{"id":122,"date":"2011-09-15T19:38:05","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T00:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joeyhand.com\/blog\/?p=122"},"modified":"2020-12-29T15:20:37","modified_gmt":"2020-12-29T20:20:37","slug":"reading_and_no_tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/15\/reading_and_no_tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading and no TV"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This year Pete started middle school, and Katie Rose started high school. Both have new and larger challenging workloads between homework, band, and sports, and I suggested that we institute a no-TV-on-weeknights policy for the kids to help them balance priorities. Then Debbie had the crazy idea that we should set some kind of &#8220;example&#8221; and not watch any ourselves, thereby leaving more time to read and (cue ominous music) talk. I reluctantly agreed, and have reluctantly, mostly followed the rule. Given my disinclination to discourse, I have gotten a lot of reading done, albeit sometimes with frequent interruptions. Not coincidental to the interruptions, Debbie started reading, but not enjoying, <em>The Brothers Karamazov<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Some consequences of this change:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>With the kids going to bed later now, whatever we watch on weekends usually must be PG-13 or thereabouts, which means the DVD of Russell Crowe&#8217;s &#8220;Robin Hood&#8221; has been sitting by the TV for 4 weeks. Thus, we are now paying Netflix about $7.99 (and counting) per DVD with their latest change in pricing. And we are getting less value from the Instant Watching side.<\/li>\n<li>I have read three books in the last three weeks (<em>Night Watch<\/em>, by Terry Pratchett; <em>Submarine<\/em>, by Joe Dunthorne; <em>Sons of Texas<\/em>, by Elmer Kelton). All were good, but I liked the Kelton book best.<\/li>\n<li>When I went to the library to get the first three books, Pete was with me, and again when I went to return those and get three more yesterday after his soccer practice. Last time I asked if he wanted to get a book, and he declined. This time, unprompted by me, he was at the catalog terminal and asked me how to spell &#8220;Fahrenheit.&#8221; I asked if he was looking for <em>Fahrenheit 451<\/em> [by Ray Bradbury], and he was. So we found it, checked it out, and he started reading it on the way home. To Debbie&#8217;s credit, that example idea looks like it is working.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This year Pete started middle school, and Katie Rose started high school. Both have new and larger challenging workloads between homework, band, and sports, and I suggested that we institute a no-TV-on-weeknights policy for the kids to help them balance priorities. Then Debbie had the crazy idea that we should set some kind of &#8220;example&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids","category-pete"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joeyhand.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}