There is an app called Stillgram that allows you to remove all people from the photo WHILE YOU ARE TAKING THE PICTURE. Did that require all caps? Sort of.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve patiently waited, annoying my family, for a space to clear before taking a picture so I could have it without people in it. The flower door of the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp comes to mind. We all aged about 300 years before I could get a moment without a random woman absentmindedly talking to her friend in front of the door. But that is the joy of taking a picture. You wait for the perfect moment and swoop in.

This app allows you to point your phone camera at the Trevi fountain, snap a picture, and have it look like you’re the only human on earth. Oh, and if you want to pay for the premium feature, you can position your loved one in the frame, tap on them, and keep them in the picture, erasing out everyone else. It’s kind of brilliant, but it’s kind of scary. It’s rewriting reality in the moment.

I’m not sure how that is different from coming home and editing everyone out of an image. I know it is possible to do this with software. Or how it is different from any sort of image manipulation, which has been going on long before modern software, such as airbrushing.

I don’t know. I guess because with all the other options, there is an original that reflects what your eye saw in the moment. It can’t capture the mood or the long wait for a plaza to clear. It can’t show all of the angles you didn’t choose or the outtakes. But this app takes us one more step from reality. And I don’t know how I feel about it.

What about you?

The writer Amy Tector asked if people choose a fork or a spoon when it is a meal that could go either way, and while I don’t have strong feelings about utensils, I do always reach for a bowl when a plate could technically do.

We run out of bowls — and we have an extraordinary number of bowls — long before we run out of plates. We run out of bowls before the dishwasher is full, so then I am forced to balance it out with a plate. I will put anything and everything in a bowl. All pasta. All salads. All rice dishes. All usual things that go in bowls, such as soup, cereal, or yogurt. I live a heavily bowl-centered life.

Are you team bowl or plate?

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

*******

I’ve always thought that I’m decent at guesstimating size. Distances? I’m dreadful. But if you ask me to make a 16 cm x 9 cm square, I can usually get pretty close.

But now I have proof because there is a game (of course there is a game) where you have to try to create a shape and then see how close you are to correct. On my first try, I got 89.34%, which is a B in 501st place. Once I knew how to play the game, on the second try, I got 91.05%, which is an A in 396th place. I’m moving on up.

How do you do?

*******

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.

There is a book on my TBR, and while I’m not sure I’ll read it, the concept is interesting: A person buys another person’s whole life. Their home, of course, but also their clothing, their furniture, their car, their belongings, their job, their friends, their family, their cat. All of it.

While parts of it are a tad unrealistic — you cannot control for your job accepting the person or people taking the new person in — the rest of it is entirely possible. The point, of course, is that you would live the other person’s life. Not toss out their stuff, keep the shell, and fill it with what you actually want. You would slip into their life and live it, as if you were them.

It’s something I used to always say to the kids when they were jealous about something. Sure, it would be lovely to have that part of that person’s life, but would you want the rest of it? Would you want their home and their parents and their siblings and their strengths and weaknesses?

I think the answer for most of us would be no. I can’t look at anyone on earth and think, “Yes, I would like to give up everything around me and slip into your life.”

Can you?

The children are home… for a few days. We went up early in the week to help them move from their college spaces, and drove back so they could spend a few weeks here before they trot off to their summer plans. I feel lucky that I get a few weeks with them. I feel sad that the long summers where they are here for months may be coming to an end.

But I’m trying to put off feeling sad about that and instead enjoy the time I do have while I have it.

See, progress.

*******

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.

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:

• “Finally Doing Less” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

A heavy week.

My heart hurts for Dear John, who lost her brother-in-law to suicide four years after her husband took his life. There are no words, but please go over and give support.

Lastly, The Barreness writes about caregiving: “I am overtaxed, overwhelmed, over run with emotions and haggard,” which led into her birthday, which was literally a journey of emotions. I cried with her. That’s the power of words.

The roundup to the Roundup: Welcome home. 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 May 8 – 15) 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.