As we settle into September and we are still in quarantine (with no end in sight), I wanted to start a column about our Quarantine Traditions that have brought a little joy into our stay-at-home lives.  I’m hoping it would help spark some fun ideas for quarantine activities, and I would love to hear about your quarantine traditions as well. Comment those below so we can all learn from each other!  If anything, it’s a nice way to capture what we’ve been up to during these quarantine times – maybe these traditions are things we’ll keep up in the future!

Since it’s Wednesday, I wanted to start out with our Wednesday tradition – Wednesday Night Trivia Night. We started this back in May and have met weekly for our Trivia games every week since.  We stream King Trivia Live through Twitch, which is a totally free, live Trivia event that takes about an hour and a half.  It starts at 7:00 PST, which is ideal for the mostly West coast audience.  They run live-stream events every Sunday and Wednesday nights, with some special themed events running on Monday nights (we went to The Office themed night – it was super fun!).  There are 5 rounds of questions, including Video and Music rounds, which keeps it fun and harder for people to cheat (we never cheat – where’s the fun in looking up the answers?).  Some nights we do really well, and some nights we don’t.  The scores are always posted regularly, but we don’t really care about them.  We’re just there for the questions and a fun night with friends through Skype.

We have a small team (shout out to the Bakersfield Brainiacs!) that comprises of me and Chris, plus two of my co-workers.  We all Skype in and project the Twitch stream so we can all see and hear on the all of our screens.  Chris and I usually open up some beer and come prepared with plenty of snacks (popcorn, cheese, melon, etc) for the evening.  Chris has begun scouting out new beers or ciders to try for our Trivia night, which has been a really fun way to try new things and to make our Wednesday nights feel special.  We usually log in about 15 minutes before to set up the stream and make sure sound is working for everyone, and stay on after to chat a bit.  It’s been a fun way to spend time with friends from the comfort of our homes.  I like that the Trivia questions keeps our minds engaged and starts fun conversations, and it keeps us off of our phones for a nice two hours.

Another fun thing that King Trivia does is a pet picture segment!  We tend to submit pictures of my cat, Nala, playing Trivia with us, which gets a fun shout-out on the stream.  Pictures of Nala playing Trivia below and up top!

If you are interested in checking out King Trivia (not sponsored, just a fan), the link to their website is here.  Click on the Twitch Livestream options for the free Sunday/Wednesday night trivia games, and get a team together to play!