Get to Know the GD TeamQuarantine Edition

Welcome to the fifth installment of “Getting to know the GD Team!” Since we’re all stuck at home, we wanted to share what we’ve been doing to bring us comfort and keep us happy. This is what we’ve each been up to!

Nat

I started a weekly online D&D game with some friends — some old hands with tabletop games, some newbies. The technological advances for tracking characters and campaigns online are amazing and keep getting better; it’s truly impressive. I have never played D&D proper before, so it’s a fun new adventure. Our DM is new to the game as well but has embraced his role with remarkable aplomb and we are already immersed in a totally ripping campaign. I’m not ashamed to say that my monk character has been instrumental in the thorough roughing up of goblins and orcs.

Brenda

Since I no longer have a commute, I’ve used the “found” time to amp up my reading routine. I’ve been switching back and forth between fiction, (10,000 Doors of January) non-fiction (Educated), business management and communication (with some Malcolm Gladwell audiobooks mixed-in), and the New Testament. I managed to line up the latter half of the Gospel of Luke with Holy Week, which offers me a new perspective of this particular time of year. When I have a chance to sit and read, I pick up whichever one I think will bring me the most comfort at that particular time.   

Megan

Aside from cooking every recipe that crosses my path and exercising, I’ve been crafting like a mad man! Luckily (kind of), I’m quarantined with my sister who likes crafting as much as I do. We’re both on the computer most of the day for work or school, so we started our crafting journey with some good old fashioned cross-stitching and weaving. When we’re sick of that, we shift to painting, drawing, or making collages. All of these are great because we can pop on Spotify, joke around with each other, and finish a project. It makes time go quickly and is entertaining enough that I have yet to watch Netflix. 

Jaimie

I have tried to maintain as much “normalcy” as possible in these last few weeks, but I have taken up a new lunchtime routine where my fiance and I stop work promptly at noon to take a walk around the neighborhood. Our “neighborhood” walk has extended to about 2.5 miles as we’ve widened our loop and tested the time limit of the lunch hour. The walk route is OK — we go along a busy road for some time, then next to and through a quiet cemetery, and we have to traverse a road work area until we turn back onto the road that leads back to the house — but the things we see or notice along the route every day are what makes it interesting. We notice the buds on the trees and ask “was that one blooming yesterday?” We watch the progress of the construction of a house, even though we never see any workers there. We discuss how much we both admire transom windows, and wonder why there’s a whole side of the house with no windows. (We decided it was because it was the side of the house on the road and maybe it was for privacy.) On the weekend we walk even further and extend our loop to about 7.5 miles. We’ve been sticking close to home on the weekends for the last few weeks, taking the “long way” to incorporate a very quiet downtown into the loop, but do occasionally go to a nearby trail to get into the woods and off of the pavement. Walking has been a low-key way to stay at least a little active and get out of the house to soak in some much-needed vitamin D these days.