The mailbox is a happy place again!

Distracted by Molly's situation (see below), I completely forgot about my new Netflix membership and didn't go to the mailbox until very late in the day. Imagine my delight to find my first video, Prime Suspect, season 1, disk 1, especially since I truly hate going to the mailbox for what I see as the daily garbage run.

At the end of the day, I climbed into bed and watched most of the two-episode video. Less than an hour in, I realized that this show clearly inspired The Closer, which is more formulaic and less gritty, but, at least initially, addresses the same kind of sexism as Prime Suspect: resentment by the men of a woman in charge of the "murder room" (as well as disbelief by the public that the woman is in charge), led by one of the woman's subordinates in particular. As I await PS disk 2, I fully expect one of the junior men, probably Burkin, to warm up to Jane Tennison very soon, just as Sgt. Gabriel became the first to respect Brenda Johnson.

I think I'm gonna like Netflix, but did I really need another thing distracting me from getting things done?

Waste

I've come to see my daily trip to the mailbox as the garbage run.

I go to the box, come inside, sort through that which should be shredded and that which should go straight to the recycling bin. When life is overly busy, this can pile up for a few weeks. This week I took note of how much actual necessary mail I received. It came to exactly two items: a bill (which can't be received online) and my W-2 (which actually can).

So --
we're cutting down trees
burning fuel to manufacture all this junk
burning fuel to deliver all this junk
burning a tiny bit of electricity each time I run the shredder
burning fuel to take the stuff to the landfill (where the recycling center is).

No wonder our environment is hurting.

People hate spam, but I don't. I use a Hotmail address for all my business transactions, and my spam accumulates there, where I deal with it at my leisure. I'll take spam over stuff that exists just for the purpose of going to the landfill.

What a waste.