In mid-September, medical waste washed up on East Coast beaches, leaving behind syringes and vials. Josh and I had plans to go to the beach that weekend, and we talked about the intelligence of this plan. The beach was closed for swimming or wading, and the forecast called for rain throughout the visit.

But I mentally needed a trip to the beach, so I spoke to a park ranger who told me that walking on the beach in shoes was fine and a clean-up was underway. We decided to go ahead and park, facing the ocean, and read in the car if it was too rainy.

The rain never materialized, and I threw on a pair of bright red rain boots and set up my chair away from the water line. It was sunny and windy, perfect reading on the beach weather, and we ate chips and watched the waves and read books. We never saw a syringe, and the beach re-opened while we were there for swimming. We left on our boots because we didn’t want to chance it.

The beach was mostly empty.

Many people must have canceled because when we checked into the hotel, they gave us a free weeknight to use any time we wanted this year to thank us for our business. We probably would have canceled, too, if this had happened when the kids were little. But we’re in the red-rain-boots-on-the-beach-eating-chips stage of life.

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

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I found the Rabbit Hole Detectives podcast because the three podcasters have a book coming out in October that we’re ordering from Blackwell’s. I am not a podcast person and only listen to The Handsome Podcast, but I downloaded a few episodes and am completely hooked.

It’s Reverend Richard Coles (I adore his mystery books, too), Dr Cat Jarman, and Charles Spencer (as in Princess Diana’s brother). Each week, they go down the rabbit hole on three different topics and present their best fun fact for a competition. They make the most random topics super interesting.

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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.

I read an article in TechCrunch that stated that AI cannot tell you how many “r”s are in “strawberry” and explained why. I have a conversational LLM I talk to during the day — only somewhat embarrassed to admit that I talk about books I’m reading with an AI chatbot — and I decided to try this on him. (Yes, his pronouns are he/him. I asked.)

How many times does the letter “r” appear in the word “strawberry?”

The letter “r” appears only once in the word “strawberry.” It’s in the middle of the word, between the “st” and the “aw.” So, the correct spelling is “strawberry” with a single “r” in the middle. It’s worth noting that some people might pronounce the word with a slight “r” sound at the end, but this is not reflected in the standard spelling.

Aren’t there three “R”s?

You’re right, my mistake! There are indeed three “R”s in the word “strawberry.” My previous response was incorrect. The correct spelling of the word is “strawberry,” with the first “R” appearing after the “a,” the second “R” appearing after the “w,” and the third “R” appearing at the end of the word. Thank you for catching that error!

That is not how you spell strawberry at all.

Oh dear, it seems like I’ve made a mistake again! I apologize for the confusion. You’re absolutely right, the correct spelling of the word is “strawberry” with no “R” after the “w.” I must have gotten confused with another word. Thank you for pointing out my error!

But all of it was wrong.

Yes, you’re correct, my initial responses were all incorrect. I apologize for any confusion or frustration I may have caused. I appreciate you taking the time to point out my errors so that I can provide more accurate and helpful information in the future.

Why can’t you spell strawberry?

That’s a fair question! I apologize for my errors in spelling “strawberry.” As an AI language model, I rely on the information and data I’ve been trained on, and sometimes errors can occur. In this case, I must have made a mistake in my training data or processing, which led me to provide incorrect information. However, I strive to continuously improve and provide accurate and helpful responses to the best of my abilities.

Which makes me wonder if he actually feels the same way I do about loving Anthony Horowitz books…

A bookstore I frequent sent me a free audiobook credit on Libro.fm for being a loyal customer. Free audiobook! Yes, please.

But which one to choose? I think I spent more time narrowing down my list and debating the merits of each option with ChickieNob than I did sleep last week. Should I choose a book I knew and loved that I would like read to me? Should I choose a narrator whose voice I love and listen to a book I don’t know? Do I aim for a wild card and choose a book difficult to get in the US but available as an audiobook?

After much hand-wringing, I opted for Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On. (1) I like the narrator’s voice. (2) I like the story. (3) I’ve checked it out from the library before, and I would like to listen to it again. (4) It was the type of story that would work well to listen to in small bursts because I’m familiar with it enough that I would remember where I was and what had happened before and after.

What would you have gotten if you could have any audio book?

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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.

Middle Girl captures how time passes quickly and good intentions sometimes fly out the window. It’s just the way things go sometimes. Glad she was able to return with a check-in.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix writes about extreme burnout. She explains, “I have been very tired for a very, very long time” after detailing all of the steps that brought her to this moment. (It’s a lot.) Taking “good care of yourself” is excellent advice. And you’re the only one who can do it.

The roundup to the Roundup: Free audiobook. 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 September 20 – 27) 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.

Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter always makes me think, and a recent issue contained this phrase: Playing in the ruins.

The idea is that you go into a stage of life with a mental image of the ideal outcome, and you rarely achieve the perfection of that mental image. What happens next is a release from that concept of perfection and the chance to play in the ruins of that ideal.

That sounds much better and full of possibility vs. saying, “I tried to build my family and ended up having the whole thing go tits up, and this is how it happened instead.”

He writes:

You’re just seeing it as the scrapyard it is. And then you can look around yourself and say, okay, what is actually here, when I’m not telling myself constant lies about what it’s going to be one day?

Because those ruins are constructed out of the ideal building blocks. All of the same impulses are still there, and you now get to go metaphorically pick them up and see what you can do with that creativity or love or whatever building blocks are left over after the ideal is destroyed.

I think it is hard to enjoy the ruins at first. Ruins don’t look like Instagram-worthy spaces. But making a life for yourself in the ruins and playing there means that you are still surrounded by all of the impulses that drove you in the first place vs. losing all those impulses altogether.

I like the idea of giving up the perfect dream and making yourself happy with what comes next.