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.

I needed two business-y outfits (like nice enough to wear to an event but not over the line into wearable-for-a-daytime-wedding), so I grabbed ChickieNob, promising that it would take maybe an hour.  Tops.

I don’t go shopping.  I don’t enjoy shopping.  I don’t enjoy clothes unless they are a t-shirt, jeans, and my boots.  I especially don’t like dresses or skirts.  I dislike every part of the shopping experience, from picking out things to trying it on to deciding whether to purchase.

ChickieNob knows this and tried to make the outing efficient and fun.  She gathered up stuff for me to try on and then gave helpful commentary like, “Do you want to look as if you’re wearing a hospital gown?  No?  Then I probably would take off that top.”  She even took some photos of me while I was trying on outfits so she could test their “selfie-ability” (how they show up in selfie form) just in case I ever feel moved to take a selfie.  The girl is prepared.

At one point, I told her that I would release her to read a book and attempt to continue on my own because I felt awful about how I was using up her afternoon.  But she stuck with me because she told me (1) she doesn’t trust me to make good decisions, (2) she pities me and knows that I need more help than the average person to hold it together while shopping for an outfit, and (3) she is a good person.

She didn’t even laugh at me when I got a shirt on and then couldn’t get it off.

I love that girl.

I walked out with an awesome dress and matching cardigan plus a pair of dress pants and two tops.  And it only took us a little over four hours.  Like I said, four hours.  Tops.

Now I don’t need to go shopping for another five to eight years.  I like to wear the same thing every single time I have to dress up.  It makes things easy.

I owe that girl the Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Once More With Feeling” soundtrack for her extreme patience.

The Wolvog and his friend have been hanging out on a Minecraft server which is an exact replica of Disney World.  Exact replica, down to the ticket booths at the front of the park, the lines outside the rides, and the placement of every brick.  You can go on rides, meet characters, and wander through restaurants.  Oh — and it’s every park in Florida.

When he first mentioned it, the ChickieNob and I sort of squinted at him and said, “I don’t get it.”  So he got the computer and showed us, and suddenly an hour of our life was gone as we rode on the Haunted Mansion and went on the People Mover and flew above California on Soarin’.  (Thank you, Wolvog, for being very patient with us, especially when we both shouted out different rides and made you jump from park to park.)

As far as I know, it’s not an official Disney project; just a labour of love from hundreds of kids who go to the park, photograph every square inch, and then recreate it in Minecraft.

You need a Minecraft account in order to access it, and you can find it at MCMagic (Palace Network).

Happy visiting.

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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:

• “With the Words of a Love Song” (Glow in the Woods)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Washington Post has a beautiful piece about why we should talk about miscarriage.  Perhaps the most important point: “For a society that has no shortage of vocal citizens highly concerned about the fate of unborn children in general, there is surprisingly little compassion to go around for the loss of one unborn child in particular. We know how to criticize, but we don’t have a script for consoling.”  I loved this piece.

Res Cogitatae has a post that made me smile after reading all the doom and gloom in the rest of the Washington Post.  She talks about what happened when she met up with a stranger to pass along some baby things.  I hope it makes you smile, too.

With Every Heartbeat looks at the life she was supposed to have and holds it against the life she has.  She writes, “This life is nothing like the one we thought we’d have.  The life we, quite frankly, thought we deserved after so many long, difficult years.  Where is that life?  Reduced to ash, just like our daughter.”  It is such a raw, beautiful post.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has a post about Ariel Levy’s book.  I wrote about her story after the New Yorker article, but I didn’t know that a memoir had been released a few weeks ago.  She writes, “Her story of how swiftly a carefully constructed life can fall completely apart is something those of us who have experienced traumatic loss will well relate to.”  I think I’m going to read this one.

The roundup to the Roundup: Virtually visit Disney.  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 24th and 31st) 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.

After losing our original tickets to the snowstorm, we tried again and were able to score 4 tickets to see Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors exhibit at the Hirshhorn yesterday.  I’ll admit that our earlier experience with the exhibit probably coloured how I felt about the exhibit.  But that’s art: you carry your baggage with you into every piece.

Was it worth it?  Yes.  I think.  Josh compared it to eating at a molecular gastronomy restaurant, which is more an experience than satiating your hunger.  This was definitely more an experience than a consumption of art.  There’s not a lot you can absorb in 20 seconds.  (Yes, you only get 20 seconds per room AND someone is outside with a stopwatch to make it fair.)  You’re thrown into the piece and then yanked out.

The kids LOVED it and were happy to stand patiently in each line.  There’s a lot to see while you’re in line, and we ended up chatting sometimes with the people around us.  (We spoke to a group of three that had gotten there at 7 am for 10 am stand-by tickets!)  And we definitely had a good time together; though how much of that was just hanging out with one another and how much of that was the art exhibit I have no clue.

Okay, I liked it.  I liked it very very much.

I took 281 images at the exhibit, but here are a few to give you a taste.