iCal is great for keeping track of your schedule, but if all you want to do is a quick check of the calendar, it can take longer than you want for iCal to open. TinyCal, by contrast, is a quick, tiny calendar that lives in your Menu Bar.
TinyCal lets you show one, two, three or twelve months in its dropdown menu. You can also "tear off" the calendar by grabbing its title bar and dragging it around the screen.
In its preferences, there is a check box to Launch at startup. Make sure you check that so that every time you restart you Mac, TinyCal loads. Also in the preferences are settings for TinyCal to show the national holidays of dozens of countries.
As a one-trick pony drop down calendar, TinyCal is free. There is also a paid version of TinyCal that syncs with Google Calendars for $10. You can read more about the Google Calendar integration in the Read Me file that downloads with TinyCal.
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