It’s been more than two weeks since the torch went out in London, but I’m still at a loss for what to do without the nightly marathon of volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, diving, track and field, trampoline, rowing, basketball, more volleyball, weightlifting and every other sport under the Summer Olympics’ sun.

No longer having Bob “Baby Face” Costas conducting PR-driven interviews or Mary “Everyone-Wants-My-Job” Carillo’s adventures in jolly ole’ England, leaves my nights empty. Like, box-of-wine-and-pack-of-Avengers-temporary-tattoos empty.*

*Which isn’t an accurate statement, because that actual sounds like a lot of fun. To me, anyway.

The lack of humble-beginnings montages and throwback clips of the 1996 Magnificent Seven leaves nothing to watch. Even the morning has gotten a lot less red-white-and-blue without the barrage of “Welcome Home” interviews. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve resorted to watching reruns of Gordon Ramsay’s two — no, make that three  — television shows on Fox. As far as I’m concerned, Hotel Hell is scraping the barrel of entertainment without moving on to MTV.

And yet, I watch. (Photo courtesy of FOX)

And the worst part? There’s still another week until MU football occupies my Saturdays and another several weeks until solid network television returns with a new season’s worth of Person of Interest, Once Upon a Time, Community and other primetime favorites. We won’t even go into how I’ve got to wait until Oct. 14 for AMC to bring back a third season of  The Walking Dead. The anticipation is so furious, I’m having a hard time not gnawing my fingers off zombie-style.

So in the meantime, here’s a list of things to keep the post-Olympics funk at bay:

1. Read and reread Michelle Collins’ Vanity Fair blog that gave meme-tastic daily coverage of all things Olympics.
2. Listen to John Williams’ iconic “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” on repeat when walking into the MU Student Rec Center, because if there’s one thing to make a workout more productive, it’s pretending you’re about to race Allyson Felix.
   

   Courtesy of Amazon.com

3. Trade in the Team USA spirit ware for MU Black and Gold; the Tigers play their first football game on Saturday against the Southeastern Louisiana Lions!
4. Study and evaluate the upcoming network primetime lineup. Include a prayer to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ghost that CBS’ upcoming Elementary isn’t just The Mentalist with English accents.
5. Pick up a copy of Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand’s non-fiction novel of a WWII hero who also just so happened to go to the Olympics. As if surviving a Japanese POW camp wasn’t enough of a story, Louis Zamperini ran 5,000 meters so well in the 1936 Berlin Olympics that Adolf Hitler requested a meeting with the Californian (who later stole his personal flag from the same Games).

Also, start studying up on Russian history and culture; next we turn our eyes to Sochi for the 2014 winter games. Still, that’s two years to wait. I’m sure Ramsay will have released a new show in resemblance to the Hunger Games, where he selects 18 home cooks to work in a decrepit hotel line kitchen while battling to the death for an apron embroidered with the name of some fine restaurant in Nova Scotia.

If that’s the case, I may have found my new Olympics.