I don’t want to miss Greenland looking like Greenland. I’ve always wanted to go to Greenland (though the kids have begged me to expand my trip suggestions beyond cold islands), but it’s clearly changing. And while it may still remain mostly Greenland-esque in my lifetime, still, in the back of my mind is a ticking clock wondering how long we have to see places before they change completely.

The kids want to go to Venice. They’re scared that the flooding will shut down sections of the city in the future and they’ll miss out. (I want to go back to Venice because I haven’t been since reading The Magicians. And now that I know about the dragons…)

Of course, there’s the question of travel itself, which adds to worldly wear and tear. Is it ethical to travel knowing that travel itself damages the earth?

I just learned the term Last Chance Tourism — going to places before they’re gone. That is exactly what we did a few summers ago when we went to see the Old Man of Hoy in Scotland. I had read an article that the sea stack was showing signs that it may collapse. And it broke my heart to think about never seeing it. So we took a boat to Orkney that would pass it. It was just as spectacular as I hoped.

But learning that term, it made me think about the other places in the world that I’d be devastated to miss, whether they are gone or I’m gone.

Which places are on your list?

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

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I’m usually pretty reluctant to buy myself something when I have another tool that can do the same job, but I bought myself a whistling tea kettle this week. We have a kumkum for boiling water — a one-cup kettle — but while it feels very Tel Aviv apartment, it doesn’t feel cozy British mystery. And… well… frankly, the ChickieNob and I live in a cozy British mystery world and would like to have our tea ready at the same time.

While knee-deep in retirement planning, I found an article on money wasters. The list contained some sound advice — I personally don’t need new clothes, fancy cars, or shoes that match every outfit — but it really felt like one person’s money waster (tea kettle when you own a kumkum) was another person’s priority.

What are your money wasters, and what do you disagree with from the list? My big one was travel. It doesn’t have to be extravagant, but if you can afford it (and like to do it), it’s educational and mind-expanding.

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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.

There was an episode of Friends were Phoebe tries to do a selfless good deed. In other words, do something for someone else and get nothing out of it––not even a good feeling of helping someone else.

That episode is the only thing I could think of when I read about the Dutch practice of niksen. It means doing “nothing”:

Practicing niksen could be as simple as just hanging around, looking at your surroundings or listening to music — “as long as it’s without purpose,” she says, and not done in order to achieve something or be productive.

But… can we actually do nothing? I mean, aren’t we trying to achieve relaxation with this? I feel very productive from doing “nothing,” such as sitting on the beach and watching the ocean, because I walk away feeling more creative and calm. In fact, the whole point of niksen is to exit your time in niksen feeling different from when you entered. Isn’t that the definition of productive––producing good feelings? For it to be truly nothing, a person would need to exit the activity feeling exactly the same.

Oh Phoebe Buffay, you were on to something…

I’ve been mostly avoiding Facebook this week — not due to the endless back-to-school posts but because I saw something really disturbing on the site. It was the first time it happened to me (stumbled across an upsetting image in a group), and while I intellectually knew that people posted disturbing images (and Facebook employees were emotionally scarred working to block them), I didn’t realize how much being confronted by an image when I least expected it would stick with me for days afterward.

I don’t want to write about the image itself — I reported it, an admin took it down minutes later, and I was able to block the person (not a friend, just a stranger in the same group) so I never accidentally see his posts again because I don’t trust the stranger to exercise sound judgment.

It gave me pause about spending time on the site. Up until that point, I would have said that I enjoy scrolling through my feed. Even if seeing stuff I wasn’t invited to stings, overall, my feed is usually a happy place. I check it once or twice a day for a few minutes. It makes it easy to keep in touch with people I would have drifted away from in another era. It makes me happy to see their lives continuing to unfold. But now I’m really freaked out when I think about the site.

It is, of course, equally possible to see a disturbing image in the newspaper or encounter something upsetting in day-to-day life. But… there was something so unnerving about a person sharing a disturbing image in order to make a joke… I don’t know. It made my heart go out to the people whose job it is to cull those images from the site. And apologies if I miss a bunch of your posts while I avoid the site and read books about magic instead.

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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:

• “The Day Before” (Torthúil)
• “Ask the Grumpies: Getting Started with Money” (Grumpy Rumblings) — thank you for this!
• “Living with Anxiety” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Lavender Luz has a post about adoption language at the zoo and why our words matter. Her guest poster explains, “The adoption world has spent decades encouraging adoptee-centered language, even down to the way we abbreviate words, with the purpose of strengthening relationships, empowering all in the adoption triad, and supporting positive views of the adoption experience.” There’s a reason for the word choice. When we ignore it, we’re saying so much more than just the words that come out of our mouths. It’s an interesting discussion on language.

The Road Less Travelled has a post about her very amusing “back-to-school” Facebook post (which I wish I had seen in real time vs. via her post; another thing I missed avoiding Facebook this week). She admits about the back-to-school posts, “I ‘liked’ them all (well, most of them 😉 ) but as the day went on I was feeling more & more fatigued by the onslaught.” Her solution — add something very cute to the conversation. I’m grateful for it.

Finally, FinallyMyLines has a post about grief intensifying as she’s parenting two children. She writes, “What has gone away is the fear and the heartbreak of the possibility of a life without living children … At the same time, I feel my grief has grown, shifted back to something closer to how I felt shortly after my later losses. That’s because I suddenly understand exactly what Alexis, Zoe, and Quinn missed.” It is a beautiful and heartbreaking post about the thin line of loss.

The roundup to the Roundup: Why I’m avoiding Facebook. 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 August 30th and September 6th) 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 inadvertently kicked off an interesting discussion on a town listserv. I was commenting that I had recently eaten in a new restaurant and the staff was super accommodating. When I asked them if something was vegetarian (and then followed it up with a specific question about how we may be defining “vegetarian” in different ways), the person taking my order volunteered that a few other items on the menu weren’t vegetarian but they had vegetarian options available if I needed them. For instance, the tortillas contained lard, but they had vegan tortillas––you only had to ask.

One person lamented that she had eaten at the restaurant, not knowing that the tortillas weren’t vegetarian, and wished that the restaurant would make that clear on the menu. Another person pointed out that it was the customer’s responsibility to ask.

Which sort of begged the question: how do you ask when you don’t realize that you need to ask unless you ask about everything?

This woman clearly didn’t know that tortillas sometimes contain lard and you need to ask if you’re a vegetarian. If you’re not a distrustful, asking-the-same-question-multiple-times person like me, you probably take for granted that something that seems vegetarian is vegetarian.

Even a distrustful, asking-the-same-question-multiple-times person like me makes assumptions in new places. For instance, if I’m ordering a salad and only vegetables are listed in the description with a vinaigrette, I don’t ask them if they’ve happen to go rogue and sprinkled cricket-protein over the whole dish. Like I said, some things are obvious and some things you can’t even begin to guess don’t fit your dietary needs when they usually do.

What do you think? Is it the restaurant’s responsibility to mark every item, or is it the customer’s responsibility to ask about everything they’re ordering? I have no clue how listing it works unless restaurant print the ingredients list for each item.