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 Velvet Knife (Maureen Johnson)
• Half His Age (Jennette McCurdy)
• Murder Most Haunted (Emma Mason)
• Discontent (Beatriz Serrano)
• A Killer Wedding (Joan O’Leary)
• A Murder in Paris (Matthew Blake)
• The Name on the Door (Anthony Horowitz)
• I’m Not the Only Murderer in my Retirement Home (Fergus Craig)
• Meet the Newmans (Jennifer Niven)
• Upon a White Horse (Peter Ross)
• Go Gentle (Maria Semple)
• Belgrave Road (Manish Chauhan)
• The Life Experiment (Jess Kitching)
• The Body in the Kitchen Garden (Paula Sutton)

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

• Vegetarian pho with ChickieNob in a little outdoor restaurant.
• New York Times corn risotto recipe, heavily changed.
• Olivada pizza from Antonios: fresh mozzarella, olive tapenade, roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts, Parmesan, and basil.
• Poppy Cooks roasted potatoes — these were exceptional.
• Austin Grill corn soup (without the add-ons) from the Vegetables Unleashed cookbook by José Andrés.

Television, Movies, and Music (watching and listening)

• The Thursday Murder Club on Netflix. It was good if you don’t compare it to the book (that all-star cast!), but it felt pretty flimsy if you do. I’m not unhappy that I watched it, but I don’t think I would ever re-watch it.
• The Paper on Peacock. I never saw The Office, so I may be missing a few jokes, but it’s very funny and sweet. I like that they’re all (except, of course, the character Esmeralda) trying to make the newspaper work vs. get out of doing work.

Added To My Ongoing Mix Tape

• “Poker Face” (Lady Gaga)
• “Welcome Home” (Radical Face)
• “Amerekan” (Citizen King)

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

• A list of audio books read by Kristin Atherton. I really like her voice.
• A webpage on Tenby in Wales. I’d like to go there.
• A website for Moomin Valley Park in Hanno, Japan.
• A description of the ride Danse Macabre at Efteling.
• A stuffed pine marten on Amazon.
• An announcement for a Boden sample sale.
• Pippin at the Signature Theater.

Micro-Joys

• I baked a chocolate cake with coffee icing at the end of August, and we ate a slice every night around 8:30 pm, calling it cake-o-clock.
• Josh set Waze to use Paddington’s voice to give us directions. Even after a month, Paddington sometimes throws in a little Paddington fact we haven’t heard before. Hidden depths.
• I got to see an old friend for a short visit, meeting her at her old neighborhood park. It was so good to see her and her kids/husband face-to-face v. through a screen.
• Football/soccer is back! We love cheering on the Spurs on Saturday morning.

Mood

• Contemplative. Trying to keep my head down and get through things without getting swept up in the noise and chaos.

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

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

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I am not a fan of Libby’s new holds system. I’ve heard the “why” behind the decision to force people to suspend instead of delay holds, but I haven’t heard “how” the new system will achieve that “why.” Unless they explain how the new system will be more efficient and help stretch library budgets, it seems like an arbitrary decision that makes things slightly harder for the user without actually changing anything for the library.

It may end up using up budgets faster if people check out more books than they can reasonably read instead of delaying, and then let the checkout sit on their shelf until it auto-returns, and then get back into the holds queue again.

I’ll keep using Libby because libraries are awesome, but I really wish the rollout came with an explanation of how this system will be better, not just state that it will be better.

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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.

I’ve been trying to get picky about new games because my game routine has grown ridiculous. In the morning, I play 9 games while I drink coffee. After work, I play 7 games before I start dinner. 16 games. Per day.

Granted, most of them take under two minutes, but still, that is about a half hour of my day given over to naming countries and guessing words.

A game needs to be exceptional to enter the rotation. Letterage is the latest game to achieve that status. It’s the final game in the evening queue.

You can play with 60 or 30 letters. The letters fall into slots on the screen, and you spell a word using your letters, like Scrabble. The difference is that you don’t have to hook onto any word, and you get more points if you use a letter more than once. For instance, if you had C – Q – K – E – N – R – T (you always have 7 letters at a time), you could spell “cent,” but you’d get more points for “center.” Once you use the letter, it disappears, though it may come back in a different set. The letters that fall into the slots change each day.

Enjoy!

We decided it was a good time to do a little subscription shedding. It’s partially cost — it’s hard to justify a charge if you barely use the service — and it’s partially maintenance. Each subscription brings a slew of emails telling you about all the exciting things streaming that week or reminding you about all the exciting add-ons you can get. I open all of those emails in case there is something I actually need to know from the service. But I will not have to open an email if we no longer subscribe to the service.

We’ll hop back on a service for a month or two to watch a show, but we’re trying to bring it down to the bare minimum of ongoing subscription services.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

I was blown away by this post from Dear John, where she points out how her husband’s craving for external validation brought on a lot of unhappiness. She writes: “I think therapy would have helped you realize that your failures were a product of your willingness to take chances. That your self-doubt should have been cured by your many, many successes … Contentment is what you should seek, because that’s longer-lasting and stable. You wanted the highs, but found yourself far more entangled in the lows.” While speaking to an individual, she so perfectly captures that gap between the external and internal self. It’s a quiet, heart-tugging post. Go read the whole thing.

Lastly, there is a lot to process inside Road Less Travelled’s brain dump. I liked Elizabeth Day’s Magpie, and I wrote on Goodreads: “I have never felt more seen by a book. She captures infertility perfectly. And far from being a painful read, it was like spending time with a friend who got it.” Guess I now know why. And sending a big hug for the big changes coming to her parents.

The roundup to the Roundup: Backups are good. 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 September 19 – 26) 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.

Speaking of questions (are you doing 10Q?), I liked this list of questions that someone linked to recently.

I actually think they’re so perfect that they should be answered once a quarter – maybe Jan 1, April 1, July 1, and Oct 1, making the “leaves” question something more generally stated about hidden things being revealed.

I especially loved “What am I pretending is working, but isn’t?” and “What am I hungry to feel again?”