I’m at the library, and I see a sign for a huge used book sale happening in the basement.  10,000 books!  Most of them only 25 cents!

I think I will mosey on down there.  Perhaps the book I’m looking for — an older Curtis Sittenfeld novel — will be in the fiction section.

I clomp downstairs and immediately find the book sale room.  It’s the room they use for story time with the librarian or special programs at the library.  Currently it is packed with books, arranged by genre, and patronized by two elderly ladies.

I slip into the room, and they both look at me curiously but go back to shopping.  They must be wondering what a hip, 40-something year old woman like myself reads.  I browse the fantasy section, science fiction, and horror before I head back to literature.  The women keep looking at me, and I keep looking at them, thinking about how wonderful it is that these 80-something year old women are browsing sports encyclopedias.  Perhaps they were Olympians in their youth.  No… wait… they are staring at me… perhaps they were NOT Olympians but they wanted to be and now they are staring because they are jealous that I grew up in an age where girls played more sports.

I turn the corner and spot a copy of Flatland by Edwin Abbott.  I immediately snatch it off the shelf, which causes one of the elderly women to turn around in alarm.  I hold it up triumphantly, grinning.  “I CANNOT walk by a copy of Flatland without buying it, you know?”

“What are you doing?” the woman asks.

“I’m…  I’m buying this copy of Flatland.  It’s a math story… about dimensions… flat… land.”

“The sale isn’t open until Saturday,” she admonishes.  She looks at the other woman for backup.  The other woman picks up another stack of books and starts sorting them.  Like… putting them out on tables, sorting them.  Not browsing sports books for herself.

“Oh,” I say in a small voice and put back the book.  “Well, I will definitely be back next Saturday because… you have Flatland.”

I duck out of the room and race upstairs, checking the sign on the way out which — indeed — states that the sale is days away.  But even worse, as I run to my car, I realize that a smarter person would have pulled a crisp dollar out of her wallet and offered 4 times the asking price in order to get the slim novella.  But, as we all know, I’m a different kind of smart.

Pottermore has finally posted its patronus test, but I haven’t taken it yet.  Part of it is because I want my patronus to be a black cat, so if it’s not a black cat, I’m going to have to do some major mental shifting.  Part of it is because I’m not really in the mood.

I think the Cursed Child got under my skin because, for the first time, I felt like a piece of the supplemental puzzle didn’t fit with the original Harry Potter world.  Everything else — the films, Pottermore, the spinoff books — supported the original world.  And then the Cursed Child wiggled in and… made the world feel different.  And not in a good way.  It feels like a puzzle piece that doesn’t snuggly fit, that you suspect really comes from a different set.

So I guess I’m worried because — I’ll admit it — I care what my patronus is.  I care which house I’m in and what my wand is made of and which animal is offering me protection.  Yes, I am aware this is silly and that it is fiction, but it’s my heart and I get to make decisions for it.  So I’m going to take the quiz, but I’m going to take it when I’m in a different frame of mind.

Until then, consider me protected by a little black cat.

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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:

• “Sometimes Walking in Cemeteries Has Consequences” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “Escape from the Monkey House” (The Empress and the Fool)
• “When Silence is the Policy” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “The Green Room #MicroblogMonday” (Dubliner in Deutschland)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Slaying, Blogging, Whatever has a post about how you can appreciate what you have while still mourning the otherwise.  She wistfully thinks about the experiences other kids have but also celebrates her son and all of his accomplishments.  It’s a wonderful post about perspective, and I love this line: “Sometimes grief is not just about the loss of a person. It is a loss of something less tangible.”

Dear Noah has a post about how the lens through which she sees the world made her mind jump to the worst conclusion when a mother showed up at a class without her new baby.  It made me think about how deeply our experiences affect us, making us see everything else from a new vantage point from that moment on.  Like how a twist of the hand forever changes a kaleidoscope.

Lastly, Ask Polly in New York Magazine has a great answer to a woman who asks about those desperate infertile women who blog all day about the fact that they can’t make baaaaaabeeeeeeees.  I love her because she writes: “Do you know how it felt to try and fail to get pregnant month after month? It fucking sucked. I’m telling you this not because this was some horribly dark passage in my life that I have a right to bitch about.”  And this: “They are not being obsessive and dorky. They are surviving hell.”  Read the whole thing even though it’s long.  Her answer will (I hope) make you get over any frustration you feels over reading the original question.

The roundup to the Roundup: I don’t know my patronus yet. 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 16th and 23rd) 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.

There is a lot I could say on my feelings about Donald Trump, but continuously going that route becomes problematic because… I’m not with Hillary Clinton by default, I’m with her by choice.  I mean, it would be equally rude to go on about all of my ex’s and finally end with, “And that’s why I married Josh,” as if he’s the only option left that makes sense.  No, I chose Josh and he chose me because we saw something in each other that said we’d be a good partnership.

So, politically, I choose Hillary Clinton.  I don’t choose her because she’s not Trump.  I choose her because she is Clinton.

It begins with her being the most qualified candidate ever.  She has already spent 8 years in the White House with a front row seat to the presidency and all the job entails.  She has been a senator and Secretary of State.  She knows, without a doubt, what she is getting into, and that makes a huge difference in the possibility of her success in the office.

I’m with Hillary because of her stance on responsible gun ownership.  I’m with her because she supports background checks and will work to close loopholes that allow guns to be sold to people who, frankly, shouldn’t have guns.

I’m with Hillary because she is working to keep legislators’ hands off my reproductive organs.  She supports Planned Parenthood and has publicly said that she will stand up to Republicans who want to defund the organization that brings critical health care to so many women.

I’m with Hillary because she has sensible, realistic ideas about immigration, taking into account that immigrants are human beings with the same wants and needs as citizens.  That the goal should be moving more people towards becoming legal citizens rather than punishment.  She makes it clear that immigrants are just people, part of the “us”, rather than an amorphous “them.”

I’m with Hillary because she is going to continue with education reforms and tweak the ones in place, reducing the number of tests children are expected to take to prove their teachers’ worth.  She has a plan for making preschool accessible to all children, not just the ones who can afford it.  And she’ll continue the work of making college affordable.  So many things are interconnected including strong education plans and a reduction of crime.  By giving more people more options, you will create a future generation that doesn’t feel backed into a financial corner.

I’m with Hillary because I believe she cares about work-life balance.  That she wants families to succeed and for people to have the space to care for children, elderly parents, or ill relatives.  That she’ll do everything in her power to influence that change in the workplace.

I’m with Hillary because she knows the limit of her position and doesn’t make promises of what she’ll do as president that ARE NOT POSSIBLE FROM THE POSITION OF PRESIDENT.  No one should have this position without understanding the requirements and restrictions of this position.

Those are the immediate reasons that pop into my head.  I’m sure that if I sat here with this post open for another hour, I could yank twenty additional reasons for why I support Hillary Clinton.  But at the end of the day, just as with Josh, it’s a gut decision.  I look at her and think, “Yes, I would like her to lead our nation.”  I don’t need her to be my friend or make me laugh or make me feel like I want to grab a coffee with her.  I just need a smart, calm, rational person to lead our nation.

That’s why I’m with her.

There was a recent Reply All that covered a number of topics, including a response from a YouTube creator who felt discouraged when she heard on an earlier episode that she needed many more subscribers (like millions more) in order to be noteworthy.

The guys mused that with all of the thinking they do about the online world, they should have a better sense of how one goes about getting more subscribers or creating a viral video.  They brought up a Darius Kazemi talk from XOXO that you can watch below:

Kazemi likens content that resonates to winning the lottery: They is no magical formula just as there are no special numbers you can play that make it a sure thing that you will win the lottery. BUT if you don’t create content (or you don’t play the lottery) you definitely can’t win. So… create good content and then let go of the process. It will either resonate, or not.

He states: “What I’ve learned is that – beyond a certain level of effort – there’s basically no correlation between the amount of work you put into something and how successful it is.”

It’s sort of freeing to think that there is nothing you can humanly do once you give it your best shot.  I mean, it’s sad, too, because the whole thing sounds like a slog from that angle.  What’s the point if you can’t influence your work’s success beyond a few tiny steps you can take to nudge it in the right direction?  But it’s also freeing.  It’s okay if I’m sitting back or moving on to the next thing.

With things pertaining to luck: creative work, relationships, baby making — it’s all about showing up and putting in the effort, and then understanding that your work is done and it’s just a matter of chance.

Does his philosophy make you feel hopeful or just plain sad?

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

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I started reading The Hopefuls by Jennifer Close, mostly because it’s set in DC.  There are very few books that are not genre fiction (and usually legal or political thrillers at that) that are set in contemporary DC, and this one is particularly Washingtonish.

I like it because the characters go to restaurants I like and visit local places I enjoy.  If it’s possible to feel homesick while you are still at home, this book is making me feel wistful for the place where I am right now.

I wish more books were set in my city, and I tend to gobble up books set in places I like, especially if they include familiar landmarks that are not the usual tourist sites.  I’m even willing to stick with characters I don’t particularly enjoy making observations which would make me roll my eyes if spoken by an actual human just to keep seeing the city.

Are there books set in your hometown?  And do you enjoy reading location-based contemporary fiction?

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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 posts.