Josh shoveled last weekend while it was still sleeting, but after three hours, he gave up and came back inside. Everything was still completely covered outside.

On Monday morning, he opened the front door to tackle the walk, and the snow was gone. Someone had cleared our snow (and everyone else’s snow) and salted the sidewalk between midnight and morning.

The Wolvog heard the person at 2 am and thought about waking us. He said he was just a guy in a high-vis vest, walking the sidewalks with his snowblower and then salting them afterward. He couldn’t see the person well in the dark, but he said it was definitely a neighbour on foot, quietly taking care of all of us while we slept. It made me cry to think about someone doing something so thoughtful for everyone and slipping away without recognition. We have zero clue who did this, though we’re trying to figure it out so we can thank them.

There are some pretty terrible people in the world, but there are also a lot of good ones.

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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:

• “Toys!” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Phoenix!
• “So Many Kids But Not Me” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ looks back on a year of blogging, especially the themes that bubble up in a year. I’ve appreciated all of the posts she has written about giving and receiving support. This made me a little teary, and it’s what I love about the blogging world: “Thanks to those who have stuck by me this year. And whether you comment or not, whether you’re a long time reader or have just stumbled across me for the first time, I want you to know how much I appreciate you.” Back at you.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix writes about the children in her life. She writes, “It’s like I just realized that among my friends there are, like, a billion kids. And that’s what they’re all doing … I like my life. I like it a lot actually. It’s just weird to live a life that’s completely different from what I pictured and from what everyone else is doing.” It’s a thought-provoking post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Thank you to the person who took care of the sidewalk. 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 January 23 – 30) 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.

This is a monthly series, published near the end of the month summarizing what I found, ate, watched, googled, and felt this month. New categories added from time to time.

Books Added to My TBR (e.g., books I just learned about that I’m excited to read… maybe)

• The Pinnacle (Abir Mukherjee)
• Sublimation (Isabel Kim)
• Offseason (Avigayl Sharp)
• Shrink Solves Murder (Philippa Perry)
• The Artful Anna Harris (Tracy Maton)
• Chosen Family (Madeleine Gray)
• Three Bags Full (Leonie Swann)
• All Grown Up (Daisy Buchanan)
• Death on the Royal Yacht (S.J. Bennett)
• Welcome to the Neighbourhood (Jane Fallon)
• A Neighbour’s Guide to Murder (Louise Candlish)
• The Night Stairs (Erin Kelly)
• Look What You Made Me Do (John Lanchester)
• The Parkwood Murders (Chris Chibnall)
• Time to Burn (Ellery Lloyd)
• The Body in the Bath (Ragnar Jonasson)
• Murder at World’s End (Ross Montgomery)
• The Opposite of Murder (Sophie Hannah)
• A Plot to Die For (Ardal O’Hanlon)
• The Distinctly Competent District Councillor (Jonas Jonasson)
• Such a Nice Girl (Andrea Mara)
• The Pie & Mash Detective Agency (J. D. Brinkworth)
• Getting Away with Murder (Shari Lapena)
• The Accidental Rewrite (Milly Johnson)
• Whistler (Ann Patchett)
• Murder by Memory (Olivia Waite)
• Bad Words (Rioghnach Robinson)
• The Exes (Leodora Darlington)
• Very Slowly All At Once (Lauren Schott)
• A Good Person (Kirsten King)

Notable Meals (new recipes, old favorites, and restaurant items we ate this month)

• Appetizers for dinner. We always do this on New Years. It’s a very brown meal, but so delicious and zero work.
• Vegetarian Canadian split pea soup with pumpernickel bread.
• Vegetarian BLTs with half sour pickles on the side.
• Thai noodle salad with peanut-lime dressing.

Television, Movies, and Music (watching and listening)

• Amazing finale to The Traitors UK, Season 4. Having people play for charity vs. their own personal gain made the whole game more enjoyable. The only bummer was that the US streaming removed the charities they were playing for. That was the whole point! I believe they aired the charities in the UK because you can see lists and discussion about it online. Zero clue why they edited that out of the US stream.
• We finished Pluribus. Wonderfully weird. I can’t wait to see where it goes in Season 2.
• I rewatched All of You with the ChickieNob. The writing and acting were even better on the second viewing.
• We started the US Traitors (season 3) but could not get into it. We switched to the NZ Traitors and liked it a lot more — especially how it ended. Though the group never felt as cohesive as the ones in the UK Traitors, which was odd because many of them knew each other outside of the show.
• We watched the new season of Man on the Inside. It was sweet.
• We LOVED Last One Laughing UK. They lock 10 comedians in a room for 6 hours, and they have to make each other laugh without smiling or laughing themselves. It was super amusing to watch. We have not found another version that we’ve enjoyed as much.

Added To My Ongoing Mix Tape

• Nothing added this month

Tabs I Left Open (things I Googled and left up on the screen)

• The words to the childhood chant “See See My Playmate.”
• Loop Quiet earplugs (considering purchasing)

Micro-Joys

• Teaching the twins how to make salmon in the oven using my freezer to plate recipe.
• Adding dried blueberries to my Special K. Little chewy bursts of joy.

Mood

• Really sad that winter break is over. And worried about the future.

What about you? Let me know what you’re eating, seeing, listening to, googling, feeling this month.

Lauren Bravo is one of my favourite writers. I’ve only read one book — Probably Nothing — but it was that good. One of my top books of 2025.

Every month or so, I look up writers I like on Goodreads to see if they have a new book coming out. Every once in a while, I’m happily surprised to see a new book listed. But her next book never popped up because she has been dealing with two miscarriages.

It’s secondary infertility, and while she knew that being pregnant used up your time and brainspace, “what I didn’t know then, privileged as I was, is that being not-pregnant makes its own demands – on your body and your time, as well as your heart.”

My throat got tight with that.

And this:

It is work, but it feels the very opposite of productivity – tending to your body as it unravels, diligently unpicking traces of the life that might have been.

What is it called to feel gutted for someone you don’t know and will likely never meet, but their words touched you and made your life better at one point and now you’re so sad that they’re part of a club you never wanted to be part of yourself? That needs a word.

Go read the whole thing. And then buy her book because it is as wise as this piece.

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

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All last week, the news would report that we maybe-likely-possibly-definitely have a weather event. The weather event would be zero inches of snow or 3,000 inches of snow.

I do not envy meteorologists because people get so angry when their predictions are wrong. But they can’t really predict accurately until we’re close to the event. I still think it’s pretty cool that we live in a world where we get some advance warning that something is about to happen.

I prepped by putting batteries in the flashlights, locating extra blankets and thermal layers, and making sure we had ingredients for meals.

I always think that I want snow until I get snow. And then I realize that I don’t really want snow. At all.

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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.

When I first heard about the game 2025, I checked it out and then quickly closed the screen. The goal is to make 45 groups of 45 entries, pulling together the groups from the mixed-up options on the screen, which are all buttons with a word (or words) on it.

For instance, you may see two animals (donkey) (horse). You click one and then click the other, and if they go together, they snap into a single block. Now you find another animal. You click that animal and then click the square with the two animals, and now you will see the list form and a red number appear on the square so you can know how many you’ve found in that category.

Of course, you don’t know the categories. You figure them out as you click options together. While some are easy to figure out, others are words I didn’t know and had no clue what else would belong in the same group.

I kept seeing people posting about the game, so I opened it again and wasted a few minutes of my life forming groups. Then I set it aside and went back to it that night to waste more of my life. Then I told everyone in the house about it, and everyone rejected the game. But the ChickieNob left my room and admitted a few minutes later that it was strangely addictive and she was going to play. Two down. Two standing strong.

When I went to say goodnight to the Wolvog, he had it up on his computer screen. He was well beyond where I was and continued to clean up the board. By the second day, he no longer had to scroll all the way to the right. Three down. One standing strong.

Josh is the only one who hasn’t given in to the siren song of 2025. He has stood behind the Wolvog and pointed out Tom Hanks movies, which we appreciate because we all suck at that category. But he has not started playing himself once he observed how we all disappeared into a fog of options, the Wolvog crying out: “Is it a cheese or a Muppet? A cheese or a Muppet?”

The Wolvog cleared the whole board in two days. The ChickieNob took a few more. I finished last. It took me about six days to complete, but I had the lowest number of mistakes (908). I had to do a lot of guessing with the final 123 options.

This is what I’ll say about the game and its addictiveness. In a chaotic world, it is soothing to group together things, clean up the screen, and make everything neat and organized. There is no timer, so you can work as quickly or as slowly as you wish. There is nothing at stake.

And I now know a lot of Tom Hanks movies.