7 things to do when there's nothing to do
With live theater gone dark, restaurant dining rooms closed and malls temporarily shuttered, we all have time on our hands but few options to entertain ourselves.
Except that's not entirely true. There's plenty to occupy us close to home, and only a few of those options involve eating pita chips and binge-watching shows on Netflix.
Here are seven suggestions to help you get started.
Organize
Those stacks of photographs stuffed in shoe boxes at the back of the closet? Now's the time to organize them. While you're at it, do the same to the pantry, junk drawer, linen closet, basement and garage. And if you come across gently used clothes and household items, consider donating them to charitable organizations.
Improve
Tackle home repairs you neglected over the winter. Do some early spring cleaning. Paint an accent wall. Rearrange the furniture.
Exercise
You might not be able to work out at the gym right now, but if you put away the clothes that have collected on the treadmill, you could run on it. Better yet, you can take a walk, maybe with your best four-legged friend.
Or you can dance, like Tom Cruise in "Risky Business," but do it fully clothed.
Read/learn
Why not return to that best-seller you started reading and never finished? If your taste runs to the classics, Project Gutenberg has more than 61,000 free e-book titles from which to choose - from the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to "War and Peace." Many libraries make e-books, newspapers and magazines available online to cardholders along with music and films, language tutorials, lectures and online courses in law, teaching and computers among other topics.
Write
When was the last time you wrote someone a letter in longhand, on stationary and sent it through the U.S. mail? Not only does it make for good prose and penmanship practice, but a century or two from now, your epistles may become part of the historical record.
Practice
Dust off that old guitar and give it a strum. Blow your horn, tickle the ivories, bang on a drum, be like the Italians and sing in solidarity from the balcony. If your music skills have lapsed, now's the time to brush up.
Compete (virtually)
You can't resurrect March Madness with your video gaming console - a lawsuit from former NCAA player Ed O'Bannon spiked any games with college athletes' likenesses in them - but you can simulate just about every other canceled sport. PlayStation 4 gamers get exclusive dibs on "MLB The Show." The 2020 edition with Cubs superstar Javier Baez on the cover dropped Tuesday. You can download it directly from the PlayStation Store for $59.99 without leaving the house.
• Daily Herald reporter Sean Stangland contributed to this report.