How I spent my COVIDcation? Things I did NOT and DID do while sheltering in place

Remember way back when in the 1960s when, upon returning to the classroom in the after summer break that your teacher might have asked you to pen a few paragraphs on “How I spent my summer vacation?”

The past few weeks got me thinking about a hybrid version of that assignment I call “How I spent my COVIDcation, subtitled “Things I did NOT and did do while sheltering in place.”

Turns out there’s a pretty sizeable list with some good and other activities not so much.

Where to begin?

I guess I need to say to begin with I’ve been a pretty good “shelter in place” citizen. However, I did sneak across the border into that adjoining nation, North Idaho, to grab one last live meeting with friends on Friday, March 20 in Rathdrum for what we call “Standard Lunch.”

Rest assured that we practiced some OK “social distancing” took place with others in the sparsely populated Westwood Brewery and so far neither myself, Mike or Marc — all in the over-60 prime target age —have symptoms.

But since then it’s been doing what I’m told, sequestered for the most part in the family compound. What the hell else am I going to do when there’s no weekly old-guys hockey at Eagles Ice-Arena, no Friday beers at Jack 7 Dan’s and my wife and I do virtual “visits” with our grandkids through Facebook, despite them being less than 10 miles away?

Some COVIDcation activities have seen me:

Gain weight (see loss of hockey above).

Clean off my garage workbench — and clutter it up again.

Assist my wife in getting the laundry/craft room all organized, which allowed a place to completely recover our dining room chairs.

Put the backyard basalt wall back together that was decimated in “Delaney Deck 2019.”

Spend seemingly endless hours organizing and digitizing photos and asking, “So why did I still have that?”

Accelerate the job to finalize my EWU football book and nudge it towards the printer.

And I’m sure if I thought about it, there’s more, but I’ll have several weeks to build that list.

Oh, yes, there’s my math project. The one where each morning where I collect data on the reason for my COVIDcation in the first place, the coronavirus.

Personally, my most effective “social distancing” has come by clicking the remote permanently to “off” from the legions of panic-driven, hair-on-fire television news talking heads. They’re in their wheelhouse during times of distress, particularly when there is no potential of a traffic-snarling snow storm.

I do stay in touch with dueling “push notifications” on my phone as everyone races to get it first — but not necessarily correct.

I’ve also been able to calm any blood pressure blips with an age-old antidote drug called context.

No pharmacy needed, just 30 minutes or less hitting several favorite and trustworthy websites. Then with, or without a little basic math — and a decent calculator on the smart phone or tablet — the numbers I find routinely soothe my fears.

Buyer beware, however. Just like infomercials pushing miracle prostate cures for men or removal of pesky facial hair for women, one must be a bit careful. Can’t tell you what are not good ones, because placebos come in all shapes, sizes and websites.

My search for “Washington state coronavirus cases” delivered a go-to place for data collection. It’s a really cool map that delivers regularly updated stats from the world, nation-by-nation and state-by state. Some basic calculations, like dividing the number of cases by population numbers ya’ get a decimal that may just put your mind at ease.

Consider that based on the recent estimated population of Washington state, about 7.7 million people, and cases through April 6 — 7,591 — your chances of contracting COVID-19 sit at 0.00098 percent and that there are just over 1,000 cases per 1 million population. Or calculate the population of the world, 7.8 billion and constantly counting, to arrive at a mortality rate from the coronavirus of .000009 percent.

Care to put that info into odds? Rapidtables.com can assist.

Remember that you have a 1 in 5 chance of dying of a heart attack or 1 in 84 of a car accident and drowning, 1 out of 79,746.

Now back to getting those 1970s sports programs ready to sell on Ebay.

Paul Delaney was a reporter with the Cheney Free Press from 2008-2018.