Anna Bell

We’re on week four of de facto crisis homeschooling, and yesterday I basically just let my daughter watch Nailed It for most of the day, and today I’m writing The Queue as quickly as possible so she can commandeer my computer for a Zoom meeting with her class. So I guess you could say I’m nailing it.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we stave off existential dread for just long enough to answer them. Just long enough.

The long-awaited closed alpha of the Shadowlands expansion for World of Warcraft is about to begin!

There’s no use crying over every mistake. I’ll just keep on trying though I ran out of cake. Because people panic bought all the butter, eggs, and flour, so I’m sitting at my house with no cake. The cake is… something something.

This The Queue, where you ask us Qs and we supply the As. You have to bring your own cake.

It's been a tough week in the world at large, and since right now your best course of action is to just stay at home if at all possible, we came up with a list of some of our favorite games to play in a situation like this.

It’s been twelve nights since we started the whole social distancing thing, and since that’s my favorite Shakespeare play it seems a good a reason as any to celebrate! Unfortunately there aren’t any movie versions I’m fond of — there was one in the 90’s starring Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia, but it’s uneven at best. One of the best versions I’ve seen was nominated for a Tony, featuring Helen Hunt as Viola and Paul Rudd in a purple loincloth as Orsino, but aside from the showings on PBS I’m not sure the proshot was ever released. Header photo is unrelated.

This is The Queue, where we ask you As and you give us Qs, or maybe it’s the other way around.

I hit the grocery store for the last time early on Thursday morning to pick up a couple vital medications, a gallon of milk, and some candy which is currently hidden from everyone in the house, including me because I forgot where I hid it. I looked into doing musicals on stream but that’s kind of a no-go, because aside from limited medleys you still need to pay for performance rights on everything newer than Pirates of Penzance. My four year old is also incredibly unimpressed by my belting skills. Maybe I’ll learn the ukelele with my daughter’s plastic 4-string Minnie Mouse guitar? I just superglued my fingers together, so that might be a no-go too.

No, I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine, it’s fine. It can’t be that hard to cut your own bangs, right?

This is The Queue! Please wash your hands before asking us questions, which we’ll answer from way, way over here.

Most people are familiar with the general idea of the badges you earn in Girl Scouts -- learn about a topic, tick a couple boxes worth of requirements, and you've got yourself a cute triangular patch to iron onto your vest or sash.

I grew up in rural Upstate New York — so Upstate we stubbornly called it Central New York, like that doesn’t mean Broadway to everyone else. The house I grew up in was literally across the road from a corn field. As a result I have a lot of love for family farmers, their struggles, and the things they have to do to maintain a living.

But two weeks out of every year… eh.

This is The Queue, where you ask questions and we pretend we’re not too sleepy to answer them until we adjust to the time change.

It’s RC’s birthday, and that’s more than enough excuse for a party. After the past few weeks I kinda feel like we need it.

This is The Queue, where you give us questions, and then when we open them there’s just a smaller question and a smaller question until we finally give up on giving a concise answer and it’s mostly cleanup.

I’m not sure what it is about The Long Dark that keeps me coming back. I know I should be collecting more vessels to do more Visions, but I just keep tromping through the snow, getting eaten by wolves. Oddly, I think no small part of it is this art style. There are both sweeping vistas and small groupings of objects in still life that could be paintings in their own right. Unfortunately, the reason this particular shot is blurry around the edges giving a kinda of tilted depth of field effect is because I’m literally freezing to death, but isn’t it pretty?

This is The Queue, where you Q us and we supply the A. We’re talking about Steamy Romance Novels today, so at least something here is keeping warm.