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

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The ChickieNob beat me in cards, and I told her that she could pick the prize.  She narrowed it down to a Buffy soundtrack or a Buffy episode, but that was as far as she got.

We talked about it a lot, and I pointed out that it was a pretty low stakes decision.  She could (1) play me in cards again and probably beat me a second time (if not on the first try then some point in the future) and (2) she had the money to buy herself the soundtrack AND the episodes.  But she still couldn’t make up her mind.  It was like knowing she had a prize was even better than choosing the prize.

The Wolvog is the same way.  It is so hard for him to choose what he wants to do when we go hang out somewhere, even when I promise him that it’s a low stakes decision: we can go out again the next week and do something different.

As someone who held onto a massage gift certificate for years because knowing I had it was better than using it, I get it.  The apples didn’t fall far from this neurotic tree.

Do you like to choose prizes (or use gifts) quickly or hold onto them indefinitely?

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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.

It has been a strangely busy week — travel, work, bathroom remodeling, weekend guests, and hosting Pesach on Monday — which means something had to fall through the cracks, and so far it’s the interactive fiction game I was set to play for my monthly interactive fiction club.  (It’s like a book club, but instead of a book, we play a game and then get together and discuss it.)

I’m still attempting to get to it tonight, but it isn’t looking good.  That matzo ball soup isn’t going to cook itself, friends.  But it brings up a question: should you attend a club (book club, video game club, etc) if you haven’t done the prep work?  I’m not bothered by the game being ruined for me.  Well, I mean, I am, but I understand that is the risk.  But is it obnoxious to show and admit, “I didn’t play this one.”

Um… in case any of the guys are reading: I didn’t play this one.  I suck.  But I will see you guys this weekend because I’m leaning towards being obnoxious and begging for mercy.

Do you show up for book clubs if you haven’t read the book?

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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:

• “Top Ten Things That Suck About Delayed Fertility” (Lady Part Adventures)
• “Sometimes I’m Firing on All Cylinders” (Bent Not Broken)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Hope Floats Among the Cherry Blossoms has a post that is so beautiful, heartbreaking, and brief that it is poetry.

My Path to Mommyhood runs into her old RE at the grocery store.  She writes, “I can revel in the fact that we are friends with someone who tried real hard to get us pregnant and tried to keep it real even as the quest failed miserably, and who still gives really great hugs and truly enjoys our presence, whether at events, the grocery store, or in the mail. Maybe, in a weird way, more so because we weren’t a success story.”  It’s a great post about reconnecting with someone who was a big part of your journey.

Too Many Fish to Fry has an important post to read about the death of a friend and a lesson learned.  She explains, “Stoicism never pretends life isn’t horrible. It never assumes that challenges won’t rear up and the philosophy won’t promise a perfect life. Instead, the stoics teach us that challenges will happen, terrible events will occur. They advise that the only way to prepare for such things is to count the good things we have, over and over again.”  I’ll be thinking about the story inside the post for a long time.  (And likely thinking about it every time I climb a long flight of stairs.)

Lastly, Riding the IVF Roller Coaster has a post about telling her child about a loss.  This is a post for everyone who worries about talking about pregnancy loss, stillbirth, or neonatal death with a child.  My experience has been about the same when the ChickieNob and Wolvog have asked.

The roundup to the Roundup: Showing up for a (book) club when you haven’t read the (book).  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 31st and April 7th) 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.

One of the rooms at the Yayoi Kusama exhibit is a series of enormous pink blow-up balls covered in black polka dots.

Kusama really loves polka dots — they are everywhere in the exhibit including the final white room that is covered in colourful polka dot stickers.

And you know what — I don’t.  I don’t love polka dots.  Given the choice between polka dots and stripes, I would take stripes almost every single time*.

Which are you?  Dots or stripes?

* The one exception is the shower curtain in the twins’ bathroom.  It has dots in vibrant shades of blue against a white background.  I really like it.  Not enough to put it in my own bathroom.  In ours?  We have stripes.

Last week, Josh walked into the kitchen while I was taking care of ordering stuff for the bathroom renovation.  “Our oven clock is out.  No.  Wait.  Our oven is out.”  The burners on the stove top would turn on, but the oven itself remained cold.

Shit.

We had to get to the Yayoi Kusama exhibit (really, the timing of it made me think that the universe reeeeeeeeeeally didn’t want me to see this installation), but my parents saved the day by running to the store to look at the oven we wanted and even ordered it for us so it would be delivered the next day.  (Thank you, Mommy and Daddy.)

All was going to be fine.

Except the first oven they delivered ran abnormally hot.  Like we flipped the burner on low and then turned it off 5 seconds later.  And 10 minutes after that, it was still too hot to hold our hand over the burner.  The store agreed this was likely a fire hazard and delivered a second oven the next day.

Great.

But here’s the thing… I make up most of my recipes, and the temperatures are all estimated because (1) I designed these recipes on a 24-year-old oven that didn’t work very well and (2) the numbers weren’t very clear on the knob so in my head I said things like: “You bake the bread at a generous twisting of the dial.”  It probably would have been a smart idea to buy an oven thermometer and test the temperatures BEFORE the oven died.  But I didn’t, which means that I’ve spent the last week guessing on things.

My first challah was a little burned on the bottom.  But my chocolate chip cookies (that was my biggest recipe fear — the inability to recreate my cookies) turned out fine.  I learned that I bake them at 350 degrees.  Who knew?

This was the last piece of the old kitchen.  Everything (well, except the floor) has been replaced.  It was bittersweet to see it go.  I folded my hands over the oven’s door handle and talked to it before the delivery guys took it away.  “Thanks, friend, for being such a great oven for so many years.”  I like to think that the oven knew — even in its dormant state — that love.

I’m not the only one who speaks to inanimate objects, right?

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

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The Paperback Princess had such an interesting post about the books she hasn’t read.  It was really hard to come up with my “not read” list because I also have a problem remembering what I have read.  For instance, I started listing out books and then realized that I not only owned the book but my handwriting is all over the inside of said book.  So… thinking I read those ones.

But I definitely haven’t read Middlemarch, Naked Lunch, Atlas Shrugged, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Tropic of Cancer, or any of the Outlander books.  And with the exception of Heart is a Lonely Hunter, I also have no intention of reading any of these books.

How about you?  What haven’t you read that you probably should have gotten to by now?

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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.