Library

I’m camped out in the mezzanine lobby of the Prince George Public Library, plugged in at least, warm at least, unmolested or very nearly so, putting in the time waiting for the Vancouver Bus at 3:30 or 4 or 4:15. Or something. Every now and then a hapless Prince Georgeite climbs the circular stairs to rattle the library door and enquire about the hours, then inevitably reads the door and blushes a little before wandering off to the health fair in the conference center below. It’s a big building, modeled vaguely as all big civic buildings in BC seem to be these days, on the longhouse or some variation thereof. In the previous century but one the buildings were English Colonial, kind of a beaux-arts Whitehall replica in as much stone as they could drag together.
Taking another look, I have to say there's a bit of Michael Graves involved here  And some really good oil-field type welding, panoplies and canopies and towers and arches out of 3 inch pipe in roman curves supporting pagodas and crennelations for no good reason but excellent and playfully formal if there is such a thing, all to good effect.

I have opted to endure this level of boredom to avoid the greater evil of a nine-hour layover in Vancouver in the middle of the night. So I have an eight hour layover in PG in the day, and its not raining, cold as it is, so good to go. They kicked me out of the depot so it could close at 10, they will let me back in at 3. I went to the coffee joint the local Starbucks clone but the loudspeakers were braying some mindless repetitive Canadian Pop Bitch music at high volume and I couldn’t take it, even though the thermometer is hovering barely above 0 Celsius, which is way more dramatic than 32 F and still colder than is comfortable even with my new thrift store generic winter sweater, goose down jacket, gloves, scarf and cap.

They opened the Safeway by the depot finally at 8, we having arrived at 6:15, nice guy driver, Scots accent Sean Connery look/soundalike let me have the very front seat and conversated a bit in the midnight, there were approximately damn few passengers all the way, including the kid we dropped off at some mining camp, dozens of doublewides lined up for barracks way out between nowhere and somewhere worse, at 4 in the morning, poor bastard.

My butt is sore from the ceramic-tile-on-concrete floor but like I say, I’m plugged in, got food and chocolate milk, so good to go.