The New Yorker has an article about the future of restaurants, suggesting that restaurant-less kitchens will become more popular, with multiple businesses sharing the space.

Over the past few years, delivery has been on the upswing, and delivery-only kitchens—referred to as “ghost kitchens” or “dark kitchens”—are having a moment. Reef operates kitchens across eighteen cities in the United States, in seventy-odd parking lots.

The meat of the article is this business model of placing pods in unused or underused city spaces, such as parking lots. But the question of restaurants has been on my mind lately. How will we return to restaurants. I know people who are eating at restaurants—usually outside—but we’ve barely done takeaway. We are not ready to eat at an establishment.

The article points out why ghost kitchens may become the way of the future:

Opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant is high-risk and expensive, whereas ghost kitchens are lower-risk, offering a more affordable way for entrepreneurs to enter the business. In most cities, opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant requires a gauntlet of permits and inspections; restaurateurs waiting on permits might find themselves paying months of rent for space they aren’t yet allowed to use.

And yet, part of the joy of eating out isn’t the food itself. I mean, of course, it’s partially about the food. But it’s about the space and decorations and the people at your table and the people around you. Ghost kitchens remove four of the reasons for dining out while only providing a single counterbalance to the loss: It’s safer.

We don’t do delivery at all (pre- or during-COVID-19), though we’ve gone to two restaurants two times each to do takeaway. We’ve started setting aside a day every two weeks to pick up at one of the two restaurants. They are places we associate with takeaway, so the experience feels normal. We haven’t yet ventured to places where we haven’t done takeaway in the past.

We may head in this direction for a few years—ghost kitchens and hiding away in our homes to consume food—but I hope we swing back to brick-and-mortar spaces. To sitting at a table and chatting with the waitstaff. Meeting with friends. Peeking at the other tables to see what others are eating. Encountering the food while it is still hot; straight from the kitchen.

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 wrote in her latest newsletter about an experiment she did with Instagram. She started only posting images where she was in the photo. So sunset photos, but only if the sunset was behind her. River photos, but only if she was by the river.

She writes: “Posts with my face in them are seen by an average of 5 times more people than posts without my face in them.” She explains how this impacts what she wants to say, especially her anti-racist work. And I’m sure it’s true for the Instagram algorithm—this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this fact. But I don’t follow people on Instagram. I mostly only follow places. And I only like/bookmark images that do not have people in them. (With the exception of nieces and nephews because they’re adorable.)

It’s a photo site, so it’s an interesting question: What type of photos interest us? Clearly, in my feed, it’s only places I’ve been and places I want to go. What do you look at in your feed?

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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.

I learned something veeeeeeeeery interesting due to my work on a local committee. I always assumed that library fines were kinda sorta a good thing for the library. Sure, the book stayed out a little later, pissing off the people behind you in line, but the flip side is that the library gets a little money. Right?

Wrong.

At least, not everywhere. It varies from library to library. Some libraries put the money into a general fund that is used to purchase more books. But some library systems transfer the money to a general county or town fund. Which means the library may not benefit from the fines at all—it could fund some other program or service in the county. That’s how our system operates.

Our library is trying to move to a fee-free system, eliminating library fines, which makes the most sense if you want people to use the library. Which librarians do because librarians rock.

A few months ago, we were watching Schitt’s Creek, and we came to the episode where the family throws a surprise party for David. ChickieNob commented that she had never had a surprise party, despite the fact that we surprise her EVERY YEAR with a floating birthday.

Anyway, do you know how hard it is to plot out a surprise party when no one leaves the house? How do you bake a cake without anyone smelling it? Or get presents without anyone noticing?

You do it when it is NOT someone’s birthday so they aren’t on high alert.

Josh and I freaked out the twins this week, jumping out and screaming surprise and singing “Happy Birthday.” We ordered gifts online, intercepting them at the door before they could see. Josh picked up ice cream because we couldn’t figure out the cake thing. They were totally surprised, mostly because it was not their birthday. But… you know… we did it. We won. Checkmate.

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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:

• “#MicroblogMondays: Garden Therapy” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “I Wish Someone Would Ask Me…” (Grief Is the Word)

Okay, now my choices this week.

It’s Inconceivable writes about several frustrating situations with friends (and family). In all cases, she felt shunted to the side. She writes, “Despite being close friends with someone and watching their kids grow up, looking after them, being their sounding boards, spending time with them, going on camping trips with them, remembering them at Christmas and so forth – they aren’t your kids, so when things like this occur, you get relegated to the background and the periphery and there’s not a fat lot you can say or do about it.” It’s not just the action itself; it’s the role social media plays in letting you know what you’re missing.

An Engineer Becomes a Mom writes about labels. “I’ve spent most of my life hiding behind these particular labels: Introvert, Pessimist, Rule-follower, Worker-bee, Engineer, ISTJ, Dominant (DISC Profile), Enneagram 1. These labels are just that, labels, and the attachment I placed on them was limiting.” It’s a post about how we see ourselves, and how that changes over time. I love this: “What I’ve found is that as I grow and heal, I’m shedding the personality I wore my whole life and growing into a different version.”

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has a post about revisiting with an old radio program. The creator of the program died several years ago, but the radio station is rerunning old episodes right now. It is like getting back in touch with an old friend. She writes: “I can’t think of anything more comforting during these turbulent times than to spend an hour with Stuart again on Sunday mornings.” I’m glad you have this.

The roundup to the Roundup: Operation Surprise Party completed. 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 July 3 – July 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.

If you’re traveling this summer and getting together with friends, this post is going to make you cranky. Click away. I promise, I’ll write something COVID-19-free tomorrow.

Josh linked to an article from The Atlantic about coronavirus restriction fatigue and doubt. This sums up everything for me:

It would feel so good to give up. To hug our friends, to visit our grandparents. To eat one meal, just one, at a restaurant table instead of on the couch, maybe even without the kids in tow. Even a mundane day of running errands—shopping, getting a haircut, going to the gym—would be glorious.

There’s no reward for abstaining from these things—just, hopefully, the absence of consequences. And lately, fewer rules are left to stop anyone, even as coronavirus case numbers in the United States surge. That means it’s on each of us to stop ourselves from doing unnecessary things that we know will put others at risk, even if those things are technically allowed.

We are on the super cautious end of things. We are still staying home. We have not gotten haircuts. We are doing only necessary errands—food shopping or the hardware store. I am letting the twins continue to do volunteer work because it’s outside and human-free. We are not socializing with people, even at a distance, with the exception of my parents. We only visit them outside, with over six feet of space between us. I restrict my water intake before we drop off their groceries so I don’t even go into their house to use the bathroom. In other words, we are very very very careful.

It’s our choice, and we make it because nothing has changed since we started it in March. The virus is still the virus. If we stayed home in March, we should stay home in July. Whatever we didn’t do in March, we still shouldn’t do in July. Our leaders told us in March to stay home and save lives, so we are still staying home and saving lives.

But it becomes an awkward daily conversation—no, we can’t join you even at a distance. No, we can’t go inside. No, we can’t do that. Because to do so would undermine the worth of our actions in March. We didn’t give up things then for no reason. We did them because we were worried about our health. It would be like eating a balanced diet for two months and then moving to eating Doritos for every meal. What was the point of the two months of vegetables and protein if we turn around and destroy our body with three meals per day of chips? We should have just jumped straight to the chips and enjoyed ourselves.

And I’ll be honest, some days it’s easy and some days it’s really hard. We know we’re making decisions that other people aren’t making. On one hand, I believe everyone should make their own choice after hearing the facts. On the other hand, it would make it a lot easier if we got strict guidance that everyone followed.

I really love this quote from the article: “If it’s a conflict between what the epidemiologists are telling you to do and what your friends are doing, the cost of getting [the disease] is high enough that you ought to summon your courage and stick with what the epidemiologists are telling you to do.”

This summer is hard. Not being able to do things is hard. Not being able to see people it hard. Mental health is just as important as physical health. But I’m still pushing on because I don’t want to have regrets.