I'm not sure whether I love or hate the day before Thanksgiving. it's one of those few workdays during the year when there's not much actual work to do, since most people have already left for the long weekend. On the other hand, since so many people are gone already, there are only a handful of us tech support types around to do the work that comes up. So on a day when I should be stress-free and bored, instead I'm swamped because so many people have left things for me to do. But this only happens two or three times a year, and always during the holidays. I'm hardly ever around on Christmas Eve, but New Year's Eve is usually dead in terms of people. And I usually end up fending off a few minor crises at those times. I'm a hardy soul; I think I can manage.

I've signed up for a free trial of Netflix, partially out of curiosity but also to help out the good folks at Penny Arcade. I just got my first three movies today. Initially I had them sent to my office, thinking that they'd come in bulky boxes that wouldn't fit in my home mailbox. To my surprise, they come in flexible red paper envelopes, with the return mailer inside. No DVD boxes to be found; apparently, if you want to see the original packaging, you're better off renting from Blockbuster. The packaging also explains why multi-DVD sets are rented one disc at a time: there isn't room in the mailer for more than one disc. Anyway, now we've got some movies to check out this weekend, and I've got a long list of things on tap that Netflix will send me when we return these. It's not that we live so far from a Blockbuster, but it is on the other side of the Village, it's not convenient to either of our work commutes, and we've been burned by the late fees a few times. It's not even an easy thing for me to ride over there on my bike: with all the one-way streets in New York, I have to go several blocks out of my way to avoid riding against traffic. Compare this with $20 a month, and all I have to do is drop movies in the mailbox when I'm done with them. It's hard to beat that.