Anna Bell

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday, but as it comes closer, I am quickly hitting an IRL breakpoint. We did take an amazing vacation over fall break a few weeks ago to ride the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad, but as we came home, we started looking through the calendar to see what we had coming up. Not even counting recurring things like my daughter’s Saturday art class, that was the last free weekend I’m going to have until literally late January.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we’ll answer just as soon as we find a free minute. Currently busy staring into the void, dissociating. You get it.

It’s nice and still. How about you? Nothin? That’s cool.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we– wait, do you hear that?

You know, I’ve always been incredibly resistant to Christmas creep. Aside from things I’ve picked up while I’m travelling, I rarely start shopping until after Thanksgiving, and I really resent it when I go to the store in mid-November for a butternut squash or something and Michael Buble is already singing his heart out.

But Halloween creep? Well, for Halloween, we’re all creeps, aren’t we.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we’ll answer just as soon as you stick your hand into this bowl of skinned grapes. OooOOOooo!

We’re officially in BlizzCon Month! There are so many things we have to get ready even before some of us start making the trip out to sunny Anaheim that it simultaneously feels like we have tons and tons of work to do on a daily basis, and yet there’s almost nothing going on. A quiet before the Heroes of the Storm, if you will.

This is The Queue, the daily column where you ask us questions and we’re not freaking out, are you freaking out? Because we’re not freaking out.

Every year, I get really excited for fall. The slightly crisp air, the food, the crunchy leaves, the cozy vibe, all come together to make it my favorite part of the year. And then as soon as I take a good, deep breath, I remember that this means we’re also rounding the corner on the most intensely busy time of the year. Between holidays, fall fundraisers, and the amount of stuff that getting ready for winter entails, I’m always too overwhelmed to truly enjoy it. But today? Today I’m wearing a soft gray henley and sipping a coffee with some nutmeg in it, and I’m pretty ok with that.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions, and we promise we’re thinking of something other than what we should buy for our Halloween costume while we answer.

Look, sometimes when we write, we fall down bizarre rabbit holes from which there is no escape. No judgement.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and some answers might be more thorough than others.

While I’m always excited for a new top tier, .X patch, I’m a little confused as to what’s going on with these weird obscure subdivided patches. I like the fact that there’s new stuff, but it’s especially inconvenient when they launch smaller community features which prove popular, like this Secrets of Azeroth event. I’m enjoying the event, but it’s going to be such a hassle to pinpoint which patch it dropped during, exactly.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we’ll answer as soon as we use the wiki to triangulate the exact date. At least it smells like leather?

This part of the year is always the worst for me. I hate the heat and fall is my favorite season, so when people start talking about how fall is well on its way when we haven’t had an overnight low under 75 F in a month, it feels like a taunt. But I’m stubborn, so I’ll just curl up under a fuzzy blanket with a seasonal beverage and sweat.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we supply the answers with a dash of nutmeg.

There are few things more liable to ruin my day than an indication on an app or UI element that I have an unread alert that I can't seem to get rid of, and the little exclamation point on the Collections tab of the Season 5 Hearthstone Battlegrounds UI is no exception.

With gamescom in full swing, we've seen a lot of demos, trailers, cinematics, and previews, running the gamut from the new AAA behemoth games like Starfield and Diablo 4, all the way through charming high-concept indies we'd never heard of before.