As I've mentioned in this space many times before, we live pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It's not that there's nothing around, but ours is a small college town in the midst of rural Tennessee. It's at least a 25 mile round trip to a decent grocery store. If we want organic foods, the round trip is closer to 100 miles. A big bookstore? Also 100 miles, particularly if we want an independent. Same with music stores, and Thai food, and any edible sushi that doesn't involve a Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. There's a small movie theater here in town, but it's at least a forty-five minute drive to the nearest first-fun movie theater that offers enough movie choices for a family of four.
Not surprisingly, we do a lot of shopping on the net. And, also not surprising, we figured that NetFlix was made for people like us. Any DVD we want is just a click away. Free postage, a flat fee for as many movies as we can watch. What could be better, right?
I should pause here to say that I have no complaints about how NetFlix works, or about their customer service. Anytime I've called, the people I've talked to have been polite and helpful. The movies arrive just when they're supposed to. We send back a movie, and before we know it, there's another one in our mailbox. Another movie. Just sitting there, waiting to be watched. It's probably a good one. I mean, we put it in our queue, right? It ought to be good. It's probably one we've been talking about seeing. We know that we really ought to watch it.
Have you ever been caught in traffic while riding in a taxi? Your eyes keeping flicking to the meter, and every few seconds the fare increases, even though you haven't moved at all. You know the feeling, right? Well, that's how my wife and I are starting to feel about NetFlix. Between work and stuff for the kids and just the general demands of keeping the household running, we barely have time to sit and talk to each other, much less watch a movie. But the movies are just sitting there. You can almost hear them ticking like that freakin' taxi meter -- that flat rate doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore. If we watch a movie every weekend and maybe even a second on a Wednesday night, it's a great deal. But after a couple of weeks, that movie gathering dust next to the telephone is getting pretty darn expensive.
I was up until 11:30 last night watching "The Good Shepherd." It was a decent movie. At one point I know that I really wanted to see it. But that was before it had been sitting in my house for three weeks. That was before I realized it was two hours and forty-eight minutes long. I used to like movies. Now they feel like homework. Another one arrives and immediately I start trying to figure out when I'm going to get done with it, when I'm going to turn it in.
I sent "The Good Shepherd" back this morning. I don't know what the next title in my queue is, but I know it should be here by Friday or so. I just hope it's short.
Today's music: Branford Marsalis (Renaissance)
Not surprisingly, we do a lot of shopping on the net. And, also not surprising, we figured that NetFlix was made for people like us. Any DVD we want is just a click away. Free postage, a flat fee for as many movies as we can watch. What could be better, right?
I should pause here to say that I have no complaints about how NetFlix works, or about their customer service. Anytime I've called, the people I've talked to have been polite and helpful. The movies arrive just when they're supposed to. We send back a movie, and before we know it, there's another one in our mailbox. Another movie. Just sitting there, waiting to be watched. It's probably a good one. I mean, we put it in our queue, right? It ought to be good. It's probably one we've been talking about seeing. We know that we really ought to watch it.
Have you ever been caught in traffic while riding in a taxi? Your eyes keeping flicking to the meter, and every few seconds the fare increases, even though you haven't moved at all. You know the feeling, right? Well, that's how my wife and I are starting to feel about NetFlix. Between work and stuff for the kids and just the general demands of keeping the household running, we barely have time to sit and talk to each other, much less watch a movie. But the movies are just sitting there. You can almost hear them ticking like that freakin' taxi meter -- that flat rate doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore. If we watch a movie every weekend and maybe even a second on a Wednesday night, it's a great deal. But after a couple of weeks, that movie gathering dust next to the telephone is getting pretty darn expensive.
I was up until 11:30 last night watching "The Good Shepherd." It was a decent movie. At one point I know that I really wanted to see it. But that was before it had been sitting in my house for three weeks. That was before I realized it was two hours and forty-eight minutes long. I used to like movies. Now they feel like homework. Another one arrives and immediately I start trying to figure out when I'm going to get done with it, when I'm going to turn it in.
I sent "The Good Shepherd" back this morning. I don't know what the next title in my queue is, but I know it should be here by Friday or so. I just hope it's short.
Today's music: Branford Marsalis (Renaissance)
Comments
I figured that the minute I did that, we'd start tearing through the Netflixes we have, but I did find time to set up the software that lets you stream Netflix movies to your computer and figure out how to get what's on my notebook monitor to play on the living-room TV, so we would have a fallback. (There's always time to mess with some techy challenge that "will be so cool if I can get it to work." *g*)
We're on the plan that gets us two movies at once -- Nancy and I get one, and the girls get the other (two separate queues). The girls go through their movies far faster than we do -- without them we'd be losing our shirts on this deal...
But it would be fun to see new releases before three years have gone by and we suddenly remember there was a certain movie we wanted to watch!