If you really want something fun and time-consuming, learn a tabletop wargame like Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40,000. Take the time to study the rule book, then read through the codex for your chosen army. After that, you can decide on which units will make up your army.
Then comes the really fun part: start actually building your army by buying the core troops (basically, a couple units of infantry and a commander), so that you can start playing some games. Of course, you have to assemble and paint each model in your army, which takes a great deal of time. To give you some idea, a moderately sized force contains between 50 and 100 models, including infantry, vehicles, HQ, etc. It takes roughly 30 minutes to 2 hours to paint each model (although smart players will paint several at the same time
). That should keep you busy for quite some time.
Finally, once you have your army (or just a small part of it, provided you buy to core troops first) painted and battle-ready, you can start playing. If none of your friends play, you can undoubtedly find opponents at your local hobby stores. Better yet, you could get your friends into the game as well
.
If you want more information on Warhammer Fantasy/Warhammer 40,000, you can visit their official website:
http://us.games-workshop.com/ When you're ready to start playing, you can purchase everything online:
http://store.us.games-workshop.com/storefront/store.us If you want to know more about Warhammer 40,000 (A futuristic, sci-fi game), you can visit the following site:
http://us.games-workshop.com/games/40k/default.htm If you prefer Warhammer Fantasy (standard swords and sorcery), you can visit:
http://us.games-workshop.com/games/warhammer/default.htm The parent company (Games Workshop) makes several other games, including a Lord of the Rings wargame, a starship combat game, and various spin-offs of the first two games.
In case you're wondering, I play Warhammer 40,000. I just started a few months ago, and I am have a lot of fun with it. wargames are great, because they combine competition, art, strategy, and sci-fi/fantasy.
Disclaimer: Playing tabletop wargames may be hazardous to your wallet. And no, I don't work for Games Workshop; I just really like their games.