I know you've all been waiting desperately to hear about my trip to the Library of Doom (LoD). Today I will satisfy your impatience, and I hope not to disappoint you in the process.
I drove to the LoD on a Monday morning. After careful planning, a friend and I worked out the details of carpooling and the like. I was distracted with reading articles in the morning and didn't leave when I was suppose to, thus my friend had to wait at the designated park n' ride for about 20 minutes before I showed up. Meanwhile, it started raining and by the time we finally hit the road, there was a typical midwest downpour.
Coming from Seattle, rain doesn't mean much. It's wet all the time, and when it's not wet, everyone is outside. Waiting for a sunny day to go for a walk would mean that everyone in the northwest would be overweight, but, as that is not the case, we northwesteners get used to walking outside in the rain. We wear fleece and gortex and get over it. In the midwest, however, the rain is a different monster. Actually, I think that the weather here in general is a different monster, but that's another blog. Rain in the midwest comes in big spurts. Seattle rain is usually the equivalent to someone in the heavens using a giant spray bottle or sprinkler. This mysterious heavenly being must not like the midwest, because here rain equals someone dumping over buckets of water. Growing up, I got used to the radio announcement that followed strange beeping and static reading "This is a test, this is only a test of the Emergency Broadcasting Network." Enter the midwest and there were no longer tests. When it rains here in summer and spring, the strange beeping and static sounds are followed with directions to seek shelter immediately and quit driving. At least I haven't had to run into a cellar yet with a tornado warning.
Back to the LoD. We weren't listening to the radio during the drive, so I don't know if there were severe rain storm warnings. I made it through the rain in one piece and then the day turned hot an muggy. Eventually we made it to the other state university's campus. I took a couple of unintentional detours only to find out that my prize parking spots from last summer are no longer free! I wrestled with the new parking meters and thankfully let my friend take over as I failed miserably. Kelsie: 0, parking meter: 2. Friend: 5, parking meter: 2. Clearly I made a good decision in bringing my friend.
A few days before traveling to the LoD, a professor friend of mine and I were talking about my reasearch. I mentioned the necessity of traveling to the LoD and my upcoming trip. She told me that the LoD is a scary place. The cages there are creepy and when she studied there as an undergraduate in the 70s, there were all sorts of crazy people on LSD camped out in the LoD, which was then opened for 24 hr/ day. Among the crazies was a man who walked backwards carrying a huge axe. The townspeople were split on their opinions of axe-man. Most people thought he was harmless, until one day he was in the library and attacked a girl in the stacks with his axe. The girl supposedly survived and my professor friend's med-school friend was in the university hospital when the patient came in. Axe-man was arrested and is supposedly in jail now. Did this really happen? Maybe not, but it could have. And I wouldn't be surprised if I turned a corner in the LoD stacks one day and came face to face with him. Lucky for me, I got everything I needed from the LoD and don't have to go back anytime soon. Phew!
Our adventure continued after fighting with the parking meter, and we crossed the street to catch the bus. Suddenly my bladder acted up and I had to find a bathroom immediately. Only there was no bathroom. Just a busstop surrounded by a field. And we had to wait for the bus for 15 minutes. I started to panic, thinking that I would pee my pants in front of my friend and my day would be ruined. Another annoying feature of the midwest is that there are no convenient places to pull over on the side of the road to go to the bathroom when an emergency hits. In the northwest, there are evergreens everywhere that conveniently give a person parked on the side of the road privacy. Here, the trees are small and bare for most of the year. When the trees have foilage, it is only at the top of the tree and there is no privacy. To make matters worse, there is generally snow on the ground at any given time for 6 months of the year. Not only is there no privacy in the snow, but anyone can follow your footsteps and see the evidence of another's personal roadside emergency. These thoughts flooded my mind while I waited for the bus. Finally, it came and I made it to the LoD and a washroom. Having triumphantly beat the odds of peeing my pants, I waited for my friend to get a visitor's pass and we were off to find the journals in question.
Finding the needed journals was more difficult than usual. The library was in the process of moving things. (why do libraries always have to move things? And if they're moving things, why can't they move the books that I don't want? I'm sure there are plenty of math or education books somewhere that no one is reading....) Eventually someone helped us and I found the old journals I needed. There were 100 years old and the pages were brittle. Only after going through half of the journals did I realize that the cover was decomposing on my sweater. I was covered in brown journal powder but it didn't matter. We found 5 articles that were relevant to Geraldine and I headed off to a scanner. Meanwhile, we somehow managed to eat an entire package of cookies. So much for my lenten fast...
We spent the remaining hours in the stacks looking for grammars. Together we pulled about 20 and I ended up checking most of them out and bringing them back home with me. To celebrate the day, we enjoyed Thai food at a local restaurant that I like and drove home. Safe and sound. No crazy men with axes, no more rain, no crazy protesters. Just two grad students that ate too many cookies. No more, no less.
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