Greetings, folks! This post is to test something on the back end of the site.
I’m testing whether the spoiler text here on the site that hides behind this nifty pink bar translates to white-on-white text in the Daily SBTB Newsletter so email folks don’t get spoiled!
That was delightfully meta. I’m using the spoiler tag to test the spoiler tag and to tell you what I’m doing. Which isn’t a spoiler, now that I think about it. I’m being pretty clear about what’s up.
You may have noticed yesterday in the morning, eastern US time, that the site had, well, no content. Yeah, that was Not Fun. Databases stopped speaking to each other over a Big Misunderstanding, and sixteen years of content disappeared until relations could be restored after connectivity issues. (This is why, btw, the like hearts aren’t up, as they’re one of the culprits for the databases and server getting tetchy, but if things remain sanguine today, I’ll bring them back online.)
BUT! Since you’re here reading this post (thank you) and testing things out with me (thank you again), I would like to ask you to tell me a thing, please, so that I may test the comment sequence and notification protocols! (That sounded ludicrously formal. Go me!)
For my family, this week is the year marker of my kids’ schools closing for in-person learning, and my husband’s switch to teleworking from home. Now that we’re coming up on a full 365+ days of What the Hell Everything’s Cancelled, I’d like to know: what’s something that really helped you get through the Quarantimes in the past year?
This question was inspired by Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study newsletter group, which is one of the things that got me through, for sure. Another thing that helped: being increasingly kind and patient with myself and my body.
And cookies. Murder cookies for sure.
What about you? Knitting? Baking? Your dog? Someone else’s dog? Romance (ooh ooh which one)?
What got you through the past year? Tell us about it in the comments!
(And thank you for helping me test the nimble databases and plugins of the SBTB HQ!)
walking. totally randomly, on the day we shut down, I met a friend on the train and we decided to meet to walk the following day . . . and we’ve been walking every day since!
Romance, my cats, my now-adult children, and the ability to Zoom with family and friends.
I started the pandemic by reading 20 Ruby Dixon Ice Planet Barbarian books in 3 weeks. As of a week from today, I will be fully vaccinated, and I’m finally making my way through Lisa Kleypas’ backlist. In between, I’ve read anything that suited my mood of the moment. Sometimes, I read veeeerrrrryyyy, veeeeeerrrryyyyy slowly. Sometimes, I gobbled up the pages.
I will always be thankful for romance books, writers, and readers–all of Romancelandia, really–for getting me through this tough time. Cheers!
Things that have helped me ~ my husband, video chats with my daughter in South Korea, books, chocolate, friends, on line sites (including SBTB).
Hi Sarah! I know you said you were testing the spoiler tag for the newsletter for white on white, but just as an FYI – I get the newsletter and have all my settings set to dark mode – the spoiler tag doesn’t hide anything in the newsletter in dark mode, but the “spoiled” text is bolded, so I know as I’m reading that it’s a spoiler.
Hope this helps!
It is early evening here on the east coast. I have steak!
If you needed to know if the test works, it did. 🙂
Reading. Baking. Reading.
And, I found out my husband may never be going back to the office full-time. Send help.
@Abbey: that’s very helpful – thank you!
Chickens here too! I’m in Seattle so we were shut down hard first in the US — I remember how terrified I was while watching rest of country seemingly not preparing. So my chickens and gardening were the biggest things early.
And then we found a Nintendo Switch for the teen daughter to game remotely with her school friends, and I found ANIMAL CROSSING. It has saved me from everything. When I had to fly to Vegas to work for the elections, I just PPE’d up and played all the way there and all the way back, which kept my flying-in-Covid-era anxiety at bay. When everyone at home forever is too much, I sit in my car and play. It’s the best thing ever.
And audiobooks — I have a hard time reading print or ebook right now b/c wearing masks made me switch to contacts a lot of the time, and that’s not working out well with my eyes for a variety of reasons. But I have listened to so many audiobooks through my Seattle Public Library – so grateful.