Thursday, January 04, 2007
1:52 PM
Well, I got my books today. Getting books has always been quite the process. You begin by finding a parking spot downtown, which it usually a little crazy and you end up about 5 blocks away from the union. So you feed the meter, and you're not quite sure how long this is going to take so you take into account your 10 block hike back and forth to the union as well as waiting in line to first have them ring up your books and charge it to you NCard. Then you wait in line once again to actually pick up your books and then you haul two 30 pound sacks of books back to your car. Generally, eh, around a 2 hour process. Today I went downtown and right away found a parking spot less than a block away. Not too shabby. Feeling optimistic, I put 3 quarters in the meter giving me about an hour and a half. Hey, it's the second day. How long could the line be? I get to the union to find that there is NOT the usual 100 people line waiting to have their card swiped, in fact there is no line for that at all. I go down to the bookstore to have a look around to make sure i'm in the right spot and I over heard some other guy ask a cashier where we pick up our textbooks at and she said, "upstairs..." So, I headed back upstairs, past the food court to the area where they keep all the reserved books at. There were only 4 of us there so I wasn't sure if this was the right spot or not but I thought I'd give it a chance. It was my turn in line after only having to wait for one person and she swiped my card and got my box (yes, they gave us nice boxes this year) and looked though it and said that mine was perfect. I wasn't missing anything and nothing was backordered. Wow, that was easy. I walked back to my car to find out that that only took me 10 minutes. I couldn't believe it. I even got some used books this year. I guess it pays to go early. Although, i'm a little dissappointed that I left someone an hour and a half of free meter time, but who knows. Maybe they didn't have change or something and maybe I saved them a parking ticket. Maybe I made their day. I hope so.