887th Friday Blog Roundup
Just as Bea was telling me about Encanto, I received an email from Hulu asking if we wanted to add Disney+ for a teeny tiny amount. Years ago, I said I would never give in and have streaming services. And now, suddenly, we have several of them. I’m not sure where this train jumped the track.
Part of me likes the streaming life. I don’t feel cluttered, though I have access to tons of entertainment. And part of me feels like I want clutter. I want to feel weighed down. I want to pay for something once and own it.
It is hard to feel such different things at the same time.
I am leaning towards accepting the Disney+ offer because there is a movie with a red panda in it. And red pandas are kind of my heart along with quokkas, foxes, puffins, bears, otters, and 3000 other animals I’ve told you are my heart over the years. But I also kind of feel like I need a good talking to about this.
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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:
- “In Our Own Time: One Couple’s Fertility Journey” (McSweeney’s) — don’t get confused about it being on a funny site. A (the commenter) found this, and it’s a beautiful series
- “Empathy: The Glue That Holds Humanity Together” (Silent Sorority)
Okay, now my choices this week.
Many people marked the two year anniversary of the pandemic. Family Building with a Twist reflects on the last two years. She lost her husband during this time period as well, and she writes, “Jimmy did not die from COVID, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to separate his death from the last two years. It’s all tangled up together and part of my pandemic experience and memory.” It made me think about how much our personal history gets tangled together with the collective history, and we live these two realities at the same time.
Infertile Phoenix also looks back on the last two years. She has a profound thought about restaurants at the start of the post: “It represents that every routine and element of structure in my life changed entirely. Over a weekend. It’s a lot for all of us to absorb, process, and endure.” Yes. I mean, on one hand, it’s just a restaurant. But on the other, when I ate my last meal out, I didn’t realize that two years later, the closest I’ve gotten to a restaurant is eating takeaway in the car. Her year contained other moments including a toxic co-worker (three cheers to not explaining yourself), but I kept thinking about the restaurant line.
Finding a Different Path learns how her story has helped others as friends use what they learned from her. It’s a powerful feeling to know your words have helped another person. She writes, “I’m pretty damn happy with where we landed, how my story has evolved, and how it’s used for a good greater than me.” She should be!
Lastly, No Kidding in NZ writes about making bread, turning it into a metaphor for life. She explains, “Even decisions over which bread am I going to make are influenced by the fact that I don’t have children. Okay, I know realistically any kids I might have had might not be living at home any longer. But I could have had years of baking bread for them or with them before they set off for university or careers or travel or love.” I hope she made the bread, and I hope it was delicious.
The roundup to the Roundup: Mixed feelings on streaming services. 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 11 – 18) 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.
7 comments
Turning Red is fabulous and I’m not just saying that because it’s set in my city (although all the Canadian Easter Eggs were amazing too).
I have a love/hate relationship with Disney and their original tepid reaction to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill didn’t improve things. But D+ has brought me SO MUCH JOY over the pandemic, especially the Marvel shows. So I’m the wrong person to try to talk you out of it!
We joined D+ when it first came out and with our kids it has been worth it. We pay for Hulu/D+ and Netflix and combined it’s way cheaper than cable. I’m a little upset to learn NBC is leaving Hulu but I will be able to see the end of This Is Us before then. I may have to start watching SNL live (with our digital antenna) now that it is broadcast on the west coast during prime time…
We haven’t joined Disney+ yet. We currently have Netflix (both streaming and old school dvds) and Amazon Prime. We just watched Encanto on DVD and have hopes that Turning Red will come to DVD soon (the online sites that predict this stuff think it will be available on dvd sometime in April. I hope they’re right! Though also a small part of me suspects DC2 won’t like it because she’s not a fan of coming of age stories unless they involve saving the world through magical powers. We will see if the magic part is enough to get over the coming of age part.
Agree with Turia on Disney’s Don’t Say Gay bill reaction (initially, keep funding politicians who sponsored it, then saying they’ll stop funding them temporarily? really? what does that even mean?). Though the reason we don’t have it is because DH thinks that Amazon + Netflix is enough for him. If he wanted Disney+, we would have it. I mostly just watch clips of random things (try guys, jetpens, amber ruffin, would I lie to you, etc.) on youtube for my entertainment.
The nicest thing about doing streaming services instead of cable is that you’re not propping up Fox News!
Listen, here’s the thing about streaming services…you can subscribe. You can watch anything you want to watch. Then you can cancel the service. It’s super easy. We get one streaming service over Christmas/New Years, so we have lots to watch. And then we cancel it. We get another subscription in summertime when it’s too hot to do anything. Then we cancel it. The rest of the time, we borrow movies and series from the library. We dip in and out all the time – and I make lists of things I want to see in the interim.
But, get Disney+ – it’s worth it for Luca (my cousin’s husband was story artist for that!), Raya and the Last Dragon, and The Mandalorian. I want to see Encanto and Turning Red. And all the Marvel movies, as well as some Nat Geo content.
I look forward to your weekly round-up so thank you for your time and energy every week. Also thank you for the mention! I also loved Mali’s and Jess’s posts too.
I have to suggest one of your posts from this week. From the not liking your choices but having to choose anyway, to crossing that point of no return with regard to the decision made, and then reading others’ stories to help me understand my own–all so relatable! Thank you. https://www.stirrup-queens.com/2022/03/what-i-learned-from-blogs/
I don’t see how we are going to keep up with the proliferation of streaming services. I foresee a consolidation in due course.
We subscribe to two here (Netflix – they limit the content for NZ Netflix, grrrr – and a local one that has a lot of the latest int’l content), our national TV channels have a free streaming service which is really excellent too, and it is hard enough keeping up with all those. Though there are definitely things on Disney and Amazon that I’d like to watch, but can’t really justify. The biggest frustration is trying to remember which service our favourite programmes/movies are on!
Thanks for mentioning my post. I feel ashamed to say I didn’t make the bread. But I am planning on making it tonight. lol
And as I mentioned yesterday, your post (that IP also mentioned) is definitely my post of the week for second helpings, as you’ve named IP’s post and Jess’s too.
We have Netflix, but I have to admit we don’t use it as much as we should to justify the cost. So I find it kind of hard to justify adding (an)other streaming service(s), especially on top of an already-pricey cable TV package, even though there are different things on different platforms that I think we would enjoy. I know a lot of people subscribe, binge watch what they want to see and then unsub, but I’m not much of a binge-watcher, and it seem like a big hassle. (Plus, I’m lazy, lol. Which, of course, is what these services are counting on…!) I agree with Mali, I’m not sure it’s going to be sustainable in the long run.