Quarantine Adventures: Book Talk with Kristy Woodson Harvey

By the end of this quarantine I am going to ready to say no more virtual events. Facebook keeps telling me about all these great virtual author events. But how many virtual author events is too many? The hubby is slightly getting annoyed with all these author events especially since they are usually at 6 PM CST.

That does not stop me from clicking interested on the event for Kristy Woodson Harvey who's new novel, Feels Like Falling, just came out. I've never heard of Kristy before but the book sounds interesting and what's one more event. I may need rehab after this..

Kristy Woodson Harvey is an amazing speaker and I'm sure her book is going to be amazing. I added it to my ever growing to read list. It even made the short list. You can watch her talk here.

Feels Like Falling is about two women whose paths inadvertently who become good friends. The story follows the women as their friendship forms, the love lives grow and fail, and help them grow in the next chapter of their lives.

The hour flew by and I can't wait to read her book. She is just one of many new authors I've discovered over the last month or so. So despite trying to avoid these virtual author events, I keep getting sucked into more and growing that to read list.

I have to admit that these virtual events are great since most of these authors would never make it to northeast Wisconsin and allows the authors to connect to readers all over the country and world. So don't mind me while I keep boring you with these author event posts. I'm sure the fun bucket list adventures will begin soon agian.

Quarantine Adventures: National Park Virtual Visits

A few years ago Heather got me hooked on visiting National Parks and collecting stamps. I have collected quite a few stamps over the last four or years. I try to hit one or two on every vacation. The hubby isn't always thrilled with this latest obsession.

Once everything started to shut down due to COVID, National Parks shut their gates too. Heather stumbled across Virtual National Park visits where you can get a virtual stamp and/or Junior Ranger badge. Of course she passed the link on to me.

Every week, the website adds several new parks to visit.

Some of the visits are videos with rangers showing you the park.

Some of the visits are Google 360 maps that you can navigate through the rooms of various houses. These tours give me a headache because of the movement going through the park. I also tend to get stuck in dead ends with them.

Some are more involved than others with multiple videos, tours, and reading.

Some are way better than others. I definitely prefer videos to other types of visits.

It is definitely fun to find new parks that I want to visit in person or others that I can move to the bottom of to visit list.

Now we are both obsessed with staying on top of the stamps. Heather is pasting her stamps in her passport. Because my passport is much smaller and doesn't have room for all these stamps, I just stick them in the front pocket of my passport. Maybe one day, I will buy a separate passport for these virtual tours.

I challenge you to go visit a National Park while quarantined. If you are a teacher and still in school, take your class on a virtual field trip.

Quarantine Adventures -- Make Zentangles

Always looking for something fun to do while in quarantine, I saw that the Kaukauna library was doing an online art activity. We were going to learn how to make Zentangles. I had no clue what Zentangles were but they sounded cool.

According to Google, "The Zentangle Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. We call these patterns, tangles. ... These patterns are drawn on small pieces of paper called "tiles." We call them tiles because you can assemble them into mosaics." Okay that sounds simple enough.

The librarian showed us a couple different patterns to begin with through Facebook Live.

The circle, the line, the flower, and the diamond were the patterns we were shown how to do.

Basically you draw a square or a tile on your paper. Then you fill it with one of the patterns.

You continue to make as many tiles as you like to fill you page.

We were told to quarter our page to start and then make the tiles in that that quarter.

It's just repetitive patterns to make a cool black and white or color and white drawing.

I did not find it very relaxing at all. I could only do 1 tile at time before my wrist got sore. However, I found the line pattern to be the most fun. The circle pattern wasn't bad either. I wasn't very good at the flower or diamond pattern. I'm sure they are more patterns out there if you Google it.

It was fun. If I come across another art activity at the library that fits in the schedule, I might join the Facebook live event. There are many that are during the day.

Quarantine Adventures -- A chat with Karen Slaughter

Browsing Facebook, since I had nothing better to do, I discovered an author event that sounded interesting. It was hosted by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation and the program was called "Final Draught: Home Edition -- at Home with Karen Slaughter." I barely heard of Karen Slaughter. I figured I had nothing better to do and could tune in.

Karen writes popular medical thrillers and is published in over 100 countries. I'm not sure how I missed hearing about her.  Her latest book, The Silent Wife, doesn't come out until July. It was really exciting to get a sneak peek of her book. The book is a continuation of The Last Widow but I was told I don't have to read the previous books to understand what is going on the book.

The Facebook Live event was very interesting. Karen talked about her writing process and the research involved into writing medical thrillers. She talks about the input she gets but she is very careful about it because she doesn't want to exploitative about the more sensitive topics such as domestic violence.

I really loved learning about Karen and her books. Her books have been added to my to read list but with all the author events I'm finding on Facebook my to read list has grown quickly. It will be years before I get to all of them.

I will keep an eye on the Charlotte Mecklenburg library Facebook page to see what other authors they are hosting. Since authors aren't touring they are doing a lot of Facebook live events with libraries and bookstores. It is a great way to meet new authors.

Quarantine Adventures -- Virtual Wine Tasting

I saw that one of my favorite wineries was doing a virtual tasting on Facebook Live. I figured I have nothing else to do and decided to check it out.

Vines to Cellar Winery in Port Washington started doing virtual wine tastings every Tuesday night during the pandemic. They would let you know about a week in advance of what wine they would be tasting and discussing. Meaning you should actually pick up the bottle of wine. Hmm.. kind of difficult to do a tasting without a bottle but que sera sera.

This week's bottle was Jacob's Ladder. They talk about how they name their wines. Jacob's ladder is named after their nephew.

Jacob's Ladder is an  Australian Cabernet/Shiraz that pairs well with red meat. I was told it has an intense Cabernet flavor along with chocolate Shiraz under tones. It might be too "red" for me. I am not a fan of dry wines. I prefer sweet and fruity wines. I am willing to try any wine though.

Sine I did not buy Jacob's Ladder ahead of time nor did I already have Jacob's Ladder in sparse wine collection I didn't truly get to taste the wine. I did learn more about the wine and the winery doing the 15 minute wine tasting.

Maybe I will try a virtual wine tasting in the future where I actually buy the wine ahead of time.. otherwise I will just have to wait til the wineries open back up for in person tastings.

20 in 2020 -- Make a new recipe -- Enchiladas

My mom and grandma both get Our Wisconsin magazine. Grandma gives us her copy when she is done with it. I read it and the hubby may read it. Then it sits on a pile on our coffee table for a few months til I get sick of the pile and weed out the old issues. Every issue includes a couple of recipes by readers. The hubby was going through the stack earlier this month and found a few recipes he thought sounded good. One was for enchiladas. So I bought the ingredients and put it them in the dinner rotation.

I'm more of a taco than an enchilada/burrito kind of person but the hubby prefers burritos/enchiladas. I've tried a couple of burrito recipes but the hubby wasn't overly fond of them. I was willing to try this one.

The recipe itself is pretty simple and can be made from simple pantry ingredients... chicken or turkey, cream of mushroom soup, salsa, sour cream, cheese, flour tortillas. I have a feeling the recipe was created to use up leftover turkey from Thanksgiving.

Basic instructions
1. Mix meat, sour cream, taco seasoning, half the can of soup, cheese, onion, salsa, and olives together in a bowl.

2. Spoon filling into tortillas and roll up and place seam side down in 9x13 pan.

3. Then combine the rest of the soup, sour cream and taco seasoning. Pour over enchiladas.

4. Bake for 25 minutes.
5. Sprinkles with the rest of the cheese and bake for 5 more minutes.

I only made half the recipe each night. I mixed the entire filling and topping but only cooked half the tortillas the first night. I figured they won't reheat all that well.

They were pretty tasty. We used picante instead of salsa so it had more pepper and tomato chunks than the hubby liked. The sauce was a bit much with the all that sour cream according to the hubby. That might be because we split it into two nights.

The recipe definitely needs tweaking for our tastes but it was good for the first try. It might become a keeper if I can figure out the whole sauce thing.

Quarantine Adventures: A Jam Session with Luke Coombs

I am not a big fan of listening to music. I will have the radio on the car when I'm by myself and listen to tunes while I run/walk. However, I rarely go to concerts, download songs, or watch music videos. However, when I saw that Luke Coombs was doing a Livestream on Y100's Facebook page.

I am not a big fan of new country. I prefer the country from the 90's and early 2000's when there was a fiddle in the band. Today's country is a lot more pop than toe tapping, boot scooting down home country.

Being stuck inside for the last month, I was excited to hear some live music. I tuned into the Livestream.

At first there was some technical difficulties with the sound. We couldn't hear him. Eventually they got it figured out.

Luke played his new song "Six Feet Apart". That song is the perfect pandemic song. I might actually have to go download it.

The livestream only lasted about 15 or 20 minutes but it was a break in the mundane. It was a good show. He actually puts on a good acoustic set. Not all musicians can do an acoustic set well.

Now I have to go find some more concerts to listen to while stuck inside besides our weekly Opry dates.