After many years of talking about getting a symphony membership, Josh and I got ourselves a symphony membership. It came with 28 concerts, which may be too many concerts. We’ve narrowed it down to 14 that fit our schedule, and we can always add in more on a whim if we have time. It gives us a discount for popular performances that are not part of the package, and we have three that we’ll purchase separately for the spring.

It feels super grown-up to have a symphony membership. Who are these adult people living in our house with a symphony membership? Oh, they’re just us.

I like being a member somewhere again. We now have to talk friends into getting their own membership so we can have a group that goes together and nerds out on Chopin.

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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:

• “Fractured Internet” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Phoenix!

Okay, now my choices this week.

I have never prepped for election results, but there are things in Swistle’s election prep piece that I’ve decided to do, too, after reading her post. Anything that doesn’t go out of my way to get anything or do anything I wouldn’t normally do, at least. If I end up going out next week, I’m two steps ahead of where I need to be. If I don’t, I’ll be happy I prepared.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ talks about the misogyny of ignoring women without children, especially in dismissing another person’s emotions. She writes: “By dismissing our emotions and feelings of loss over infertility and the life we now have, we are being told our feelings are not important … it reinforces that feeling of invisibility, of worthlessness, that so many childless women have to battle against.” Don’t want to harm women? Give space for women to feel what they are feeling without shame or dismissal.

The roundup to the Roundup: Feeling massively grown-up. 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 October 25 – November 1) 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.

Mari Andrews had a thought toward the middle of a newsletter that gave me pause. She was speaking about a podcast she found, and she said:

“Something that is both comforting and eerie to me is that you can’t choose your memories. You can ‘make memories,’ sure, but you really have no control over whether you end up remembering them or not.”

So you can do everything to make a moment memorable. You can plan out elaborate trips or plot out what you’re going to say or host an event, and in the end, there is nothing you can do to turn it into a memory for yourself, and even less you can do to turn it into a memory for someone else. I know my parents must have spent hours planning things for me, and then I forget all those things I did as a child, and I remember a random conversation with my mother while I watched her dry her hair.

It may help you to remember that whatever you do this upcoming holiday season, there is no guarantee anyone will remember any of it soon after the event. Maybe that takes some pressure off.

I get that this was (1) a joke that turned into a TikTok thing, and (2) is likely over by this point, and (3) led to many pineapples being damaged, but it’s kind of a brilliant way to get people into the store AND help them find one another in a no-pressure way.

If I ran the store, I would have a ribbon you could pick up as you entered the store, and you could tie it to your cart. And different colours would symbolize different things. Like blue would mean you’re looking for friendship, and it would let people know to strike up a conversation with you. Or red could mean you’re looking for a date, so if they see it on your cart, you’re available to be asked out. At the very least, you get your shopping accomplished. And at most, you walk away with someone’s number or a fun conversation.

So who is going to start this for real without damaging pineapples?

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

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The Wolvog introduced me to the game Balatro. It’s a roguelike card game, played on the surface like poker. But the various additional cards — jokers, planet cards, etc — increase the impact of the played hand. So you’re taking chances in multiple ways: the hand you play, the booster packs you purchase, the blinds you skip. Even the order of the jokers makes a difference. It became enormous fun once he taught me how to play and explained all of the cards. (I still need to text him when the game unlocks a new one to understand what it means.)

But the thing I love most of all is that when I play, it turns off all notifications and alerts. I don’t see news alerts come in. For thirty minutes or so, I can lose myself in the game and not think about the election or the state of the world. It’s hard to convince myself not to check the news when I can access other apps, but I love that this one gently tells me to shut it all out and turn off my brain for thirty minutes.

Thanks, Balatro.

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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.

Remember how I had an entry for an upcoming Janice Hallett book called The Killer Question in my TBR spreadsheet, but I couldn’t find a mention for it anywhere on the internet?

Well…

I’ve been checking weekly, and last week, it popped up again on Goodreads. It now states it will be published August 1, 2025 by Viper Books. I can’t find it on Viper’s site or any book site (e.g. Blackwell’s) yet, but I feel vindicated that I obviously didn’t dream it up.

And I can’t wait to read it next summer.