Saturday, August 24, 2002
 

I think I killed my back. Perhaps carrying the Yellowpages in my backpack for about a mile was not the brightest idea ever.

I went to the library to get the reserve items for advance reading for my southern lit class. Reserve does't open until Wednesday-- the day of the first class. So forget that. The draconian circulation librarian (who warmed up as I adopted my techinque for disgruntled employees-- thank them for everything, including breathing, apologize for your very presence, etc) informed me that there was no way on God's green footstool (stealing that excellent phrase from Zora Neale Hurston) that she was going to let any human being into the reserve room before Wednesday. She then stormed off to fire off an e-mail to the professor who had the gall to send students into her lair. Fortunately, I didn't give her my name (but her security cameras probably picked me up). I reserved a carrel-- one of the less glitzy ones, but more to my taste. It's free to do that and recommended highly to people doing research (so you don't have to lug your books everywhere). I got a VendaCard for the copy machines (since it's 8 cents per copy with it and 10 cents without it). Finally, I located a stray copy of one of the reserved books down in the divinity library, so I copied the relevant sections of that. Even if it's not due for the first day of class, it's one less thing to deal with once classes actually start. It's nearly impossible to find one's way around the library. It's 8 floors, no central staircase, no directional signs, one creaky old elevator. A staircase from floor 4 (the floor you go in on) to floor five will not put you anywhere near the staircase to floor 6. It's very confusing, and there are a lot of half-levels. I even had to practice making a few dry runs to my carrel so I could find it later. After that little 1:45 adventure, I went over to the bookstore and found two more texts I needed (used!) with the undergrad texts. This time, it was only about $10, and considering that one of the two books was Middlemarch (a megahuge whopper of a tome), I think I did pretty well.

Lunchtime.

Elvisette philosophized at 12:36 PM