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

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Eater has an article about “house meals,” which are defined as “a dish that perhaps was once inspired by a recipe, but you’ve made it so many times, and riffed on it so often, that it bears little resemblance to any known dish. It is comfort food at its finest, a thing designed for your specific palate, with absolutely no thought paid to impressing anyone else.”

Ours is, without a doubt, this potato-and-Morningstar-vegetarian-bacon thing that Josh and I dreamed up years ago. It is so horrible-looking and horrible-sounding on paper. It is so good in your mouth. We have it at least once a month, down from once a week.

My other house meal is black beans and rice with roasted red peppers and an egg (over medium). It’s gooey and yummy and so easy to pull together without thinking.

My old house meal was a red sauce, but I’ve dropped it in favour of either Marcella Hazan’s red sauce or the one I learned from Da Mario’s last spring. So both real recipes, as opposed to the mess above which is unique to our home, and we’ll never serve it or give the recipe to anyone outside the house.

What is your house meal?

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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 say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she read that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better about doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from October.

If We Were Villains (M. L. Rio): This is a book with plot holes. Major plot holes. Major major major plot holes. And I’m still going to recommend it because even with those plot holes, it was a great read. It reminded me of The Secret History by Donna Tartt—both in content and in pacing. I love books set in schools.

The Midnight Library (Matt Haig): This was a quick, sweet read about getting to test out all of the roads not taken in life. It was clever and wistful and hopeful. It was a book that came to me at the right time, but I think I would have been smitten with this book at any time.

Carry On (Rainbow Rowell): This was a re-read before I read the sequel, Wayward Son. I liked it the first time, but I didn’t think she stuck the landing. The story sort of wobbled apart at the end. But this read-through was a completely different experience. I thought it was a great ending, and the whole thing was well-structured. I mentioned that to ChickieNob, and she re-read it and agreed that it was much better the second time around.

Dreyer’s English (Benjamin Dreyer): This is the most enjoyable reference book you’ll ever read. It’s worth reading cover to cover because (1) the first part of the book is more story/explanation than reference and (2) you’ll know where to look when you have a question in the future.

Majesty (Katharine McGee): This is the sequel to American Royals, and I believe it’s the end of the story. Meaning, there are only going to be two books in this series, though the ending left things sort of feeling like there could be another book in the future. I liked the story and liked all the characters again. I wish it took a stronger stand with the ending. I either wanted it wrapped up tightly or left open-ended so the author could return in the future. Some characters had no fuel left in their story. Some characters were left hanging. So… read knowing that’s how it will close and be okay with the journey.

His and Hers (Alice Feeney): This was the sleeper hit of the month made all the more perfect because I also read the worst book of the year this month. (Clearly, I didn’t review that book this month because… read my rule above.) I loved this book so much that I immediately put everything else she has written on my TBR list. I thought I knew who the killer was, and I was delighted to be so incredibly wrong. Loved this book.

What did you read last month?

Last week, when the returns were trickling in at a snail’s rate, I started taking screenshots. I couldn’t keep the numbers in my head, and I spent a lot of time on Wednesday saying, “Have the numbers moved?” Screenshots solved that problem and provided an answer. Because the time was also part of the screenshot, I could start judging how many ballots each state would get through in an hour. I felt in control of something that was completely outside my control.

Of course, we know the answer now so I no longer need these screenshots. But I’m finding it difficult to delete them. They capture a moment in time, and I feel weird tossing them in the trash. But I also need the space on my compiuter.

Maybe I’ll keep one or two. Maybe I’ll just be happy with the results, delete the screenshots, and keep looking forward because there’s still a lot of work to be done.

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It’s Friday the 13th. Remember? Compulsive need to say that every Friday the 13th? Zero clue why.

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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:

• “My Blog Is a Teenager” (The Road Less Travelled)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Phoenix is controlling what is under her control. She writes, “Some things don’t have a definitive ending. They happen over time and change your life forever. It can take years to figure out how to live again within your new reality.” Yes—all of this. And applying lessons forward is the only thing you can do.

The Next 15000 Days has a quote about the concept of acceptance, highlighting a strange question that really only has one answer. Some things just are. She explains: “Am I OK with being childless? There are many days that I am and there are also days that I am not.” It’s a brief post that will make you think.

Finally, The Road Less Travelled has a post about passing along family heirlooms and the stories that go with them. The post also serves as an important reminder to draw up your will. But the main focus is deciding what to do with those physical objects that have been passed through families. She points out: “If we want people to appreciate the things we want to leave to them, we need to make sure they understand their significance.”

The roundup to the Roundup: What to do with my election screenshots? Friday the 13th. 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 6 – 13) 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 have a special iced coffee tumbler I use every morning, and it came with a teal reusable straw. Setting the scene: Election Night. Before any returns have come in. Josh doing the dishes, and I hear, “Crap.” He came in holding part of my teal straw.

It felt like a harbinger of things to come.

I had no clue I was that emotionally-invested in a straw until it snapped in two.

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I got the paid version of the Calm app a few weeks ago. (The fact that I am emotionally-invested in the colour of my straw probably points to why I need this app.)

ChickieNob and I have been trying to work our way through sleep stories, but they’re a huge time commitment. I wish they had eight minute versions. Or ten minutes, tops. Spending almost a half hour with someone speaking very slowly and calmly is making me feel like ripping up paper and smashing tea cups.

I love the meditation visual… image… video… sort of things though. If you have the app, you know what I’m talking about. The beach scene? Or the one that feels like a first-person perspective on a boat going toward the horizon? I want to hook up my phone to the television again and run all of the water-related videos on an endless loop.

There is a lot on the app, and I still need to explore. It feels like a good weekend activity.

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Speaking of which, after not wanting a stationary bike ever, I decided that a stationary bike would be the most amazing thing ever. I want something akin to a poor man’s Peleton. Something without a lot of bells and whistles that I can set up in front of the television so I can watch first-person biking videos streamed through my phone while on the bike to feel like I’m moving. Something like this. (Warning: non-Cotswolds-like music in video, so maybe mute for more enjoyment.)

A long time ago, I would go on the Wii Fit and run around Wuhu Island. Maybe I just need to do that again. Except I really want a stationary bike. Does anyone have an inexpensive one they love that they can recommend?

If you play video games, you’ve probably encountered resource management games. The point of these puzzles is that you have a variable that limits what you can do. So, for instance, in Zork, you have a lantern. It has limited light that diminishes with each turn. So you have to plot out your time in dark places because you don’t want to waste the lantern while you’re up in the forest and can see without artificial light.

Or you have food that gets used up by the player character or a limited number of items that be carried (and all other items need to be stored someplace central and safe). The point is that some people love these types of limits and some people hate these types of limits. Once upon a time, I was in that former category. I thought those limits made the game more exciting.

But now my life is one long resource management game.

Josh goes shopping every two weeks. Which means that days ahead of time, everyone chooses meals for the next two weeks. Then I create a PDF of all the recipes and use it to plan out the shopping list. Because he goes food shopping for two other households, I have to get their lists and meld them with our list, and then put the whole thing in order by section and aisle so Josh can walk through and see everything in order. Then we have to put our groceries away, drop off the other groceries, and follow the plan to the letter until it starts over again two weeks later.

While it’s fun to do resource management for a single player character, it is really hard to do resource management for four different living beings. Plus a very insistent guinea pig. I spent an afternoon organizing all of my spices, generating a spreadsheet of what I had and what I needed for my two-week cooking window. I HAVE A SPICE SPREADSHEET.

Nine months. We’ve been doing this for nine month.