peeing in a hole

Since numerous readers have commented on my positive attitude as of late, I'll indulge myself one episode of being a complaintive grad student conducting research in the former Soviet Union.

It is really freakin' cold in the archives. No one has turned on the heat yet, and they really, really need to. The lighting is also really terrible, and I've noticed that I already need a new prescription for my glasses.

As many of you know, I'm horribly allergic to dust. This poses a real problem when I try to spend all day reading newspapers published in 1888, as I did yesterday. My solution is to wash my hands and face every thirty minutes, which seems to cut down on the sneezing and headaches. But, there was an "accident" in the library bathrooms--don't know and don't want to know what sort--and they were closed altogether. Being unable to wash up, I was sneezing up a storm. You also can't come and go freely: you have to surrender your card and a slip of paper to the librarian, and the guard only lets you exit once you've returned all your materials and gotten a small collection of stamps on your little slip. As time passed, I was really needing to go to the bathroom. I finally asked the librarian what I should do. She said she'd hold my materials and give me my exit stamps, and advised me to run across the street to a park and pee in a hole there. Which I did!! Good think I already had a variety of camping supplies (toilet paper, hand sanitizer, etc.) in my purse, which you need in even the "real" bathrooms of libraries and archives here.