Last week felt like a month.
I was standing in my bedroom with my wife and daughter on Sunday night. I told them both that it didn't feel like the quarantine stuff was basically a week old. It felt like much longer.
The family should be going back to school on Monday but instead will be out for at least another three weeks. They may not go back at all.
Sports are still cancelled. The Summer Olympics have been called off. Newton's prom also has been cancelled.
It was supposed to be the weekend that Iowa wrapped another national championship in wrestling. We also were supposed to be watching the Hawkeye men's basketball team potentially clinch a spot in the Sweet 16 for the first time since Tom Davis was the head coach.
Instead, we had to find other things to watch on TV and to do inside our house.
Here are a few things I did to kill time. ...
I still have a long list of movies from 2019 that I want to see. I have a few movie reviewers' top 10 lists to knock out.
I am more than halfway through a list after making a few trips to a Redbox station in town. I crossed off The Joker, Ford vs. Ferrari and Bombshell. I also decided to check out Richard Jewell.
I can see why Ford vs. Ferrari was on most people's top 10 lists. It was a fantastic sports movie about the 24 Hours of Le Mans race with some great acting from Matt Damon and Christian Bale.
I also loved Bombshell. It was a true story based upon the accounts of the women at Fox News who set out to expose CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harrasment. Parts of it were disturbing, but the acting of Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, Nicole Kidman and John Lithgow were on point.
Richard Jewell kept my attention throughout. It's about an overweight and unhealthy security guard who grew up dreaming of being in law enforcement. He was deemed a hero after saving hundreds of people from a bomb during events at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
Jewell then becomes the prime suspect in the bombing and the investigation into what really happened begins. Clint Eastwood directed the film and the only thing I don't like was how Eastwood portays the media.
The main journalist in the movie goes to grave lengths to get her story, which doesn't happen in the real world.
I went into The Joker knowing it was going to be extremely violent and twisted. And that's what it was.
I didn't enjoy the movie as much as the other four, but Joaquin Phoenix was fantastic in the title role. He won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance.
Besides those four movies, I re-watched A Star Is Born, a movie that I had in my collection of movies. And one that was up for an Oscar in 2019.
Our family had a movie night on Saturday and we went with the old-school version of 101 Dalmations on Disney Plus. Movies have definitely come a long ways since the 1990s.
I don't usually dig into Netflix a lot. I leave that to my wife and daughter. But with so much time on my hands lately, I have been scanning it a lot more. I watched Philadelphia this past weekend, too, and finished the Allen Iverson documentary.
Two of my favorite shows on TV are Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Impractical Jokers. I usually can find marathons of those shows that can kill a few hours. I spent a whole two days just watching syndicated episodes of SVU.
I stumble upon Rocky and Rambo marathons quite often on TV. On Sunday, both were on. So I of course checked out a little bit of each one.
The daughter and I have been spending one-on-one time together through workouts in my basement. With my gym being closed for the rest of the month, I have had to get created without weights.
We have done our workouts in a fun way and even caught a few videos on YouTube to help us out. She seems to enjoy them and watching Daddy struggle through the exercises.
Hopefully you are finding things to do during this tough time of being mostly restrained to our homes. It looks like we are going to have do it a little while longer, too.
Contact Troy Hyde at thyde@newtondailynews.com.
