What’s your strategy for keeping saner-at-home? Bill Whittle, Stephen Green and Scott Ott share their techniques for staying in without going out of your mind. Feel free to share yours in the comments below.
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35 replies on “Corona-Crazy: Staying In without Going Out of Your Mind”
I have also worked from home the last four years so there’s no change of venue for me, but there is less work. I migrate data from dental offices to the software created by the company I contract to. Most dental offices are closed and have pushed their live dates into the future. I’m about half as busy as usual. But this gives me more time to work in the yard, ride motorcycles with my husband, find new mountain biking trails and work on some sewing projects.
My husband has been working from home since mid-March, so it has been a change for him. Fortunately, we have a large house with a walk-out basement so he has set up his computer in his man cave.
The one thing I’m really looking forward to is going out to a restaurant for dinner! My husband and I have a weekly date night and have Mexican, Chinese, pizza, etc. We’ve tried takeout from those restaurants but it’s just not the same. I miss the background noise of people talking, music playing, dishes clinking, etc.
I found two other sources for unbiased reporting during this “vacation”. One is OANN.COM – the One America News Network and the other is Epoch Times. Along with Bill and the Patriot Post cartoons and reporting — all is well with my brain.
Bought a couple of mini-drones and we have races through the living room, dining room, kitchen, and entryway which forms a circular air corridor. It drives the cats and dogs nuts, which is an extra obstacle and adds to the fun. …OK, maybe we already lost our minds.
I would like to see video of this, please. Especially if you can get any video of cats going airborne in an attempt to catch them.
what a good segment, Loved the level participation and personal stories
as for me:
I work for WesternDigital, here in Israel (Scott – if you have any code related questions – don’t hesitate 🙂 )
So I’m currently working from home, which is less efficient, but I can’t complain,
I also have Juvenal Diabetes, so I’m In that list of Higher risk, which means that I will stay longer at home, but still – I don’t think that I should complain,
I consider myself as strong and healthy, My sugar level is balanced (for the most part), I run more often (and longer), and I have already lost 4 Kilograms (4 more to go…) – so I know that I shouldn’t complain 🙂 .
My wife on the other hand, just started a new job one month before this whole mess began, and she is currently at home, not knowing if she will have a job, so she can complain (and believe me – she does 🙂 ) and I sympathize …
our 3 children have become more lazy, and more addicted to screens, so that’s not so good
that’s it for now – stay safe, and stay healthy
Bye
Mail ordered an air rifle and an air pistol. My back yard just became a range.
What I have noticed during this time of lockdown, shelter-in-place, safer-at-home, call it what you will…
1) Families are re-learning what a family is again. I’d go into it more, but as a single person living alone, I can only observe. Mealtimes, homework (in the very real sense), taking care of each other.
2) Neighbors are becoming more neighborly. I have over the years – living in a subdivision of single family houses, nice front yards, yada yada – gotten to know (at least by sight) my neighbors, but wow, now I talk to them as I take my walks and they are out in their yards. I’ve talked to neighbors over the proverbial fence, across the street, as they walk past my yard and I’m outside doing stuff (reading, either under the tree shade when it’s too warm, or out in the sun when it’s cooler).
3) Everyone’s hyper-friendly, supersaturated with being cooped up with only their immediate family, wanting to participate in this patriotic endeavor of following the guidelines (until and unless they become too burdensome or over zealous). Driving into the middle of my small town (25-30K, waiting on the latest census to inform me), I saw 2 people, I hesitate to call them protestors, wearing masks, standing 6′ apart, holding signs (only saw 1 which begged “Open our churches and our businesses!”). I waved as I drove by…
4) I’m retired, and still trying to discover what I have energy for to do with the rest of my life, have lots of ambitions… Have gotten into cooking, into gardening so far. But the computer and the Internet is so enticing, I could spend all day in front of it, like I did when I was working (actually working on the computer… no really… I was a ‘software engineer’.) I want to do creative, active things, things that engage the body as well as the mind.
One of the first things I will do is go to Fuddruckers. Bit of a haul; but worth it to p-off the Oswalts of the world.
Onanism. Lots and lots of self-abuse. -_-
Kidding! (kids, don’t look up that word!)
The shut-down of life came just as our complex was gearing up for our (semi-) annual community garage sale. I had gotten a bunch of items from storage to include in the sale, including an old Total Gym that I hadn’t used in years (no room in the house after my wife got here). Couldn’t take it back to storage as they were shut down now, so I’ve been working out on that, and low-and-behold, it’s kinda fun! I’m getting back some muscle tone i haven’t had in years.
I’ve also started up my smoker early this year. Lots easier to tend fire when you have the WHOLE DAY to do it. Plus: ribs, brisket, chicken! Yum.
I am working from home with the exception that all salary at my company are on furlough every third week in a rotation.So that hurts but fortunately we are currently ok with that (thanks Dave Ramsey). The week’s off we have caught up on those long overdue task: cleaning out the “storage room”, workshop, yard work.
I am a pretty competent cook so my wife and I have decided to get healthier together. Eating better and taking more walks. Trying different recipes. Easier for me then for her as she is not working and trying to keep busy. Taking care of older relatives that cannot is chief among her tasks.
We are definitely walking and reading more and streaming shows we never watched.
I do like some parts of working from home, but our house is not really set up for doing this long term.
Though I think my company will now say if you can work from home, do so.
We learned how often we ate out so really miss that and as Bill stated we will be doing that a lot when we can to help those folks out.
I’ve been retired for a couple of years and live alone so things are fairly normal for me at home. I’m doing a lot of reading, especially nonfiction. I’ve signed up for free Hillsdale College online lectures. I cleaned out and reorganized my entire attic; lots of donations are lined up. B.C. (Before COVID), I had started to renovate my 100 yr-old house and had to disconnect from cable. So I have just been streaming on my Firestick. Not watching the news has been wonderful, and I think I’m better informed by curating my own news from a variety of online sources. I may never reconnect the cable and save myself the time I spend trying to find something worthwhile to watch.
When this whole thing started we sat down as a family and everyone picked something that we wanted to get better at by the end of all this. I’m taking on line guitar classes after decades of trying to be self taught.
My lifestyle hasn’t changed much at all. My best days have always been the ones I can stay put and focus on my to-do lists. Fewer trips away from base camp means more is getting done than ever. Getting goods and services is a challenge but everyone seems to be adapting in my community. Lawyers are still employed so I’m getting some long-avoided estate planning work done. With death and divorce on the increase, (thanks a lot C-19) I’m glad I got in at the front of the line for this service!
Well, I’ve been retired for a few years now, so I’ve gotten used to being at home most of the time. What I’ve done lately, though, was created a women’s only group on Facebook called the Cranky Old Women’s Society (COWS) and had fun choosing the banner, which is a very grumpy looking cartoon cow. Everyone loves that. I’ve had quite a learning experience in managing the group, including creating rules and finding some great ladies to be co-admins and moderators. We now have almost 64K members, which is mind-boggling to me because I figured I’d be fortunate to get 500 total. Anyway, managing the group has become danged near a full time job, since we have to approve new members, handle reports of rule violations, etc. The upside of it is that I’ve provided a place where stressed-out women can come to relax, laugh and just have a good time. The gratitude from them is so very heart-warming and helps me keep on with the work involved. Of course there’s daily problems with a herd of heifers that size, but that’s okay. Other than that and another group I’ve had on Facebook for seven years that is trying to help a wonderful, intelligent, charming young man get out of Zambia, Africa and to America (Called Mathews’ Family), I meet with my best lady friend every Saturday for lunch. Since the restaurants closed dining inside, we pick up something from a drive-through and meet at a nice little, barely used, park and sit across the picnic table at an angle and catch up on news and laugh until we choke. Yard work has never been my thing, but I do love to sit on the porch in nice weather and read a good book. The latest of those is a series by Bernard Cornwell, the first of which is titled, “The Last Kingdom”. I really love this series and will read all 12 of them, hopefully, on my porch (or on the john), at least until summer hits here in the Deep South.
I love Bernard Cornwell, have read many many of his books! I miss the library! When we got locked down, I had 2-3 library books checked out, and was in the process of reading all 3 at once (different places of the house or outside, different times of day) Unfortunately, all 3 just so happened to be non-fiction, although only 1 was a somewhat boring slog (but I made it thru all 500+ pages, why not, nothing better to read). Now, I’m resorting to reading old paperbacks, harder on the old eyes!
If you have an ebook reader, try archive.org and gutenberg.org for tons of public domain books. Actually, you don’t need an ebook reader, just a PDF reader. The ones at archive.org are available as page-image PDFs. Archive.org also has lots of in-copyright books that are available to borrow for two weeks for free. (Your local library probably has several ebook services that will let you borrow books too.)
I’m old-fashioned, I like real books, ones I can hold in my hands, and turn pages, and go back to re-read occasionally. My sister has a kindle she’s used for several years, but I never got into it. Too much electronics, I guess.
I agree wholeheartedly. But needs must! Before Hurricane Harvey I had upwards of 1500-2000 books, including a set of Easton Press editions. Now I have a motley collection of books I’ve picked up at estate sales that all fits in one bookcase.
BTW, they’re not heifers, those are young, virgin girl cows. Not sure what the milking cows are, except, maybe… Cows!
We use heifers because it just sounds funny with herd. and the group has COWS of all ages, races, cultures and religions. It’s quite the experience keeping everything under control I’ learning as I go.
I love this! At the dairy farm where I buy fresh milk, they have been running out and people are lining up twice a day to get milk. There’s a sign up on the door of the self-serve shop that has a picture of a cow and says something like, “Please socially distance by keeping one cow length apart.”
My sister and her husband used to be dairy farmers in Wisconsin, now since both retired. We would go over to their farm for fresh (didn’t call it ‘raw’ back then, didn’t know any different) milk. The best part was skimming the cream off it in the morning for coffee!
I confess that I still buy commercially-produced cream for coffee. But I can tell you that pasteurized dairy products taste “dead” to me. What I do is freeze some almost-ripe milk in an ice tray (one with long, skinny depressions designed for water bottles) and add one of these to a carton of cream when I open it. (Technical term for this is innoculation.) And when I say “almost ripe” I don’t mean sour: it smells like cheese!
Interesting! Thx, I only wish I had a source of raw, unpasteurized milk!
Sanity? What is this sanity of which you speak? When bad things happen, slings and arrows of outrageous fortune occur, I yell “This is driving me sane!” But I’m not homicidal, just suicide inducing with my bad puns.
No really, I work from home and have for a little over a year. I have 4 indoor rescue dogs and my wife is at home, so they are me sane as I ever was.😉 I really only miss going out to restaurants occasionally. Movies out are rare as my wife cannot sit that long very often. Wish I had my income AND the time to do things I want. Cant even sleep late, but do sleep later than when I drive to work. Consider myself lucky I have an income.
At home half the time on Red Team (our staff is split in half), I’ve discovered I can’t focus at home as I can at work trying to accomplish the same tasks. However, my organizational efforts at home get better every day. The garage and workshop is in great order. I’ve ordered and replaced tools I’ve long ago forgotten about. I’ve repaired tools I said I would tackle “some day”. And my honey-do list is down to almost nothing. Not much reading accomplished as I listen to books through Audible during my 60 minute one-direction work commute. When this returns to somewhat normal, we are hoping to visit our favorite restaurants as often as possible and ask for the servers we have always enjoyed. One new thing – we happened to get 10 chickens a few weeks before all the social distancing started and they are about to start laying eggs and each have their own personality we have become acquainted. My fear is the retail outlets and restaurants will recover in a manner very different than what we saw before…. on-line businesses have thrived at the expense of local establishments that may never recover.
I can’t help but share with my kids how I personally went through this in 1982. Economic hope to recovery under Ronald Reagan, my 2 1/2 year job as a teamster was furloughed and I used that to change all my prospects and returned to full time school and graduated a few years later.
If I can’t get a haircut soon (compared to the 500 people in Costco not worried about social distancing), I may very well need to….
Steve is definitely right about keeping up morale through a sense of normalcy.
I’ve shaved and showered every day.
I try to keep to some kind of routine.
I wear real clothes (not PJs and sweats).
Any day when I have a Zoom session with my students or for meetings for faculty or even my Knights of Columbus club, I wear a jacket and tie and make sure I have a nice bookshelf in the background.
As we keep finding out how much less deadly this thing is and how much we shouldn’t have shut everything down I spend my time planning some retribution on those who purposefully tried to destroy the economy and did manage to destroy the lives of millions of people.
Have you seen Greg Gutfeld’s hair lately???
I actually like it! As I also like Scott’s hair!
As luck would have it before this goat rodeo started 485 days ago, I studied for and passed the first level of Ham Radio license. One aspect of ham radio that interested me the most was Summits On The Air. (Google that and sota map) So, at the ripe old age of 61 – as of April 1st, Happy Belated Birthday, Bill, you whipper snapper – I started running again. And I found a YouTube video of a 1.5 ounce antenna to build. He warns that due to the small parts this is a pretty advanced soldering job/build. But, hey, I’ve got time, right? Did I mention I’m new to soldering? Anyway, hang in there, everyone!
I’ve been getting a number of dull, tedious projects at work done. File management stuff that I can do at home. I also enjoy cooking so I’ve been doing more of that. Smoked a duck last Sunday. Came out OK. Well enough to try again, get better at it. And I’m hoping to be motivated enough this weekend to do my spring cleaning. Other wise I’ve been trying to conquer ancient Egypt. Until the game crashed.
On smoking the duck, how did you find rolling papers big enough? 😛
LOL!
Amen on keeping as normal as possible – I’ve been taking care of myself as much as normal, albeit enjoying more beer. Sister Babe comandeered the basement for work and my work has been slow so I’ve been handling Little Bib’s home schooling.
And as I’ve come to realize that being happily married is more of the exception than the rule, I am more appreciative of my family than I normaly already am!