Living in Library Land

For the last couple of days I have been commuting down with Kate and heading over to the Indianapolis Interim Library on Alabama Street. The interim library is housed in this beautiful four story building with an open center that allows you to look up to the fresco on the dome inside. There are a number of computers and hundreds of nooks and crannies to find books, magazines, videos, music, and microfiche. I go to study, read, and check email and I have run into a couple of characters along the way.

When ever I go to the library I head to the second floor East wing where magazines G-M are kept as well as the 000-400 books in the card catalog. There are three computers in that space and there is usually a free one for me to merge onto the information superhighway. Soon after arriving my first friend usually gets there as well. I like to call my friend "Works at Arby's Guy". He is Steve Erkel with out the glasses. He has high-water black pants on, white socks, black shoes, and well worn burgundy polo shirt that hasn't been washed for a couple of days. "Works at Arby's Guy" likes to check on the breaking Star Trek news each day and will spend upwards of 3 hours a day reading nothing but Star Trek web sites before heading off to work.

About a half hour in "Retooling his resume" guy joins us and grabs as many Resume books as he can hold and starts to work on his resume. He hits Monster, Careerbuilder, and Yahoo Jobs and works on his resume constantly. He has 47 versions of his resume saved to various yahoo briefcases and I'd like to put $100 on the over at Vegas, I think the line is +/- 100 for the year.

My last buddy in the library is Homeless Joe. Homeless Joe is an old black man with dreads in his hair and beard and he comes in to read fashion magazines each day. He goes into the magazine archives and grabs stacks of Glamour and flips through them muttering to himself. I haven't worked up the nerve to find out what he is looking for but I have vowed to find out by the end of next week. Homeless Joe tells me to "Mind the first step" each time I leave and I tell him "You too" cause I'm a moron.

I'm gonna start volunteering at Redeemer, the church I go to so I won't be spending as much time at the library any more. I wonder if my friends will notice I'm gone. I wonder if they have come up with a name for me.