
• The Art of Getting Hammered (Joanna Wallace)

Notable Meals (new recipes, old favorites, and restaurant items we ate this month)

• Vegetarian bacon butty: Real eggs, fake bacon, French butter.
• New York Times ribollita recipe, though I used baby spinach instead of kale, and I made the toast separately and floated it on top of the bowl of soup.
• New York Times chickpea stew. Once again used baby spinach instead of mustard greens, increased the broth to 6 cups, and increased the orzo to 3/4 cup. So so so good. We made it again the next week.

Television, Movies, and Music (watching and listening)

• We finished The Paper on Peacock. Loved, loved, loved this show. It grew on me by the second episode, and now I’m bummed that we have to wait for the next season.
• I saw Freud’s Last Session last spring/summer, but I watched it a second time because it moved from Netflix to Hulu, and we could slip it in before Hulu went away.
• I loved loved loved everything about All of You. The writing and acting are both fantastic.
• It took an episode or two until we were hooked, but we enjoyed The Gold. At first, I couldn’t understand how it was going to have a second season. The story wraps up but clearly more happened after the case.
• I haven’t watched Slow Horses, but we are super into his new show, Down Cemetery Road. I like all of the characters, even the bad guys.
• We’ve watched one episode of The Studio. I avoided it at first because I’m not really into Hollywood and moving making, but it’s pretty funny.
• I love Pluribis as much as I loved Severance. Apple is producing fantastic shows at the moment.

Added To My Ongoing Mix Tape

• “A Girl Like You” (Edwyn Collins)

Tabs I Left Open (things I Googled and left up on the screen)

• A story about CS Lewis and the biscuit tin toy garden his brother made him.
• Tig Notaro tour dates.
• Multiple websites with information about myriorama cards.
• The Wikipedia page for Allantide.
• BBC’s Saturday Kitchen landing page.
• How to make your own Starbucks Iced Via packets.

Micro-Joys

• Seeing a few purple-y states go firmly blue on election day.
• Josh and I were bicycling at the beach, and there were hundreds of egrets standing in the marsh we were riding by. Suddenly, they all took off into the air and flew right at us. For a moment, the only thing we could hear was hundreds of wings flapping over our heads. And zero birds pooped on us in the process. 
• I finally won the final board of one of the card sets in Balatro. I had come close many times before, but had never finished.

Mood

• Feeling end-of-year antsiness.

What about you? Let me know what you’re eating, seeing, listening to, googling, feeling this month.

It’s a good week because the kids came home and I could smoosh them in person. I love it when they’re here, and Quentin is beside himself with excitement.

It’s so hard anticipating that they’re going again in a few days because it’s so hard when they go.

I’m happy that they’ll be home again a few weeks later for winter break. But it doesn’t make the leaving any easier for me.

*******

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:

• “Hope vs. Optimism” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Whoa! Infertile Phoenix moved a very far distance. I love this: “But it is done and I am proud. I saved myself once again. I saw what wasn’t working. I saw the direction things were headed, and I made major changes. Did I want to do all of that work? Not at all. Not any of it. But I did it anyway.” There is a lot of power in saving yourself and making things happen.

Lastly, Finding a Different Path explains how she can instantly recall the age of her sofa because they were “part of our ‘things we can have because we’ll never have children’ campaign.” It’s funny how we can date things through these random associations. The simple objects that we see in other people’s homes can carry enormous stories.

The roundup to the Roundup: Good break. 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 November 21 – 28) 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.