Positive Vibes & Feelgoods: Week of April 20, 2020
Our daily work and home routines have changed drastically since March, and sometimes that is difficult to deal with. Our team has compiled a list of special things we are each doing/watching/listening to for extra peace of mind, a little personal development, or to help battle the blues.
If you haven’t yet perused last week’s list, please enjoy our recommendations on music, books, and more. ☀️
Animals
Nico’s cat, Rory.
Jess says she’s been feeding catnip and bacon to these bros.
Via Josh, a picture of Cleo that looks like a John Singer Sargent painting.
Andi
The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago is a great Twitter and/or Instagram for cute critters and fun facts. I can’t wait to go back for an IRL visit after all of this to watch the otters do their zoomies. Look at this beluga and penguin interaction!
Stephanie
Monterey Bay Aquarium (which is, to date, my favorite aquarium — though special mention to the Sea Lion show at the New England Aquarium in the summer) hosts some excellent soothing livestreams, and now has Zoom backgrounds.
Joan
Watching #pandacam
Waiting for lambs/checking on my critters:
Podcasts
Jess
Noble Blood – True Crime + royalty + history = 😍
Reply All – PJ and Alex solve tech mysteries and teach you everything you need to know about internet pop culture
Every Little Thing – Host Flora Lichtman, a chef’s kiss, finds answers to all your wacky questions. (E.g. In a recent episode, Flora talks to a biomolecular archaeologist to answer the question, “How did prehistoric parents feed a baby that couldn’t nurse?”)
Stephanie
Selective podcast listening – currently my faves are The Daily, Straight & Curly and Thirst Aid Kit.
Faith
Awards Chatter, which is just interviews with actors where they walk through their whole career, from birth to present day. Lots of fun anecdotes.
Andi
My household has been rewatching all of Star Wars in conjunction with a podcast called Newcomers (hosted by two comedians I love — neither of which had seen any of the films ’til the pod). Nicole Byer refers to Han Solo as “Hans” the whole damn time. It is delightful. Also, did y’all know Bea Arthur was in that insane TV Christmas special?
Food
Faith
Cooking is one of my favorite things and one of the things I do most often, so all the cooking content coming out of this situation is making me very happy. I particularly enjoy Great Jones’ Instastories and the amusing cooking tutorials from actress Florence Pugh.
Unnecessarily elaborate cheeseboards:
TV & Movies
Stephanie
Continuing to burn through my streaming list. Particularly loved The Repair Shop (if you like builders and Great British Bake Off, you’ll probably like The Repair Shop) Also just found Dom from The Repair Shop’s insta so I’ll probably be looking at that.
I started watching the Scooby Doo Reboots this weekend, made it through the 2005 set and am now almost halfway through Mystery Incorporated. I realize now this was all heavily influenced by seeing a set of tweets about actors with range and seeing this response by Matthew Lillard. (Warning, the original tweet he’s replying to has profanity. Also it’s Twitter, so, thread content.)
Nico
Movies: Onward (Disney+), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Netflix)
TV Shows: The Magicians (Netflix), Star Trek: Picard (CBS), Community (Netflix/Hulu), Psych (Amazon)
Josh
Schitt’s Creek is a lovely TV show. What could easily have been sort of a lazy indictment of terrible people in a terrible situation ended up being sweet, endearing, and really revelatory on many levels. I cannot wait for whatever Dan Levy does next.
I’ve started introducing the kid to classic sci-fi films. We just watched ALIEN and ALIENS, but we’re also mixing in some family movies, from classics like THE NEVERENDING STORY to new stuff like TROLLS: WORLD TOUR and CALL OF THE WILD.
