went by sandmeyer’s after work to see about purchasing a copy of the atkins diet book, since i seem to have lost my copy.

good niqui passed up purchasing both The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy by William Greider, and American Sucker by David Denby, in favor of trying to get them at the library.

bad niqui did not pass up buying The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled by Will Cuppy and illustrated by William Steig, Collapsible: The Genius of Space-Saving Design by Per Mollerup (i bought it for max, but i might browse through it a bit … it’s awfully neat looking and max isn’t back to work until Monday…), and grabbed The 9/11 Commission Report (Authorized Edition) at the checkout.

the method to my madness is pretty simple: if i think it’ll take me forever to get through it, e.g. The Metaphysical Club, i should just buy it.

also, i didn’t actually have a CPL library card until yesterday. well, evidently I technically did — they’d never cancelled it even though i lost it in, oh, ’98 or ’99 — but i didn’t have one.

you know what’s embarassing? having not been in a library in ages, and asking for the card catalogue — knowing full well that there isn’t one, that it’s all computerized, but not knowing what the name is of an electronic card catalogue (hint: it’s “catalogue.” dumbass.) … and knowing that you’re going to get the pitying look from the librarian when you ask after such an archaic, antique piece of stone-age technology. so. yeah. that was me yesterday. went into the Harold Washington Library to get the new library card and to check out the Atkins book. getting the card was fine. then came the card catalogue question.

the nice librarian offered to help explain the computer to me.

…

turns out all three of their copies of the atkins diet book were out (figured it out all on my own … nyah), so that’s why i went to buy one today.

but i need to go see about checking out those other books i saw at the store that i wanted to read.