Last week, we were driving home from a work trip and realized we were on a road close to the ocean. We pulled off at the first town I recognized by name and parked at the end of the boardwalk in the public lot, intending to have a quick walk near the water before heading home.

As we were walking to the beach, we noticed a group of young adults leaning against a nearby car applying zombie makeup. What fun! They had decided to mark Halloween a few weeks early.

We got up to the boardwalk and noticed a shambling family, all splattered with fake blood. Interesting. So it seems like more people had the idea to celebrate Halloween in early October.

We took a few steps through an open-air indoor mall to continue on the boardwalk and emerged into a crowd of over 1,000 people, ALL DRESSED AS ZOMBIES. There were multiple zombie Santas, four zombie Marilyn Monroes, and a whole crew of zombie construction workers. There were also four random people holding signs and shouting that everyone was going to hell, plus a steampunk man riding a penny farthing with a bubble machine on the back. People were staring at us and our lack of costumes.

We had inadvertently stumbled into a yearly zombie walk, and it was just through strange luck that we showed up on the early end of things and were able to grab parking. By the time we left, we had to inch our way through the traffic out of town.

A very strange outing.

Yesterday was Super Thursday, which is when many many many books are published in the UK ahead of the holiday season. In case you never noticed, the US releases new books on Tuesdays, and the UK releases new books on Thursdays. I’m sure we have something similar to Super Thursday in the US, though Googling “Super Tuesday” takes you to political articles, but I buy a lot of books from the UK, so I’m particularly excited to read all the book newsletters going out this weekend.

It kind of feels like a big online party for books.

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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.

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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Phoenix marks 9 years of blogging. She writes: “Nine years and five days ago I took the plunge and published my first blog post. I had been thinking about blogging for awhile and decided to do it. I was extremely lonely and looking for connection. I hope what I have shared here has helped someone, but I think that what I have received here is exponentially more than what I’ve given.” It’s the same thing that drives a lot of us to set up our site, and I love our little corner of the internet. Congratulations, Infertile Phoenix.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ has a post about childless perks. She talks about something I hadn’t thought about before: “The thing is, many of the perks that I used to think about are largely irrelevant now that I am older. On a daily basis, my life is not much different to those friends of mine who have children.” While it’s true that lives that diverged begin to look similar again, she still notes a difference and provides food for thought.

The roundup to the Roundup: Perusing the books this weekend. 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 October 3 – 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.

On the topic of sudden restaurant closures, I remembered a Facebook post I bookmarked a few weeks ago because I found it touching.

The restaurant posted about a celebration of life held in the space for a restaurant regular. I never thought about being a regular from the opposite side: that restaurant employees (or bookstores or salons or wherever you are a regular) miss us as much as we miss them. That they not only notice the regulars and greet them when they come in, but they mourn them when they’re gone. Community flows both ways.

And I never thought about that before.

We were recently saying goodbye to our friends after a gathering at their home, and we were talking about a popular vegan falafel place. We all loved it, and we decided that we’d get dinner there together (thank you, outdoor seating!) when they were back from work travel in a few weeks.

In the meantime, said popular restaurant closed.

No warning. One day open. The next day, they posted an announcement that they were closed forever. No explanation of what happened.

It was a complete bummer. There are other falafel restaurants, and we can make falafel at home. But this was the only vegan option in the area, so we knew for certain there was no cross-contamination from meat options on the menu.

Sometimes a closure needs to happen suddenly, of course. But in this case, I have a sense that they didn’t wake up that morning and think, “Everything is going so well. Let’s close this very busy restaurant that only opened a few years ago.” They likely knew, so it’s a bummer that they didn’t let the rest of us know so we could go for one final falafel.

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

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I heard a person use the term “tangible media,” and it was such a perfect term to describe my relationship to books (and movies and music). I like tangible versions of most things. I especially do not want to invest money in intangible versions.

So I like streaming the least because it’s just a gatekeeper to intangible media. If you pay, you can access what is behind the gate. You cannot control what is behind the gate. You can pay to go behind the gate, be in the middle of using media, and have your access end due to licensing or corporate decisions.

I like paid intangible media slightly better because I pay once and have access indefinitely. Or, at least, until licensing issues get in the way because you don’t truly own your digital media. If the platform or product goes away, the media goes away, too.

I like tangible media the best, even though I like reading library ebooks. This is why I purchased three paper books this month so far and zero ebooks. I like to hold paper books and know that they are mine unless I misplace them or give them away.

How do you feel about tangible and intangible media?

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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.