Family Zoom quizzes, rediscovering jigsaw puzzles, and my favourite new thing, playlist playoffs.
I challenged my brother Matt to create a 16-song playlist called The Horn Section. We then swap our playlists, listen and critique.
I'm a few years older and had the benefit of the short-lived ska and Celtic pop eras, Geno by Dexys Midnight Runners, It Must Be Love by Madness and The Impression That I Get by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
What about Chicago, 25 or 6 to 4, hailed as the pinnacle of horn playing in popular music?We had one song the same (the Bosstones), so it made for a fun afternoon.
Matt came straight back with 16 saxophone stunners, including The Logical Song, The Heat Is On and Englishman in New York.
We've also done chronological, a song from each year we've been alive, alphabetical (one track starting with each letter) and tunes that name check cities.
It is endless fun, and I recommend you give it a try.
Streaming services such as Spotify make it easy to compile playlists, and you have so much music at your fingertips, which sparked another discussion.
We reminisced about spending hours at our local record store flicking through the albums. Rummaging through records was an activity that stimulated the senses: touch, sight, smell and sound.
It was also intellectually and artistically stimulating.
The artwork, liner notes and printed song lyrics allowed you to connect with an album even before you asked the assistant to give it a spin.
Yep, for streaming-only readers, you used to be able to take music for a spin before you decided to part with your hard-earned.
Joy of all joys were the double albums, which offered a moment of great discovery as you slid the album cover out of the sleeve and opened it up to see what was inside.
Alice Cooper's School's Out opened like a school desk.
Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick contained a complete newspaper, the St Cleve Chronicle and Linwell Advertiser, with articles, competitions and advertisements lampooning the typical parochial and amateurish journalism (in Tull's view) of the local English press.
Devo, the guys who introduced crazy red energy dome helmets, included an entire merchandise catalogue so you could order your own.
There is great joy in vinyl and the large format packaging, and the resurgence in popularity is no surprise despite most believing it is an inferior audio format.
Another advantage is that you tend to listen to the whole album as the artist intended, with no random playlists and shuffling.
When I get out of lockdown, a new turntable is on the bucket list.
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