We went to the beach a week ago. We normally have reception on the beach. It’s sometimes a little weak, but I’ve checked email from the beach and made phone calls. But this time, our phones didn’t work for whatever reason. We had zero bars, as the teens say.

I was unreachable, which is how one should be on vacation, but I also could not reach out. I could not check my email, which meant that I couldn’t peek at something for a second and give an opinion. It was a very weird and wonderful feeling to be cut off during those hours. I read my book without feeling guilty because I could do nothing about it.

I mean, beyond going back to the hotel and checking my phone, which I didn’t do because have you ever tried to get a parking space near the beach? It’s impossible, so you don’t relinquish your space if you’ve landed one.

It helped that we were on vacation rather than at home, where we had the expectation that we’d be online. But sometimes, it’s nice to be unreachable.

Consider this your PSA to clean out your vents. I was reading Apple News, and there was a headline about the toilet paper test. What is the toilet paper test, you ask?

Get up right now and go into any bathroom with an exhaust fan. Turn it on. Take two squares of toilet paper and stick them to the vent. If the toilet paper sticks, you’re okay. If it is a little loose or falls, you’re not.

We vacuum our vents, so I didn’t think I actually needed to test anything, but I wanted to see if it worked. We went into the first bathroom and turned on the fan. The toilet paper stuck firmly until we turned off the fan. Yay! We are awesome home owners. We went to the second bathroom and tried it again, and this time, it took a few tries to get the toilet paper to stick. And even when it did, it felt loose.

We ended up taking the fan apart and cleaning everything out inside, too. Better safe than sorry because these fans can cause a fire. So go try the toilet paper test yourself.

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

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Say that title ten times fast. This is the original idea for Microblog Mondays. You didn’t have to keep it short, but I suggested short posts because I thought it would be easier, especially because tiny thoughts were ruling the day on social media.

This is the 500th week of doing it, and it will be ten years old in September.

Thank you if you’ve contributed a post. And if you haven’t, here is your chance to dust off your blog and put up an update.

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

The day after the US men’s gymnastics team took bronze, I clicked on a great piece via Facebook. I am so frustrated because I can’t find the article again. I’ll try to summarize it for you.

It was about the pommel horse specialist Stephen Nedoroscik. When he was training as a kid, he realized he didn’t have what it took to compete in all areas. He could have walked away from gymnastics when he realized it wasn’t going to go as he hoped, but instead, he looked at where he was exceptional — the pommel horse — and he went all in on becoming a pommel horse specialist. Being a specialist meant unlike his other teammates, he only got one chance to shine, but he didn’t act like someone who was waiting. This article talked about how he brought his teammates water and cheered them on while they were competing, remaining part of the moment, and then went out there, rocked the one thing he does, and contributed the points needed to get them on the podium.

It’s a great story, which is why he has become one of the stars of the Olympics, but the part I kept thinking about was that he had a choice to make somewhere early on when he received feedback or understood at his core that if he kept going on the path he was going on — the path everyone in the gym was taking to get to the Olympics — he was not going to achieve his goal. Only by thinking outside the box and moving onto a Plan B could he keep moving forward.

I realized reading the article how many of us (myself included, which is why it resonated with me) hear the word “no” and move on to something else rather than finding a new route forward toward the same place. There are plenty of places in life where “no” actually means “no” (relationships, family building, etc.), but I sometimes apply that knowledge to places where “no” is more of a “Stephen Nedoroscik no,” which is a not-this-way-find-something-else “no.” I’m impressed that he thought of trying that path. And I’m going to keep that in mind the next time I hear one of those softer “no”s and look around to see if there are any other options to move forward that get me to the same place, even if the journey to get there will look different.

Francine Pascal died this week. Like most girls my age, I was obsessed with Sweet Valley High books. I bought them the day they came out, immediately read them, and then felt an empty, aching feeling waiting for the next installment. I wrote my own Sweet Valley High fan fiction, typing it up on my word processor, and circulating it among the other girls in my elementary school. Let’s just say that Bruce Patman had a very spicy life in my version.

I joined the school newspaper in high school so I could be like Elizabeth Wakefield. I never tried cocaine because I didn’t want to die like Regina Morrow. And you better believe I’ve never flown in a tiny plane because of Enid Rollins.

I still collect Sweet Valley High books when I see them at a used bookstore, and we have a bunch of them on the shelf. They’re fairly ridiculous but still hold a special place in my heart.

Rest easy, Ms. Pascal.

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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 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. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Finding a Different Path thought commentary about JD Vance’s words missed the mark. She writes: “It just felt like a missed opportunity to fight the pronatalist status quo and point out that not having children doesn’t make you an oblivious, selfish, uninvested stain on humanity.” I wish the article had gone further, too, though I liked that the writer pointed out how harmful these words are and that he is putting them out there in the universe.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled also wrote about Vance, this time touching on another aspect of the conversation around it. Namely, people who now declare themselves childless because their children are no longer in the house. She explains why this is offensive: “Your life is different from mine/ours because of the simple fact that you got to be parents and we didn’t. Just because you don’t have kids in the house now doesn’t mean that your life is now like ours. It’s not.” So true.

The roundup to the Roundup: Goodbye, Francine Pascal. 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 July 26 – August 2) 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.