My new obsession is puzzle fiction.  I fell in love with Robin Sloan’s Sourdough — he’s the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.  It feels a little bit like a food-focused Mr. Penumbra (as opposed to “book-focused”).  So I looked up his website and signed up for his newsletter, hoping he had another book in the works.

One of the newsletters in the archive covered a genre he calls puzzle fiction.  They’re books that sometimes contain a mystery, but they’re not a conventional mystery.  Think The Westing Game.  (Or, really, anything Ellen Raskin.)  They’re more like verbal sudoku or puzzle solving, and he gives a few examples including the 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (Stuart Turton) and Gnomon (Nick Harkaway).  Both sound so cool.

I was trying to find other books that fit this genre, books that contain a central puzzle, but they’re not straight mystery.  Maybe Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious series?  Or John Green’s Paper Town?  Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murder?  (That last one may be too much of a mystery-mystery than puzzle fiction.)  As Sloan says, “they just have to be interested in the processes of puzzle-making and puzzle-solving as well as the mental state—not unpleasant—of being puzzled.”

What else would be on this list?

Josh and I are back on the healthy-eating wagon, which means that we mostly text each other several times per day and say things like, “Remember crackers?  Remember how good crackers tasted?”   And then we reassure each other that a handful of almonds are just as satisfying and drink our water.

I gave up sugar for over a month.  I didn’t even cheat and have a cookie while I was making dozens of hamantaschen for our friends.  But then we went to Hershey and a gorged myself on York peppermint patties.  That was a bad idea.  I said goodbye to them once we returned home, even though there are still precious patties left in the bag.  And I went back to almonds and water.

But more than the York peppermint patties, I want crackers.

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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:

• “How to Choose” (The Uterus Monologues)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I normally don’t include magazine articles, but I have to start off with The Atlantic’s “The Fertility Doctor’s Secret.”  Holy shit.  And probably not a situation the creators of Ancestry.com (or other connection tools such as Facebook) ever imagined during their early years.  “The children Cline fathered with his patients now number at least 50, confirmed by DNA tests from 23andMe or Ancestry.com … They keep in touch through a Facebook group. New siblings pop up in waves, timed perversely after holidays like Christmas or Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, when DNA tests are given as well-intentioned gifts.”  It’s a chilling read.

Life’s Basic Elegance has a post about conflicting feelings.  She talks about a video she posted, pointing out that it’s possible to be sad and filled with hope at the same time.  “Going through seasons of loss and despair is difficult especially when it seems that everyone wants you to move on. But who said moving on means you can’t grieve, that you can’t cry, or that you can’t express your inner brokenness?”  Both truths can exist at the same time.

Lavender Luz has a post about what happens when you’re ready for open adoption but the grandparents are not?  She gives really good advice about setting up healthy boundaries and establishing autonomy as well as closely examining your beliefs.  I love this sentiment: “You will teach your family about love that goes beyond blood and the myriad ways people can be connected through their lives and hearts.”

Lastly, I have to include Res Cogitatae as a fellow dragon wanter. (There are magical creatures I probably want more than a dragon, though the sentiment is the same.) Especially this: “I stopped looking for the door into the faerie realm, the wizard on my doorstep, the quest to come calling … Deep down, though, I’m still the little girl I used to be, the one who escaped to other worlds when she didn’t want to inhabit her own The one who would have given anything to ride on a dragon.”  Me too.

The roundup to the Roundup: I miss crackers.  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 March 15th and 22nd) 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.

Hell yes.

Over in Scotland, women are calling for schools to add information about miscarriages into the sex education curriculum:

Now, charities and women have called for the issue to be discussed in schools as part of normal sex education classes, and say this would help future generations understand how to cope and remove any taboo surrounding it.

Raise your hand if you felt totally alone after a miscarriage?  I remember once being with a group of women. One woman was talking about her miscarriage, and pretty much everyone in the room stepped forward with her own story, and the first woman cried something like, “Why didn’t you tell me before now?  I felt so alone.”  No person should go into family building without knowing this possibility.

If we’re telling kids about sex, STDs, and pregnancy, why aren’t we telling them about miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death?  Isn’t the whole point of education to prepare people?  To impart knowledge?  Why would we withhold important facts from a conversation?  And while we’re at it; if we speaking about fertility, we should tell people about infertility.  Let’s take the surprise and stigma away by making it an integral part of every person’s education.

Sending support over to Scotland and hoping we implement something here.

Josh and I were once at an Elvis Costello concert in DC, and we started talking to the couple next to us.  They were a long way from their home on the west coast.  They told us that part of their retirement plan was to look at where favourite musicians were playing, and then randomly visit a city and see the show.  So they flew across the country to check out DC during the day and then see Elvis Costello at night.  If the city was boring, they still had the concert, and if the city was amazing, they got to have a fantastic trip all-around.

It sounded like a cool idea.

The ChickieNob worships Tig Notaro, and she asked me to check if there was any way to see her live.  She wasn’t coming to DC, but she would be in a city a little over two hours away.  We decided to be like that couple and plan a trip around a performance.  So last Saturday, we drove up to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ate chocolate at Hershey’s Chocolate World during the day, and then headed over to see Tig perform live.

Third row seats, baby.

The twins were a tad younger than the rest of the crowd.  As in, we didn’t see anyone else close to their age.  But they didn’t care.  We laughed so hard; that kind of laugh that also sort of hurts because you can’t catch your breath and tears are rolling down your face.  And when it was done, we walked back to the hotel, repeating our favourite moments.  And the Wolvog asked if we could become Tig Notaro groupies and just follow her from show to show.

Um… sure?

So that’s where you’ll find us from now on.  Just going from Tig Notaro show to Tig Notaro show, and watching her Netflix shows in between.

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

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Someone made a comment on a listserv that I’m on that 10 – 15 years from now, we’ll only need 20 – 30% of the workforce.  Meaning, there may not be jobs out there for people who want to work.  I tried to check the figure online, and while I didn’t find that one specifically, there are plenty of AI experts making predictions on how many jobs will be going away in the next few years.  Are we watching a crisis unfold?

I’m jumpy.

So, yeah, that job from yesterday is looking pretty damn good right now; not least of which is the job security.

Do you worry about an unemployment crisis in the future?  Because even if you’re not affected because you’ll be done working, if younger generations aren’t working and contributing taxes and continuing the system, we’re all screwed.

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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.