Tag Archives: self isolation

How Are We All Holding Up?

Posted on by
1

Hello folks! I hope you are all doing well. How is the quarantine treating you? I’m on day 44 of “self-isolation” – well, sort of anyway. I did have to go into work a few days this week and will again next week, but other than that I haven’t gone anywhere else and most things are still shut down (so no bookstores or movie theatres or window-shopping in Midtown…)

Are you all handling things ok? Are you finding things to keep you occupied? Did you have some kind of income to keep you afloat, or did you lose your job because of the pandemic? It’s all very scary right now and we are all under a lot of stress. Some people are using this time to “better themselves” and others are taking care of their families and still others are just fighting to keep it together. Whatever you are doing, it is ALL GOOD. You are doing the best you can and that’s all anyone should expect of themselves or others in a time like this.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is something I have to remind myself as well as anyone else. I have had some really rough days, and some days that have been perfectly fine. That’s totally natural but sometimes we cannot help but feel like we’re not doing enough – even though we know logically that that’s totally silly.

I thought I would share a few things that I’ve been keeping busy with, and if you’d like to share what you’ve been up to, that would be great!

I am still participating in Camp Nanowrimo for the month of April, and doing surprisingly well. I mean, I’m not going to be writing 50k words like some people – I gave myself a SMALLER goal, just 20k words this time. But I have managed to keep up a daily writing streak ALL MONTH, which is the best I’ve done in YEARS, and I have written a little over 16k words so far, which is more than I have written (again) in YEARS. I am very happy about that. While I am in no way minimizing or trivializing the difficulties, tragedies, and death toll of this pandemic, I am trying to be grateful for the small things, and one of those things has been the luxury of free time I haven’t had in quite awhile.

I have also been reading a lot still. Not quite as much as I did the first couple weeks, but still. I finished Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (book #7 of the series) last night (technically at 2:30am this morning). Unfortunately, because I am borrowing those audiobooks from the library, I now have to wait for the final book of the series to become available and the wait is KILLING ME. In the meantime, I have started the audiobook of The Wee Free Men (one of the Discworld books) by Terry Pratchett. This book will satisfy one of the categories in my “Storm the Castle” 2020 Reading Challenge (which much of my reading these days has not done). I am also slowly working through the nonfiction book The Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt.

Speaking of my reading challenge, I have now completed 9 out of the 21 books on my challenge. When I finish the two books I’m currently reading, that will put me at 11 and I’ll be halfway through! In addition, when I finish the 8th Artemis Fowl book I will have officially finished the first series in the 2020 Finishing the Series Reading Challenge. And then I’ll move on to the next series (perhaps The Dresden Files, though that I might be TOO ambitious…)

I have also bought a computer game for the first time in, oh… 12 or 13 years… I bought the video game Gris when Steam was having a sale last week. I’ve never been a big gamer, but I did play a couple computer games back in the day and I thought it would be fun to pick it up again. I’m only 3 “chapters” into Gris so far, but I absolutely love it. It’s quiet and calming and the art (which was the main selling point for me, I admit) is absolutely GORGEOUS. I highly recommend it.

In addition, I am doing more cross-stitch work. I’m almost done with this robot design I got from the Etsy shop DianaWattersHandmade. She has great designs for reasonable prices, she ships quickly, and she’s really friendly as well!

Anyway, those are some of the things (besides work and house-cleaning) I’ve been doing to keep busy and calm. How about you guys? Found anything fun? Read anything good lately? Please do share! I’d love to hear about it!

Addendum: A few more fun things to do while social distancing

Posted on by
Reply

Since I wrote my last post on Tuesday, a few more interesting/fun things have popped up on my feeds and various articles. Apparently a BUNCH more museums have made their collections virtual for online viewing, and so forth. So I thought I would just add an addendum here.

According to Google, approximately 2500 museums and galleries have now made all or part of their collections available for virtual viewing on the

The National Aquarium in Baltimore has now joined the Georgia Aquarium in making livestreams of various habitats available online. Fun fact: I lived in the D.C. area from 1st through 6th grade and the National Aquarium in Baltimore was and remains to this day one of my favorite places in the world.

There is also such a thing on VIRTUAL RIDE-ALONGS for various Disneyland rides. And as a Disney-fanatic (as mentioned in previous posts), I love this more than words can say.

The ebook/audiobook app Scribd is offering 30 days access to their entire library for free, without needing to put in credit card info or anything (so you don’t even have to worry about canceling your promo subscription for fear of being charged their monthly rate later!) Though, honestly, their monthly rate is pretty reasonable!

For more reading options, Humble Bundle has a great collection of Science Fiction/Fantasy ebooks from Tachyon for a minimum donation of $15! (Humble Bundle does, of course, also have enormous collections of video games, etc but I’m not a gamer so I can’t speak to that).

Lastly, for now, BroadwayHD is offering a free trial or their streaming service of Broadway musicals and plays. Now, this one is only a 7-day-free-trial, which under the circumstances is not that much, but its still a chance to maybe watch a few musicals you’d been hoping to catch but hadn’t managed to yet.

If you’ve seen something cool that I have missed here, please feel free to share it in the comments! It’s impossible to catch it all, and I’d love to see what else is out there!

Some Fun Things To Do While Self-Isolating

Posted on by
Reply

There have been a few of these posts and articles floating around the internet, but I thought it would be fun just to compile and share a few of the things I’ve found to keep you entertained, to keep you indoors, to keep your anxiety under control, etc…

Keep in mind that these are just things I’ve managed to find, and things that I personally find fun or cool or whatever (I’m sure you’ve seen many of these and more besides in other places).

First off, I love museums! So, here’s an article about 12 museums that offer virtual tours, including the British Museum in London, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Guggenheim!

And since we’re talking about museums, we can’t forget that these Paris Museums have put 100,000 images online for free unlimited viewing!

Next, I love music. I love going to concerts in genres ranging from classic rock to indie alternative to classical! I regularly attend concerts at the Houston Symphony. I was hoping they might do something online for audiences, but I suppose they didn’t have the setup necessary for it. Instead, the Seattle Symphony has done something very cool and is sharing previously recorded concerts for free streaming on YouTube and Facebook. More information can be found on their website here.

In for more classical music, you have probably heard that the Met Opera is doing free viewings of some of their previous Met Opera in HD programs (which they usually broadcast via Fathom Events in movie theatres and on their Subscription App). You can find more information, including a schedule on their website here. 

Yesterday (Monday, March 16th) they streamed Carmen, which I watched and really enjoyed. Tonight (Tuesday, March 17th) they will be streaming La Boheme. Just fyi: you can stream these performances straight from the website, however due to more site traffic than they were prepared for, the Met Opera recommends streaming from their On Demand App. The App does technically cost money, however you can access the free broadcasts without signing up by going to the “Browse and Preview” option! It’s a tiny bit glitchy (again, due to more traffic than they’re used to) but it worked me just fine!

For more fun, the Georgia Aquarium has live cams in many of their habitats so you can visit with the fish and animals going about their lives without any clue of the turmoil currently going on among us crazy humans.

I recommend watching some Mister Roger’s Neighborhood if your anxiety or restlessness is especially bad. Amazon Prime has quite a few episodes. And the Fred Rogers Productions website releases 5 new episodes twice per month for free.

I always, of course, recommend reading. If your local library has been forced to shutdown due to the social distancing efforts, I recommend looking for their digital collections. You’ll find that most (though not all) libraries have a partnership with one of the two e-catalog apps for ebooks and audiobooks: Overdrive and Libby. Keep in mind that you do need a library card from your local library to access the collections, but many libraries allow you to apply for a digital-only “card” on their websites that will give you a code or number to use the digital collections.

Speaking of books, I also HIGHLY recommend Levar Burton Reads. Obviously this is going to appeal to the millennials who grew up on Reading Rainbow, but really anyone who likes fiction would probably enjoy this. It’s a podcast that Levar Burton started awhile ago where he chooses a short story to read. It’s a delight!

And, of course, there are plenty of tv series and movies to watch on cable and on the myriad streaming services available these days. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think it’s generally safe to assume that most people have at least ONE of the major streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or DisneyPlus. Just for the fun of it, here are a handful of television series that I really enjoy:

The Good Place (seasons 1-3 on Netflix)
Community (on Hulu)
Lost in Space (the new one on Netflix)
The Umbrella Academy (on Netflix, and the wait for season 2 is killing me!)
Hilda (Netflix, animated and family-friendly)
Futurama (one of my all-time favorites, on Hulu)
Adventure Time (another favorite, also on Hulu)
Amphibia (a really cute new-ish animated series on DisneyPlus)
Gargoyles (if you want to go old-school on DisneyPlus)
Good Omens (on Amazon Prime, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and possibly the best thing to come out of 2019)

And for the anime fans: Fairy Tail, My Hero Academia, Soul Eater, Tada Never Falls in Love, Golden Time, Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Yu Yu Hakusho (to name just a few…)

Also, a friendly reminder that STAR TREK exists and has gifted the universe with seven different series, 13 movies, and more novelizations than you can shake a stick at.

I might also suggest something to help keep you calm and balanced, such as meditation. There are a ton of meditation books, videos, and apps. But I personally use and really like an app called Stop, Breathe, and Think. It has both a free and a paid premium version, and contains quite a lot of guided meditations and some short videos for yoga and such as well.

So that’s what I have! I would love to hear about some of things you have found, either online or elsewhere, to keep you busy, calm, and/or entertained! Please feel free to share in the comments!