A native of Chicago and a graduate of the University of Missouri, Eric Bernsee has enjoyed residing in Greencastle for more than 25 years. Years of consuming McDonald's iced teas, Dairy Castle flurries and Marvin's GCBs have helped make him the man he is today.

COVID confinement getting expensive

Posted Thursday, March 11, 2021, at 2:01 PM

More than a year into it now, this continuing coronavirus confinement is not only boring, tedious and nerve-wracking, it’s getting expensive.

Granted, I haven’t spent nearly as much on dining out in the past year. But then again, my Kroger expenditures have doubled or tripled for the month as I’ve eaten my way through the grub I had stashed in the pantry and freezer.

I’ve devoured more soup and cereal than the Campbell’s Soup Twins and Jerry Seinfeld combined.

But the real sequestered spending has come from enduring hours and hours of television exposure.

First came the Solo MicroTouch trimmer. An easy sell after watching numerous commercials since my Covid neck beard was getting wilder and wilder. So for $19.95 I ponied up for a device that could shave the tough places, trim my mustache and sideburns and make life easier, just like they said on TV. Plugging it into my computer to charge it up seems a little weird, but hey, whatever works.

Next I bit on the Ancestry.com commercials, joining up for $99 to find out pretty much what I really already knew -- that my family was paler than pale, coming from all over northwestern Europe and the British Isles. Found out I even have a little Pomeranian in me, so pardon me if I might nip at your heels occasionally.

Then, in between infomercial-inspired gifts like Alexa and a Shark Robot Vacuum to add to my living room menagerie, came a subscription to Classmates.com, which it seems has hounded me since I graduated from high school.

So for the special price $7.50 for three months, I now know that most of the 795 kids that I didn’t know in my Proviso East graduating class (in a school of 3,705) are on Classmates.com.

Meanwhile, with creaking knees keeping me from climbing the 32 steps to get to the third floor of the Banner Graphic on more than Monday and Thursday, a commercial for Cubii, an under-the-desk elliptical device, caught my eye.

I Googled Cubii, and then sprang for a knockoff for half the price at $139. Got free delivery from Amazon, which was a savings since the package weighed 29 pounds. Got a workout, just dragging it in from the back stairs. Maybe I’ll even get it out of the box tonight.

So what’s next?

I’m not sure, maybe a couple Copper Fit knee braces.

From the looks of the TV commercials, it sure looks like they’ve made former NFL stars Brett Favre and Jerry Rice young again.

If you see me running fly patterns this fall, you’ll know they worked.