{"id":19075,"date":"2016-07-31T11:14:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T18:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=19075"},"modified":"2016-07-31T11:14:37","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T18:14:37","slug":"cushion-hegemony-other-domestic-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=19075","title":{"rendered":"Cushion Hegemony & Other Domestic Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is not the chummy interlude it appears to be, but a quiet struggle for cushion hegemony. Left Shark<\/a>\u00a0prevailed.*<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1122\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Up early this morning to prepare a rack of pork spareribs and hit the gym. By preparing ribs, I mean pulling the membrane off the back, coating them with dry rub, and wrapping them in foil. Later today I’ll bake them in the oven, then finish them off on a gas\u00a0grill. Of the two ways I cook pork ribs, this is the easy one. The other way is to put them on the smoker with charcoal and wood chips, but that’s more work than I care\u00a0to do today.<\/p>\n

They told me not to exercise for a couple of weeks after skin cancer surgery.\u00a0One week off\u00a0was all I could stand.\u00a0This morning, on my way home from the gym, I stopped at Safeway for corn on the cob to go with the ribs. While there I stopped at the DVD kiosk and rented My Big Fat Greek Wedding II, thus ensuring myself a couple of uninterrupted reading hours after dinner. Donna and Polly will have\u00a0the family room and\u00a0their movie; I’ll be in the\u00a0auxiliary reading chair in the\u00a0master bedroom. The important thing is we’ll all be happy.<\/p>\n

I generally read\u00a0two or three books at a time, but right now I’m concentrating\u00a0on\u00a0Jim Webb’s excellent Vietnam war novel Fields of Fire<\/em>, which I’m reading on my Nook. I recently had a problem\u00a0downloading that book and a couple of others from Barnes & Noble. There was a lot of back & forth over the phone and by email, and somewhere in there they promised to send me a newer Nook as a replacement for the old one. They didn’t follow through, so early last week I called again. Three to five business days and I’ll have it, they say. That’s how long they said it would take to correct\u00a0the downloading problem, but\u00a0after eight business days they’d done nothing and I had to call and start all over again.\u00a0I’ll believe I’m\u00a0getting a replacement Nook when it’s in my hands.\u00a0Will I be surprised if they stiff me again? No.<\/p>\n

Tell you what, I never experience this level of aggravation\u00a0with Amazon. There’s a problem, they fix it right away. There’s gift card money in the\u00a0B&N account that\u00a0can only be spent\u00a0on Nook books, but when that’s\u00a0gone\u00a0we’re done. All my future ebook purchases will be through Amazon. Good thing Donna has a\u00a0Kindle she’s not using, eh?<\/p>\n

As for TV, the political conventions are over and we’re back to regular programming. Well, not quite: we\u00a0no longer watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, which was our\u00a0nightly ritual before. Now we go straight to Netflix or Amazon streaming. Streaming TV’s not all it’s cracked up to be, though. Netflix and Amazon have both\u00a0taken shows away\u00a0before we’re done watching them. I was really into a Belgian series called Salamander, but it disappeared when I was only halfway through. Last night we\u00a0wanted to put on one of the old black & white\u00a0Julia Child cooking shows, but\u00a0what was once included with our Amazon membership is now pay per view. I thought about watching Breaking Bad again, but it’s the same story there. I could live without TV. I love to read. Donna likes to read but loves to watch, so\u00a0giving it up\u00a0wouldn’t work for us.<\/p>\n

*Judging by feedback, not all my readers get\u00a0pop culture references and memes, hence the link. Don’t say I never did anything for you, baby!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is not the chummy interlude it appears to be, but a quiet struggle for cushion hegemony. Left Shark\u00a0prevailed.* Up early this morning to prepare a rack of pork spareribs and hit the gym. By preparing ribs, I mean pulling the membrane off the back, coating them with dry rub, and wrapping them in foil. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19075"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19079,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19075\/revisions\/19079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}