891st Friday Blog Roundup

COVID cases are on the rise, which means it must be time to get rid of masks. Amirite? Especially in small, enclosed spaces such as cars and buses and planes. We can use those forms of transportation to get to other small, enclosed spaces, such as bars, where we can all hang out, maskless, and lament how COVID cases on the rise. Whatever should we do?

If Year 1 was scary and Year 2 was frustrated, Year 3 of the pandemic feels ridiculous. We know what works. We know what we need to do to keep cases down and continue with — for the most part — normal life. And yet we seem incapable of doing what we know works. We’re like toddlers screaming that we’re not tired while we have a meltdown and fall asleep on the floor.

Luckily, one-way masking still works, even if its effectiveness is reduced. I’m keeping my mask on — for myself, for the immunocompromised, for the people who can’t or are too young to get a vaccine.

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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 makes a surprising connection with a student’s parent. It was a great conversation about infertility and adoption, and she ends with this thought: “It was a moment that left me feeling connected and understood. Our experiences were different, but with a thread of commonality.” Here is to the connections we make along the way.

A Separate Life muses on a line in Richard Osman’s book about how we once knew each other’s handwriting. Yes! It’s a strange thing to miss, but I knew all of my friends and family member’s handwriting. That number has shrunk considerably. There are still people whose handwriting I can identify, but for most of the people I interact with on a regular basis, I have no clue what their handwriting looks like.

Lastly, I held this over from the missing Roundup: Bereaved and Blessed breaks down 15 years of blogging with each year’s defining word. It’s an amazing look back at a writing life, and it would be fun to retroactively return to each year and figure out the overriding feeling of your own posts. Congratulations on reaching a huge blogging milestone.

The roundup to the Roundup: Thankful for masks. 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 April 8 – April 22) 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.