Netflix informed me today that I'd reached my limit. It wouldn't let me add Sweet Home Alabama to my rental queue unless I deleted some other titles. So I more or less randomly dropped 41 movies off my list. The decision was based on the fact that I couldn't remember what they were about (or in some cases that I could remember what they were about).

Most of the titles I dropped were movies I knew I could add back in at any time. Some were classics, like 42nd Street and Annie Get Your Gun, that probably don't have much of a waiting list. Others were films I'd already seen but wanted to check the DVD features on, such as Jurassic Park and Speed. And then there were movies I knew other people in my family already owned, like Men In Black II and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

I'll be more careful adding movies willy-nilly, helter-skelter to my queue from now on, that's for sure. Mildred Pierce is just about to be released on DVD, but I have to think twice about it. Or maybe I should upgrade my subscription so I can have more DVDs out at one time. (Nah, that's a bad idea. I hardly have enough time as it is.)

The maximum you can have in your queue, in case you were wondering, is 500. That's probably enough movies anyway.

After working myself into waves of panic and near-panic for days, and after using all my energy to get the workload down to where I could be fairly certain it would be done by the Friday deadline, I find myself at a point where it suddenly appears to be almost finished. Now. Today. Tuesday. Ahead of time.

How can that be? I always leave everything to the last minute. What am I going to be doing at 4:59 Friday afternoon?

There's only one tax form left to complete, but it's a big one, the California sales tax return. That one always gives me fits because I don't know what I'm doing. The company doesn't sell products as a retail outlet, and we pay the sales tax on almost everything we buy. That means I enter a lot of zeroes in the tax form, and I'm always afraid that will raise a red flag in some office in Sacramento.

We were audited on our sales tax license once, years ago, and I was assured by the auditor that I was doing everything correctly. I just don't know if I believe her. We don't pay sales tax on material we buy from out-of-state suppliers, or on material we buy for out-of-state projects. That's the only time we use our sales tax exemption, and since we're a construction firm, we're in a kind of hazy area about which items we're supposed to report to the state.

I do it the way I think is fair and correct. If I'm wrong, somebody will tell me, eventually. Then I'll fix it. I think that's the way things should work anyway. If you're acting in good faith, you should be patted on the back and allowed to correct your mistakes. Punishment is for bad guys, not inept bunglers like me who are doing the best we can.

I think the sales tax return is the only one I have left to do, but I can't be sure. I keep coming up with one more form, and then one more, that I've forgotten or mislaid. I guess what I'll be doing at 4:59 Friday is exhaling, and realizing that it's too late to worry about anything I've overlooked.

And there's plenty left to do in February, so it's not as if the work load has suddenly crunched to a halt. The paperwork machine rolls on forever.