By Charly SHELTON

It’s been nearly two weeks of the statewide lockdown and, as evidenced by videos being posted on social media, many residents are fed up already with it and choosing to go out to parks and beaches against the orders of health officials. Some might say it’s selfish to chance the spread of disease and risking further loss of life. Some might say that it’s counterproductive going out thereby making the disease stronger and more widespread and resulting in a lockdown more stringent and longer lasting. Some might say that. But we at CV Weekly believe in the goodness of people and that those who went out to congregate in public must have just been bored out of their minds at home. In that momentary lapse of judgment, while out of their minds, they went out for a constitutional to regain their composure.

So, to prevent that from happening again, we have congregated some of the best to-dos while stuck in the house without work.

Play Games

Take this as an opportunity to reconnect with family and friends, digitally. Games can be played online through game systems like Xbox Live or PlayStation Network, which allow users on different video game consoles to play the same game together and connect via headset microphone. The online lobbies are swamped with people right now because so many people are at home playing so, if you want an exciting, full game experience, now is the time.

Physical games can be played via a video chat software like FaceTime, Skype or Zoom. Using the video chat software, one player can call the other and set up the camera to see the game board. If the two parties have the same board game, each can set up recreations of the one board, with each player moving their digital friend’s pieces to see a physical copy of the board. This also works for poker, Magic the Gathering and other card games where two decks can be used concurrently.

Cook

Learning new cooking techniques is always fun and something many people say they would like to do someday. With nothing but time now, learning to cook or bake something new is a great way to spend the days. Cookbooks are available for free online, recipe sites are currently pumping out new dishes to capitalize on this homestuck population and some really great YouTube channels walk viewers through exactly what to do and how to do it. Gordon Ramsay’s channel has hundreds of videos of not only his work on TV but also his teach-from-home videos for making each viewer a better cook. And despite his reputation for blowing up on TV, he is surprisingly gentle and effective as a teacher.

Or for a new challenge, go old. Townsends is a YouTube channel that explores the 18th century lifestyle, mostly in cooking. Recipes on the channel are all well researched from period cookbooks and prepared in the same way they would have been in the 1700s – in hand-pounded metal cookware over an open flame in the hearth. These recipes are fantastic for the shutdown as they use relatively simple ingredients that many people have lying around the house. Learning to bake is a great skill to have, and now there is time to learn it.

That Big Project

Many people have “that big project” they always wanted to work on if only there was time in the day. Whether it’s writing a screenplay, learning the violin, cleaning out the back room or organizing your seashell collection alphabetically, there is time now during the shutdown. Don’t waste it on more TV and allowing yourself to get super-bored.

“I’ve always wanted to write a mystery but there’s never time in the day-to-day,” said Matt Abshire, manager of Avignone’s in Montrose, which has been temporarily closed. “I’ve written some stuff here and there, mostly comedy, but nothing of this magnitude. This takes research and lots of planning. It’s tough to get in the headspace and really let it flow when you only have an hour at the end of a long day. Well, I definitely have more than an hour now.”

  Charly Shelton