It’s packed over in the free computer access area—lots of hubbub, potato chip bag sounds, unsilenced cell phones—so I take my Woodstar coffee to one of the big tables, the ones with built-in lights and electrical outlets. I’d love to have one in my home. I forget if outside drinks are allowed in here, so I’m a little nervous, but I remember they used to have a coffee/snack bar in the lobby a couple years back, so they must, right? They must. A dude walks by with a gigantic Dunkin Donuts iced coffee. Okay, anxiety released.

I’m sitting in the reference section. How often do these babies get cracked open nowadays? The 12-volume New Catholic Encyclopedia. The 20-volume McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Five volumes on Africana. Three books on world coins. There’s a 22-volume World Encyclopedia with a single graphic image running across all the spines, but the set is split onto two shelves, ruining the effect and offending the orderly part of my brain.

I don’t take books out of the library much anymore. I can’t stand feeling like I have a time limit to read something, even though I fully realize I could renew. But I’m a slow and infrequent reader, and I don’t want recreational deadlines in my life. My real problem is that I buy books, and then they sit on a shelf for three or four years before I get around to them. So I already have my own library, I guess. But I rent DVDs here, discs donated from good ol’ Pleasant Street Theater Video. A seven day loan for a movie is a *good* thing for me. It is manageable, and a good motivator to watch a thing within a reasonable period of time.

I move to the upper level and grab a comfy-looking chair overlooking the checkout desks. There’s another guy sitting in the other comfy chair, possibly ogling one of the young librarians below. But who am I to judge? I’m ogling, too, I guess. I’m ogling everybody. The only difference is that I’m writing about it, and I’m not as creepy as this dude is. Ogling. What a bizarre word. Where’s a word like that come from? If only there was a place I could go to look up its derivation. I know, I’ll check the internet.