Interesting Times

We live in interesting times. Along with a large percentage of other Californians, I am staying home with only occasional outings to take a walk. Really not much different than my normal life. The biggest change is that my husband is now home more because all of his usual activities have been cancelled. He’s the one who braves the grocery store and does the shopping for family members who shouldn’t be going out right now.

A sign of the times: the Manhattan Beach Pier Closed

For me, not a whole lot has changed. I usually exercise indoors with only an occasional walk outside. I’m still writing. It’s nice that I no longer have a deadline so I’m not so stressed out about that. I’m still working on painting projects, reading and doing other stuff around the house. Honestly, as long as someone brought me food periodically and talked to me on occasion, I could stay inside for months and months and never be bored.

But all of the constant news on the corona virus and its effects on everyone and the economy is taking a bit of a psychological toll on me. The weather isn’t helping. It’s been raining here for the last couple weeks, unusual for this time of year. Sometimes I think the sky is crying for all of us.

So I’m trying to be kind to others and myself. I read 2 newspapers in the morning and that’s all the news I look at during the day. My husband gets alerts on his cell that tells us of any other stuff we need to know about from the city. Besides the usual things I do, I’m looking for fun and interesting things to keep my mind off stuff. I thought I’d share some of the  things I’ve found.

From BoredPanda, the Cowboy Museum put its head of security in charge of their Twitter. The results are pretty fun:
https://www.boredpanda.com/national-cowboy-museum-head-of-security-twitter/

Murder and Mayhem moved its conference online. It’s free. To register and watch the replay go to: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/murder-and-mayhem-in/register

Then there’s finding amazing artwork like these from Stone Artist Akie Nakata. Also from BoredPanda.com: https://www.boredpanda.com/stone-art-animals-akie-nakata/

Then there’s the 40-minute free virtual tour of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA. I took a tour of it years ago, but it was fun to go on this one. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/video-tour/

If you want to learn about Egypt, you can take a short animated 3-D “tour” of the Giza Plateau. And there are a lot of photos and information on the plateau. http://giza.fas.harvard.edu/videos/87541/full/

In other news, my publisher has knocked down the price of the Kindle edition of the first book in my series, Fatal Brushstroke, as well as the first in a number of other series to 99 cents. https://henery.press/brushstroke For links to the other books on sale, you can go to my Facebook author page (www.facebook.com/sybiljohnsonauthor) and check out the pinned post.

Stay well and safe, everyone, and don’t forget to be kind to others and yourself.