I am more than a little smitten with the story that Abbey National Bank, which acquired the address 221B Baker Street, hired a secretary for many decades whose sole purpose was to answer fan mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes.  Mental Floss writes,

Rather than simply throw away mail addressed to a fictional character, the bank decided to hire someone to answer Holmes’s mail—as his secretary. Until Abbey National moved its headquarters in the 2000s, the bank continuously employed a series of secretaries to respond to fans, letting them know that Holmes had retired to the countryside to raise bees, or even replying occasionally as Holmes himself, using quotes from Doyle’s books.

Isn’t that brilliant?

Image: David Jones via Flickr

Fan mail is now answered by the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which isn’t as good a story.

Which makes me wonder whether other fictional characters get fan mail.  What happens if you mail a letter to 4 Privet Drive?  I’m assuming it ends up here, but does anyone answer it?  Can you write Leopold Bloom at 7 Eccles Street or Phileas Fogg at 7 Savile Row?  Will I reach the Steadmans if I write to 1710 Bryn Mawr Avenue, Philadelphia, PA?

It sort of wouldn’t matter to me if it was just a secretary writing me as long as I got a letter back.

Which fictional character would you want to write?

As I said over on BlogHer, this is my least favourite day of the year.  I know a lot of infertile women struggle with Christmas or Mother’s Day, but my worst day is April Fools.  It’s a day that turns otherwise thoughtful, kind people into jerks for 24 hours.  I hate all pranks, but especially fake pregnancy announcements.

I could write off everyone who posts something asinine on social media today and say, “Well, it is April Fools, and I know it’s a joke.”  But here’s the thing: It isn’t funny.  It isn’t funny to see someone mocking fertility (or in the case of the video I linked to in the BlogHer post, mocking adoption).  It isn’t funny to wade through picture after picture of pee sticks.

So I’m mostly offline today.  I’ll be on social media when I need to be for work, and I’ll read the blog posts in my feed reader since I feel pretty certain that no one I read would post a fake pregnancy announcement.  But other than that?  Avoid avoid avoid.

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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:

• “Thaw” (A Half-Baked Life)
• “Tick Tock” (The Road Less Travelled)
• “A Meaningful Life” (Lavender Luz)
• “Intensity” (Unpregnant Chicken)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Sad in the City has a gorgeous post this week called “Letting Go of Biological Motherhood.” A walk with her dog places her in the path of a child, and while the exchange would normally be welcome, it comes during a time when they have decided to stop treatments.  She says this so perfectly: “I am mourning the lost bit of living I feel like I have missed out on.”  This post… You just need to read the whole thing.

Anabegins has a post about applying the Kondo method to her life, which is brilliant.  The idea of tidying up your time: “I suspect I’m spending my time and energy on  things that don’t bring joy or utility to my life. I am squandering my precious minutes and hours on things that don’t matter, that suck away my joy and satisfaction and don’t bring me any closer to my goals.”  I’ve seen more than one person this week trying to put this into practice.  It is such a smart idea.

There is also Twangygirl’s post about getting the call, the one from the adoption agency.  There is so much giddiness in this post that I actually got chills down both arms reading it.  My favourite part: “Actual Baby is awfully, awfully sweet. The JB held him for three hours straight, until his arms hurt. That’s a kind man. And here I am, over Newfoundland, catching up with them, and now you are now caught up, too.”  Go wish her congratulations.

Lavender Luz has a post on the third anniversary of her book about how the project emerged from an unflattering blog post someone wrote about her.  She could have shut down and lost her voice, but instead she listened, considered, and reworded her thoughts.  And what came out of that experience is something incredible.  It’s a great story.

Lastly, Searching for Our Silver Lining has posted two very pretty pictures of herself, and it’s fitting that she is putting a face to an infertility story this week on a day when so many people need to remember that infertility affects real people.  Have I mentioned how much I really dislike fake pregnancy announcements on April Fools Day?  But I do love this.

The roundup to the Roundup: I really dislike April Fools Day.  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 25th and April 1st) 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.

I was fascinated by the study outlined on Mental Floss using Facebook to see if children go into the same careers as their parents.  The Facebook study also looked at whether siblings choose the same field.  The study found that,

15% of siblings share an occupation, which is higher than the 8.6% rate for any two same-gender, same-age individuals in the population. Twins’ tendency to choose the same occupation, at 24.7%, is even more striking.

Still, the study also found that “in absolute terms the vast majority of kids strike their own path and choose a profession different than that of their parents or their siblings.”

In my family, two of us are in the same field, and the other three are in three different fields, yielding four career fields for five people.

But then I went ahead and married a writer, therefore, my kids have two parents in the same field.  One wants to be a writer, too, and one doesn’t.  Though, of course, they’re young so that may change many times over before they settle on a career.  After all, I wanted to be a fish researcher or a cardiologist when I was their age.

How about you?  Same career field (not necessarily same job, but same area of work) as one of your parents?  As one of your siblings, if you have siblings?  As your partner?

25 teams.  525 broomsticks.  75 chasers.  1 golden snitch.

Quidditch World Cup.  This summer.  Frankfurt, Germany.

It’s on, like Donkey Kong.

Okay, maybe that’s more like “It’s on, like Hermione and Ron.”  Ooooooh!

This summer, 25 teams from around the world will meet in Frankfurt, Germany on July 23 – 24th for the IQA World Cup.  IQA, if you’re a complete Muggle, stands for International Quidditch Association, and it’s the international governing body for the sport.  Yes, sport.  It’s played at the college level and beyond, across the world, and while the broomstick regulations have changed over the years to prevent injury, it is as close as you can get to J.K. Rowling’s in-air vision of the game while on the ground.

The US National Team is sending 21 players and 7 alternates to the games, and I got to talk to one of them — Julia Baer — who normally plays chaser for Quidditch Club Boston, a community team in Massachusetts.

She, like probably you, scratched her head when she first noticed Quidditch listed as a sport while applying to college.

I thought it was a joke at first, admittedly.  I’m a competitive person and I adore the Harry Potter books (my application essay drew comparisons between Neville Longbottom and I), but I knew nothing about the sport. About one week into freshman year at University of Richmond, I was returning to my dorm room after class when one of my hallmates ran up, grabbed my hand and told me to change into gym clothes because it was time for Quidditch tryouts. I followed her and fell in love with the sport from the first practice.

She ended up playing 4 years for the University of Richmond Spiders.  Despite the fact that the sport was born in a book description, it’s not for the delicate or faint-of-heart.  Baer has weathered sprained ankles, a separated shoulder, and temporary blindness in one eye.  Concussions remain the number one Quidditch-related injury.  Yes, in case you doubted: This is a real sport.

It’s also possibly the ultimate feminist sport, with a mission statement that outlines numerous times the importance of gender inclusivity.  While other sports maintain separate teams based on sex (and often times don’t even have a team for one sex), Quidditch teams are always co-ed.  That focus on gender inclusivity is what drew Baer into the sport.

I find [the fact it’s co-ed] so fitting for Quidditch because it’s the kind of sport that requires basic open-mindedness from the very beginning. And Quidditch has a great way of being gender-inclusive in that it has developed the “four maximum” rule. This states that there may be no more than four people on the pitch for a team (a team fields seven at a time, including seeker) that identify as the same gender. This ensures inclusiveness across the gender spectrum, not simply for those identifying as female.

Making the game about skill in the sport rather than sex or gender changes the conversation.  Baer points out the ways that Quidditch is truly leveling the playing field.

[Quidditch] is a great opportunity to showcase the power of the gender minorities. I personally love having the chance to outplay male opponents and silence society’s little voice in my head that says all men are better athletes than I could ever be. I’m one of the best players on my team. I’m not one of the best girls on my team and I’m not good “for a girl”. It’s so refreshing to be in a sports community where gender minorities not only compete alongside men, but thrive.

You don’t have to love Harry Potter to play Quidditch.  In fact, the sport has strayed so far from the story that it’s likely that there are people on every team who have never read the books.  Baer admits that it has been a long time since she has thought about Harry Potter when taking the field.

It’s hard for outsiders to separate the sport and the series, however, and that tends to drive them away from giving Quidditch a shot. Personally, I’ll give a nod to J.K. Rowling for creating my favorite sport of all time, but when I’m on the pitch, Harry Potter is the last thing on my mind.

Probably the most important lesson Baer takes away from Quidditch is the idea that if you haven’t found your sport, create your sport.  (And that advice extends beyond sports to all areas of life.)  There is nothing stopping you from leaving the well-worn sports path and trying something new.

I’ve played sports all my life. I’ve played softball, soccer, field hockey, basketball, horseback riding and lacrosse. I’ve been above average at most sports I’ve played, but never once played for a varsity level team. Quidditch is the sport that I excel at. It’s the sport in which I’m (apparently!) one of the best players in the country. I’m extremely grateful to have had the ability to play this sport throughout college and after college. And this sport didn’t exist ten years ago. If you don’t think you’re great at any existing sport, invent or try a new one!

So who is with me cheering on the US National Quidditch Team this summer?

This post first appeared on BlogHer, but I had to post it here, too, because I am so freakin’ excited about the Quidditch World Cup.

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

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I gracefully stumbled into a low-lying planter at the mall.  I was twisting backwards to try to figure out the name of a new store — it didn’t have a sign above the entrance and had instead etched the name faintly into its glass windows — when my shoe caught on a six-inch decorative planter.  I fell in slow motion, with the ChickieNob screaming, “Mooooooooooomeeeeeeeeeeee” as I tumbled forward, breaking my fall with my hands as I smashed my right knee into the tile.

Not one person stopped eating at the tables around me.  Not one person came over to see if I was okay.

The ChickieNob and I sat there for a while, and then we slowly limped into a department store where I collapsed on a bench near the high heels.  The lump on my leg was so huge that it looked like my kneecap had decided to get itself an extra backup kneecap, just in case, and set it at a jaunty angle like a beret.  (The ChickieNob whispered, “It’s a good thing you didn’t check your unshaven legs when we were sitting in the casual part of the mall and instead waited to roll up your jeans when we were sitting amongst the fancy shoes.”)

I moaned the whole ride home.  Thank you, world, for creating ice.

What was your last injury?

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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.