I am pro-third party candidates.  More choices mean more viewpoints, and frankly, there are a lot of ways we could positively run this country.  Democrats and Republicans don’t have a monopoly on good ideas.

But this election is different, and I’m going to ask you not to vote for a third party candidate when it comes to the presidency.  I know there is a feeling of “if not now, when,” but I repeat that it’s this election: It’s different.  Please hear me out.

Imagine your teacher says that your class can have an ice cream party, but you need to vote and decide on a single flavour of ice cream.  The choices are chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.

Image: Joy via Flickr via Creative Commons license

4 kids vote for chocolate, 4 kids vote for vanilla, and 1 kid votes for strawberry, which is what you really want.  Maybe you think, “Well, I don’t mind chocolate, though I really want strawberry.  I will vote for strawberry to show them that I really want strawberry and that will affect the next time we get ice cream.”  Or maybe you think, “I don’t like chocolate or vanilla, so I will vote for strawberry because that’s what I like and eat whichever one wins because who really cares if it can’t be strawberry.”

If we were voting between chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, I would not be writing this.  But we’re not talking about three equal but different ice cream flavours.

This is what this election is like: 4 kids vote for chocolate, 4 kids vote for salmonella-poisoned ice cream, and 1 kid votes for strawberry.  You may not like chocolate, but I think we can all agree that voting for salmonella-laced ice cream is not a healthy decision.  It has the potential to make the class very ill, and if nothing else, the class will be filled with dread while they wait to find out if the ice cream they knowingly consumed is going to harm them.

While that strawberry ice cream looks really good, and it’s what you actually want, your vote will not get the class that desired strawberry treat but could get the class the salmonella-laced ice cream.

So I’m going to ask you a favour to keep America healthy, and I ask this knowing full well that there will be a time when you will ask me to help you get strawberry as the flavour winner: Please vote for Hillary Clinton.

There will be future elections where we’re not fighting to keep bacteria out of our ice cream bowls, and there are many other positions of power in which to elect third party candidates this November.

Please make your vote count this election, and stand together with reason and capability.  It’s a huge ask, and I know that it is not easy to cast a vote for a candidate that doesn’t match your ideology.  But the only way to keep bacteria from spreading is to wash our hands of it.

We love watching @Midnight, but we tape it, so the news is often old by the time we get around to watching the episode.  A case in point: on Tuesday night, we watched an episode from October 3rd.  The first segment was called “Donald Trump’s Worst Week Ever.”

The irony, of course, is that this was days before the tape was released.  So we were watching it, not only cognizant of what would go down a few days later, but cringing as the comics tried to imagine a worse week.  We commented that night that things couldn’t get any worse, but now, after the debate, we know that Trump sums up our future president as a nasty woman AND has already let us know in no uncertain terms that he isn’t going concede and let the nation come together and heal from this election.  So there’s that.

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I was asked to speak at a Career Day, and I told the twins at breakfast.  “What’s your career?” the ChickieNob asked.

“Well, I like to think my full-time job is annoying you, but I suppose your school would like me to talk about being a writer.”

One point for mum.  Or, as the kids say these days, GET REKT.  That’s how cool I am — I know that it makes you ultra hip to point out that these are the sorts of things the kids say.

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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:

• “Blue Blanket” (Anne Heffron)
• “To Live in This World” (By the Brooke)
• “Lest We Forget?  Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness” (Spiritbabycomehome)
• “Four Words” (Middle Girl)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Slaying, Blogging, Whatever’s daughter asks an excellent question: “Can you go through your whole life without being bitten by leeches or having poison ivy or getting hurt, etc.”  Her daughter gets her answer a little while later when she gets locked out of the house; a small moment for an adult but a huge deal for a child.  She captured the moment very well.

A Half-Baked Life has finally settled into her new home, and she writes about finding herself again and that moment that comes when you’re finally settled after a big upheaval.  She writes: “There is something about the light, the space, the countertop filled with apples and flour and cinnamon and sugar, that makes me feel like yes, this is home.  And I am me again.  Not that I’d lost myself, exactly, but that a part of me had been missing.”  I’m glad you’re back.

Lastly, Lavender Luz has a post about listening and adoption up on Adoptimist.  She explains: “Anyone who tells you adoption is wonderful! is just as misguided as someone who tells you adoption is horrible! In both cases, they have filtered out all but a fraction of a sliver of the whole to reach their conclusion.”  I love her third option of listening instead of fighting back or walking away.

The roundup to the Roundup: Poor @Midnight: You couldn’t have known how the rest of the month would unfold.  I delivered a sick burn (which is more teen-speak).  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 October 14th and 21st) 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 my SuperBetter tasks told me to toast myself.  Not to wait until I had done something fantastic, but to toast myself… just for being me.

Mind blown.

You see, every week or so, I walk by this fancy bottle of lemonade at the food store.  I’ve always wanted to try it, but I told myself that I would get it the next time I had something to celebrate.  I didn’t think I deserved bubbly blood orange-flavoured lemonade any more than I deserve a trophy or a ribbon or an award.  Fancy drinks are for celebrations, and I have nothing to celebrate.

And it felt sort of… I don’t know… like I was tempting fate to just buy myself this product I had been saving for a special occasion.  But what was I waiting for?  What if I died tomorrow and never knew what blood orange-flavoured lemonade tasted like?  I drove to the store and bought myself a handful of Kind bars and a fancy drink.

At dinner, I poured a bit for each of us, and I asked everyone to raise their glass and toast something about themselves.  Something they accomplished, even if it was a small thing.  And then I told everyone that we were awesome just the way we are, and we drank to that.  In fact, we drank the whole bottle.  And Josh removed the sticker for me and washed it out so we now have a fancy water bottle for the dinner table so people don’t have to get up to refill their cup.

How you like them apples?  (By which I mean blood oranges.)

Go buy yourself a fun drink today and toast yourself.  What small thing are you celebrating?

The most interesting things I’ve read in a long time is an article in the Verge about a woman who built a bot out of her friend’s old text messages.  It is subtitled: “When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using artificial intelligence.”

So begin there.

Photographers may try to remember people with images, and writers may jot down all of the stories, but Eugenia Kuyda — the “her” in the story — is an inventor of bots, so it makes sense that she would use her chosen art form to memorialize her friend.  But in memorializing him, she was able to sort of… speak… with him again, for lack of a better word.

Reading Mazurenko’s messages, it occurred to Kuyda that they might serve as the basis for a different kind of bot — one that mimicked an individual person’s speech patterns. Aided by a rapidly developing neural network, perhaps she could speak with her friend once again.

She set aside for a moment the questions that were already beginning to nag at her.

What if it didn’t sound like him?

What if it did?

I’ll admit that I read this article because I love this idea.  I’ve written before about Bina48 and similar projects.  I have a hard time with goodbyes and letting go, so this intermediary step feels like an insurance plan, a way to still connect with the person after they’re gone.  Even if it isn’t totally “them” in the sense that you are communicating in real time with the actual person.  Except… you sort of are, right?

As the article points out: “Modern life all but ensures that we leave behind vast digital archives — text messages, photos, posts on social media — and we are only beginning to consider what role they should play in mourning.”  What do we do with all the digital pieces of our personality that we leave behind?

I would want this.  Even if it extended the mourning period.  Even if it was painful at times.  I would want something like this very badly.

What are your thoughts?

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

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This Wednesday is St. Frideswide’s feast day.  We celebrate it as a family every year, usually doing something Alice-related or having a special meal or cake.

But this year, celebrating St. Frideswide Day on St. Frideswide Day isn’t really going to work.  I can pull together scones for breakfast, but that’s pretty much it.  A bunch of work projects are all due at the same time, so it would be really great if we could celebrate her life on Tuesday.  Or Thursday.  Sort of any day but that Wednesday.  (Unless Hillary would like to reschedule the debate?  Then we could tuck it into the evening hours.)

I feel weird celebrating a holiday not on the holiday, even though it’s a great solution to a common problem.  Lots of people celebrate a holiday early or late so they can get people together or celebrate with two different groups, one after the other.

What do you think of celebrating holidays not on the actual day?

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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.