I am currently ensconced in a nice room at the Crown Plaza Hotel
Georgia in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s not very large,
but it’s got a window (that opens!) overlooking the downtown street
scene, and if I sit in the one reasonably comfortable chair and put my
feet up on the bed I can look out on the street as I type. There’s an
upscale mall next door (translation–no book stores) and an art museum
across the street with a Georgia O’Keefe/Diego Rivera/Frida Kahlo exhibit
that ran from July 15th until precisely eleven minutes ago. I guess I
won’t be seeing it. I did manage to find a bookstore on the other side
of the mall, but it was one of those remainder stores. I got a copy of
The Pickwick Papers to read during dinner.

The voyage here from Los Angeles was less unpleasant than I expected.
Except that I had to take my laptop out of its case and put it in a large
plastic bin with my wallet, keys, and so forth, the security check-in
wasn’t much different than I’d encountered pre-9/11. Of course, I was at
a small airport at 8 AM on a Sunday morning. It wasn’t conspicuously
crowded. The flight to Seattle was uncrowded, as was the hop from
Seattle to Vancouver. The Airporter bus brought me straight to this
hotel, and now here I am with nothing much to do until registration opens
for my conference tomorrow morning at 8 AM.

Update: Score one for terminal stodginess. It has started to
rain; if I were more adventurous I’d be out in it. And I’m a Southern
California kid–I didn’t bring an umbrella.