My Mac laptop has started to insert an extra space in random spots. So nine out of ten times when I use the spacebar, it puts one space. But one out of ten times, it puts two spaces. It is really frustrating. And it means I need to constantly scan everything I write for weird spacing.

Has anyone else out there had (and solved) this problem?

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Yesterday, I drove to four stores to find a tube of my cinnamon-flavoured toothpaste. Once upon a time, this toothpaste was everywhere. Now it is pretty much nowhere. I’ve thought about switching to mint, but life is too short to give up a toothpaste that makes me happy.

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The twins just wrapped up their final middle school book battle. Their school has a book battle team, and they compete against other schools in the county in a giant book trivia fest each spring. So they have a year to read dozens of books as a team, and then they go and compete against other schools who have read the same books.

They’re thinking of expanding it to high school, but if they don’t, their book battle career is over.

I kinda sorta wish I was on a book battle team and that we went to book competitions. Does this exist? Like everyone gets the same list of books to read, and you have several months to prepare and drill each other on facts. And then you get together for a trivia competition that pulls the questions from those books.

If it doesn’t exist, would you join if I started this and the battle was online?

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

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If you asked me three years ago if I liked mystery books, I would have told you no. It was a genre I avoided. Loved fantasy, loved science fiction, loved non-genre fiction. Didn’t love mysteries.

But I went from not liking mysteries at all to pretty much only reading mysteries. I’m currently making my way through Brittany Cavallaro’s Charlotte Holmes books. (They are so much fun.) And Agatha Christie. And I just finished the 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. (Fantastic except for one tiny thing in the ending.) And Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious books. (Loved them.)

I don’t know what changed, but I stopped avoiding mysteries and finally embraced them.

Are there any genres you once avoided and now love? Or vice versa?

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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.

Many years ago, my cousin was a student at Gallaudet (the only university for the deaf in the US), and she asked if I wanted to come to a play that night on the campus.  Sure.  I’m always game for theater.

But my takeaway from the performance — seeing theater signed — was an emotional expansion of the experience of theater.  I’m not deaf, but seeing a play signed changed my world. It was like… theater+ to see a play paired with a language that naturally complements the art in the same way that the round vowels of Italian lend themselves to opera.

Then, a few years ago, we were watching the Tony’s and caught Deaf West’s performance of a scene from Spring Awakening.

Again, it was theater+. I couldn’t stop talking to people about that performance.

Josh mentioned about a year and a half ago that Olney Theatre was going to workshop The Music Man. The idea for the performance came from Joey Caverly, recently in Children of a Lesser G-d on Broadway, and it grew and grew, looping in deaf and hearing actors alike (including the actress who opened that clip from Deaf West above). For a year and a half, the kind people at Olney Theatre got to endure me asking whether I could sit in on a day of the workshop over and over again.

Fast forward to last week. I got to sit in on two hours of rehearsal.

It was incredible. Mind-expanding. Emotional. Beautiful. I walked out of there grateful that I got to witness it. Turner Hitt’s write-up about the experience says it best: “This week-long workshop would light a fire under the pants of every single person involved.” The fire is lit. I’m just a witness, and I’m now dedicated to doing everything I can to help them bring it to the stage because I want everyone else to get to see it, too.

So expect me to talk about this. A lot. Because it was that good and everyone should get a chance to sit in a room and understand how much larger theater can be.  Or as Turner so perfectly puts it:

Every single one of us walked away with the realization that this kind of process and product has the potential to radically change musical theatre–to make it more inclusive and accessible, and to celebrate what every individual has to offer.

Have people been watching The American Farm on the History channel? It’s on Thursday nights at 10 pm EST. It covers a year of family farms, following them through the ups and downs of farming, season to season.

There was a line in the description that crawled under my skin: “America’s farmers are heroes who gamble every last dollar on their own two hands.” It reminded me of the line from “Inútil” in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights: “He cut the cane / He came home late and prayed for rain / And on the days / When nothing came / My father’s face was lined with shame.”

Because planting crops is an enormous gamble. Raising livestock is an enormous gamble. Having inventory that is completely outside your control; that can shrivel up or get sick and die makes year after year a gamble.

If you’re not watching it, go DVR it. Now. Or watch it online on the History Channel site.

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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.

The Uterus Monologues has a roundup of 75 pieces of advice after baby loss. She writes: “Just about managing to cut its way through the white noise and static of shock and grief is a notion that this is something that will take time to heal from. But what is less clear is what this actually looks like. What exactly do you do? What do other people do?” So she set out to learn what other people do. And she presented the findings in a post. Brilliant and helpful.

Everything Comes with Pancakes has a post about donor eggs and “So what happens when the babies are old enough to understand it all?” It’s what we’re preparing for all through that babyhood. But it’s what we can never really prepare for, right? I love this line: “She is exceptional and teaches me more about who I want to be every time we connect.” Everyone should have someone so wonderful in their world.

Lastly, I snickered over Torthúil’s panda bear post mostly because my brain works the same way. You’ll need to read it to see what I mean.

The roundup to the Roundup: Farming is fascinating.  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 April 5th and 12th) 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.

The twins (clearly) share a birthday, so we’ve had a tradition since birth that every year, they would each get a surprise extra day that was their day.  They would choose the activities and meals and be generally celebrated like a birthday.  They wouldn’t know when this extra day would appear; they would just wake up in the morning and see the decorations and have 24 hours to be smothered in attention.

A few months ago, I started seeing ads on Facebook for a museum in Delaware (Winterthur) that was hosting the costumes from The Crown.  Can you imagine anything more perfect for ChickieNob Day?  We got tickets for this past weekend, and I spent the weeks leading up to it doing everything in my power to not scream, “I HAVE A SURPRISE PLANNED FOR YOU.”

She had no clue where we were going or what would be there until we walked into the building.  Her little mind was blown.

And it was such a good exhibit.  They did a great job giving a behind-the-scenes look at how the costumes and props were made.  It was amazing to see them up-close.  Can you name the scenes where these were  worn?

Afterward, we went on a tour of the grounds.  (Oh, and we kicked off the visit with a guided tour of the permanent collection.)

It was such a great day.  And the exhibit is there until late December if you’re on the east coast.