D.O.P.-T.

After I tried and failed last night to figure out how to reserve books from the San Jose State University floors of the San Jose main library (it's a combined building, built with city help, but the state university library system separated the catalogs several years ago, withdrew the San Jose State books from the interlibrary loan consortium, and those of us who wanted to check out books from their section had to create second accounts with the same number but a different password format and figure out how to use the OneSearch software, which every university library in the US now seems to use but is hideously clunky) and had an amusing chat with one of their librarians in the early afternoon, we arrived and I tried to claim my books, only to be sent elsewhere and then get a flood of totally inaudible statements. Luckily the housemate was there to hear for me. Eventually we figured it out: after I was told a few months ago that the ability of us non-university folks to take university books out had been restored, but only through requests because we couldn't be admitted to the university floors of the library, there was apparently an outcry even louder than the one when we had all been told in e-mails that we would need new passwords but never informed of what they would be. Apparently there are more of us, or more impressive in raising a ruckus, than I'd thought. I wish I'd known so I could participate. They rescinded the rule and we can just go up there and raid the shelves again! So I did. I pretty much filled my canvas Ikea bag designed for carrying flat paks of furniture. Now maybe just maybe I can fill some of the reference gaps I keep running into.

And the poor housemate has a bad knee and was suffering so badly, someone got her a chair while I was upstairs. (They removed the easy chairs from the ground-floor browsing area as part of the COVID stuff.)