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

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Robin Sloan (the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore) sends out a weekly email containing a mishmash of thoughts. In a recent one, he talked about the Gutenberg Parenthesis and the whole idea of recognizing when you’re living between parentheses.

Or, as Sloan states: “Here’s a question you should ask sometimes, about the story of the world and your place in it: am I living inside the normal body text now… or a phrase offset by parentheses, set to close?”

Mind blown.

I think there are our personal parentheses and then there are societal/historical parentheses. And as Sloan says, the point isn’t to prove the theory. It isn’t to find proof that it is or isn’t happening. It’s to ask yourself the questions and simply wonder whether you’re “living (or reading books, or participating in the economy, or or or) at a point along a ‘normal’ historical continuum, or inside a bubble of strangeness?”

Life if pretty strange right now. Do you think we’re inside parentheses or is this just part of a new normal?

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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 bought Josh a copy of Circe by Madeline Miller at a used book sale. It was in perfect shape; the jacket pristine and the pages clean. If someone read the copy, they did so neatly. As in very neatly. They were clearly a book lover.

One night, Josh came in the room and tossed a photo onto the bed. “This fell out of the book while I was reading it.” ChickieNob and I looked at the picture. It was a family — seven people in all — posing on a Jaws-themed set, pretending a shark was about to eat them.

The picture, like the book, was in pristine shape, tucked inside a cardstock folder labeled Cinespia and printed by Amazon. We Googled it — it’s an organization that hosts viewings of classic films out in Los Angeles. Jaws had been shown back in June.

Over the next day or two, we kept going back to the picture, unsure of what we should do. I asked the used book organization. They thought the book was probably donated by someone in Maryland, but it could have come from anywhere in the United States. For instance, it could have been from Los Angeles, where the picture was clearly printed.

“You could post the picture on Facebook,” the ChickieNob offered. “Maybe with a message like, ‘Hey, I have your family photo. Do you want it back?'”

Because they kind of looked like an awesome family who was having the best time with one another. I thought about how this was why I thumbed through each book I returned or donated a dozen times; because I was so afraid to leave anything behind. Plus the picture was from an event and it looked expensive.

Then one night, Josh came back in the bedroom and dropped a boarding pass on the bed. “Another clue.” At that point, we asked him to thumb through the book for any other slips of paper, but these two items were the only things tucked into the crisp pages. The boarding pass had a name on it and a date for the flight, one day after the date for the movie.

I Googled the name and found two people with the same name: one in Los Angeles (promising!) and one in Maryland (promising, too!) The one in Maryland had her work email address listed on a website, but the Los Angeles one did not, so I decided to start with the Maryland one.

She wrote back the next day saying that it certainly sounded like her photo. We made plans to meet at a Starbucks so I could reunite her with her photo and boarding pass. (Okay, maybe she didn’t need the boarding pass, but it does make a handy bookmark.)

The woman was lovely and told me the story of the photo. It had been the only four days her three children could get together over the course of the whole year. One was living on the west coast, one had been traveling through Vietnam, and one was in medical school. The family met in Los Angeles and went to the movie together on the last night. This was the only copy of this photo, capturing a silly moment for their reunited family. I was so happy that I got it back in her hands.

There’s not really a point to this story because I ultimately reunited the photo with its owner without needing the help of the Internet, unless you count that quick Google session. It’s more a PSA to take your bookmarks out of your books before you return them. AND it’s a PSA to buy used books because you never know what you’ll find inside.

Thank you, random person, for gifting us with a fun two-day mystery.

Let’s pretend someone who knows nothing about investing wants to learn about investing. (Actually, we’re not pretending. I know nothing about investing.) How does one go about getting started? I have a 401K that I am probably mismanaging because I don’t really know what I’m doing. And I wanted to understand the different types of saving programs… programs is probably not the actual term but I think you all know what I mean.

Is there a book that teaches you what everything is and how the stock market works and how one goes about setting up an e-trade account and doing something like that with a small amount of money?

This is part of the whole “find a hobby” thing. I just thought it sounded like this topic had a good learning component and it would be fun to check on the stock market every day and understand what I’m seeing. Plus if I did well, there would be a clear benefit whereas learning about birds does not provide the family with a clear benefit beyond bird knowledge.

Um… does anyone have a good book explaining investing and stock and bonds and all of those other keywords that pertain to money management? Something really straightforward and simple for the true beginner?

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Of Needles and Noodles writes about family building for the second time after infertility. She writes, “The stakes are most definitely higher with another frozen embryo transfer than they were with Laurie’s round. Before we had Laurie, we’d only experienced loss; now we’ve experienced success, it’s just another added pressure; we’re more fully aware of what’s at stake than we ever were before.” She explains what other people can do to make things easier for the person who is still family building. It’s one of those posts you hope everyone reads.

An Engineer Becomes a Mom writes about the “messy middle,” that time that comes between the beginning when things are finally changing and the end when it looks like things will work out. The messy middle is “the part where it’s so comfortable to slide back to where I was, to just wallow in the mud puddle of me vs. them, I’m gonna go hide, I’m not going to show up, I’m not going to embrace this.” Cheer her through this patch.

Baby Ridley Bump is trying to add to their family. She admits, “For the first time ever in my treatment, I am hesitant to move forward.  I’ve never ever wanted to wait for anything on this journey … But now that I’ve taken a break and enjoyed these last several months, I find myself often questioning if one child is all that we really need.” She is starting the process for another transfer, taking her time to do it in the best way possible. Go wish her good thoughts.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ has a bittersweet post about losing a cousin but realizing the strength of family and friends. When her cousin got sick, “they were concerned she had no partner or children or parents who could help. One of her brothers told us that she wasn’t dejected. ‘I have cousins!’ she declared enthusiastically.” It only took a few days to put together months of support. It’s a good reminder that we all need to nurture our relationships.

The roundup to the Roundup: How do you get started in understanding what you’re doing with your 401K? 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 9th and August 16th) 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.

“Do you think the kangaroos are my destiny?” I whispered to Josh while we were falling asleep.

“No,” he answered back.

“I think they’re my destiny,” I told him.

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My friend Sarah told me about the kangaroo sanctuary. It’s actually not just kangaroos. The woman has wallabies and sugar gliders and degus and emus. But the focus is on the kangaroos. And maybe sanctuary is the wrong term. Maybe kangaroo ranch? In any case, it’s an education kangaroo space.

Sarah and I were talking about what I’m going to do with myself when the twins go to college. I am in a constant state of thinking about possible hobbies and volunteer work. I was telling her how we’re going to become birders, despite knowing nothing about birds, and that I was going to start volunteering with the ornithological society. “It’s not ideal,” I told her, “mostly because I’m not totally in love with birds, but volunteering for the zoo — what I really want to do — is too hard because it’s so far away.”

“Why don’t you volunteer at the kangaroo sanctuary. That’s right near your house.”

Kangaroo sanctuary? How have I never heard of this place?

She opened her phone and showed me photos of her daughter petting a kangaroo. The woman takes the animals on the road for educational events, but you can also visit the ranch and play with the animals while you learn about macropods. Plus, they need volunteers to clean out the habitats.

Check out the little joey sticking out of her pouch!

I was born to clean. That is my passion. When I was a kid, I mucked stalls and groomed horses once a week at the stable where I rode. My favourite job ever was dishwasher at a cafe. I have cleaning supplies all over my house so I can be in a constant state of cleaning.

The only way I can explain how in felt to learn about this place was with that part in The Magicians when Penny brought the button to Quentin after they were both out of Brakebills and Quentin realized that his childhood dream of going to Fillory had been in his future the whole time. That is how I felt learning about this amazing space just a few minutes from my house — that the Melissa of a few weeks ago had no idea that her future contained a kangaroo sanctuary, but it clearly has always been my destiny, especially as I piece together moments of my life like a jigsaw, layering together my love of animals with my love of Australia with my love of cleaning.

I went last week for the first time. I got to hold a baby kangaroo in a carrier, stroking its velvety head while it ate leaves. We bottle-fed kangaroos and they licked treats off our hands. We peeked inside a pouch and saw a little jellybean-like kangaroo growing. There are about 30+ kangaroos on the ranch, and all but three were happy to play with us. They were so loving, and the woman who runs the ranch is brilliant and filled our brains with macropod facts.

I want to start volunteering now so I have all of my ducks in a row before the twins leave for school. I need to know that something else needs me, even if it’s just to remove poop from an enclosure. I guess you can say that I’m ready for my destiny to begin.

“A Macintosh PowerBook 160: she’d left it to me in her will, along with her books, but it had sat, plastic and inert, a thwarted life of the mind, her mind, a mind that I crammed into a box and stored in the back of the cupboard where I keep my fabric, yards of cambric and calico and gingham. So this spring I yanked it out of the cupboard and hauled it out of the box.” –“The Lingering of Loss”

The New Yorker had a piece where a friend willed the other her computer. It’s the modern-day equivalent of passing along your diary except maybe even more intimate because while diaries have stories and thoughts, computers often contain those too along with images and bookmarks and old correspondence. What someone saves says a lot about them.

The essay is a gorgeous statement on friendship and loss — I guess it’s not really a spoiler to say her best friend dies because I’ve already told you that there is a will — but I kept returning to this idea of who would want my computer. Josh will get it when I’m gone or the kids or the grandkids. I don’t know if anyone will want it; if anyone will power on the machine and poke through it. I mean, I would, if I was willed a computer, but I wonder if I’m the norm or the anomaly.

I’ve thought about my journals and my photos, my important papers from childhood and all the mementos I’ve collected over the years. But I never thought about my computers and how personal they are.

Would you give your computer to someone?