So sad right now. Apparently the Naperville library no longer has a subscription to the OED as of a few months ago. And the Chicago public library claims that I lost one of their books — I emphatically did not; I had 18 books overdue at one time, sure, but I did not lose any of them and I’ve paid my fines for the lateness — and won’t let me use their online resources till I pay them for the book I didn’t lose. Incidentally, the NU library still wants $10 for a book they lost and then found: oh, what I mean is, in case that wasn’t clear, is that they lost the book, they found the book, and then they nonchalantly wondered if maybe I’d give them a $10 service fee of some sort to cover the hassle of them losing, then finding, within a week, their book. Haha. Libraries! So great, and yet I’m so terrible at using them. Oh, but it really does seem terrible that the Naperville library doesn’t provide OED access anymore. Seems like something that would benefit the students at what realtors like to claim are two of the state’s best public school districts, yeah? And which continued excellence at educating kids might continue to kind-of legitimize the high property taxes and the high cost of houses and the high cost of pretty much everything. No, but I’m glad to see that the library at least spent money to update their ugly-but-workable website with a new ugly-but-workable one.

I mock because I love though, swearsies. Maybe it’s just because in the cash-flush late 90s and early 00s the staff thought nothing of cranking up the thermostat, but my memories of the Naperville library from that time are all warm, all long, warm snowy Saturdays, sitting with a pile of Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys. Oh, but, if the NU library wouldn’t mind giving me back the bit of my soul it took and probably squirreled away in the fifth floor Transportation Library a few years ago, that’d be swell; although it’s also possible I lost that soul by my own carelessness, when it spilled out of my open mouth as I spent all that time napping in Periodicals (with a copy of Mother Jones or Utne daintily draped over my chest, of course, because even when I was so obviously crass and boorish, sleeping in a library, it was important to signal my progressive politics).