Et in California ego

I know, I've used that subject line before. Don't care. It's too good to pass up.

And yes: here I am, tho' not without adventures. Including an almost-total meltdown in Heathrow security when they couldn't find my return booking and wouldn't let me fly without it and I apparently hadn't printed out that bit of the itinerary and I had to phone Karen from my mobile in the middle of a busy airport and it was 6am in CA and I got her voicemail and aaargh! Please not to say, if you can imagine anything worse for a Chaz. But I phoned again and the second time she answered, and she was a voice of calm rationality against my panic and once we had told the silly people where to look they said "oh yes, there you are," and all was well. Ish.

And the immigration person at Chicago said "What's happening, Charles? This is a very odd pattern of visits," and I was Direct and Honest and explained about the visa application &c, and he Made Notes On My File. Ahem. Nothing negative, he said, but... Yeah.

Anyway. Here I am. Slept overnight in Chicago, after a last phonecall with Karen, when she reminded me that the clocks were going forward; and I'd booked an early alarm call anyway and was worried that it might not be early enough, so when I woke and drowsed and woke again and thought the sky was looking brighter I figured I should probably start waking up. So I did that, and wandered through to the bathroom and drifted about a bit and finally spotted an actual clock on the far side of the bed (I never make it all across the bed, in US hotels) and discovered that actually it was 2.15am Chicago time, and I'd only slept a couple of hours before my body remembered that it was eight-ish UK time and I really should be waking, so...

So by then I was pretty much awake. Went back to bed and drowsed but didn't sleep, and so by 3.30 I was working through an idea for a story, and by 5.30 I was writing it. Just the opening page, but it's going to be a slightly steampunk fantasy mystery with no magic (I love fantasies with no magic), where the solution is going to be both rigorously logical and utterly dependent on its fantasy environment (It Couldn't Happen Here). Needless to say, I have no idea what the mystery is yet, let alone the solution, but I'm determined to cover both those bases. And the character is called Logic Hallelujah Chain, because I was that tired and halfway hallucinating; and yes, his initials are LHC, and no, of course I am not going to be inserting sly references to doughnuts and toroids and particles and such*.

His given names are Logic and Hallelujah; his family name is Chain. That’s a heavy thing for a boy to drag behind him. But he grew big, and he grew quiet, and he grew ... oblique. At school the bullies learned to be afraid of him, and the masters too, a little. Cross Chain, and there would be a price to pay. Walk with him, and there would be rewards.
I walked in his shadow, when he would let me: in school and out of school, in the precincts and in the world. There was shelter there, and danger, and enchantment.
There still is.
I still do.
When he will let me.

And then there was yet more airport and yet more plane, that seemed to last for ever: but at the end of it was Karen. And now I am here, and we are drinking our first glass of Firefly Ridge, and life is good.

Also, there are boys. Who seem vaguely pleased to see me here, as an adjunct or addendum to Karen.

I haven't yet spotted either of the turtles.

Also, I am just astonishingly tired, tho' I don't expect to sleep. And I left my house in a hell of a state, so I feel all guilty about that; I needed an extra week, but I would probably always have needed an extra week, so.

I have programming at FogCon, which is generous of them, as I didn't fill in the proper forms on time. Come to FogCon, California people!

And today we had lunch at Hobee's, as is our Sunday tradition (it's usually brunch, but the food remains the same; coffee cake continues not to be flavoured with coffee), and tonight we're having dinner at Kabul, as is our first-night tradition. See, we already have traditions...

*The hell I won't.

Lemon fresh

I read where cats are put off by the taste and smell of citrus. This has sunk into me so deep, I just read where the advice was to use lemon oil on your mission oak desk, and I thought "well, maybe not: don't want to drive the cats away."

Ahem. Barry is sitting beside the laptop here, chewing fresh lemon leaves from John's tree. Don't ask me.

In other news, I have a mission oak desk. Or I will have, on Thursday. It's old and big, and I like these attributes. It has one drawer that locks another. It has a file drawer, and other drawers. And now that I am a Whole New Chaz I should take good care of it, because I don't think it's been much cared for; and I should start while it's empty, yes? Hence the looking for instructions on how to care for old and tired mission oak furniture.

Also, I have a chair. The nice lady tried to sell me a blue one, but I wasn't having that. This one's brown.

In other other news, I have just changed the time zone on the LHP. This may not sound so dramatic, but I use Ubuntu, and the time/date option in the regular system settings is broken in this iteration. Last time, I had to poke about in fora and follow fairly complex directions for a fix that I thought would endure, but hasn't. This time? sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata, and pick your city from a list. Which doesn't list Sunnyvale, or even San Francisco, but hey. I don't mind pretending I live in Los Angeles, if it gives me the time.

Which is 6.21 as I type, and I've been up an hour and awake ... some period longer. The boys have had Early Breakfast, and been prevented from sneaking outside, and also from disturbing Karen (I hope). I am currently preventing myself from working, by noodling on the internets. Hullo, internets. *noodles*

FogCon schedule

FogCon is the last weekend of March, and if you're in striking-distance of the Bay Area, you should totally come. *nods* (It was fab last year, a newborn literary con on this coast; we hope to be regulars there.)

My schedule:

Saturday
10:30 a.m.
Best Alien Ever
Some aliens are just humans with funny foreheads. But sometimes an author creates an alien that stretches your mind or makes you see ordinary humans in a whole different light. What makes for an alien species worth reading about? What are the most extraordinary aliens authors have successfully portrayed?
Salon A
Theresa Mecklenborg
Chaz Brenchley
Juliette Wade
Ann Wilkes

Sunday
1:00 p.m.
Reading 11
Santa Rosa
Daniel Marcus
David Levine
Chaz Brenchley

So what should I read? House of Bells should just be out - but in the UK, it's not due in the US till July. A short story, maybe? An old favourite, a chunk of work in progress, what...?

Went the day well?

I dunno, really. I've spent all day feeling like I was working up towards getting some work done on this story - "Only Logical", its title, at the moment; I dream of a series of ever-increasing complexity, from "Geological" to "Epiphenomenological", but I do so often see stories as part of a series that I seldom actually complete - but all day there's been something else to do first. This morning I went for a walk, just to shop a little and touch base with Sunnyvale; I knew where I was going and what I was going for, and yet somehow it still took three hours, which was all the morning that remained. And this afternoon I had to take the shopping - not much: just stewing beef and vegetables, really - and convert that into a meal for tonight (beef stew, obviously, since you ask; with potatoes a la Chaz and balsamic-roasted brussels and shallots). And I'm still kind of shattered, and moving quite slowly. And stopping now and then just to understand that I am here, and that the boys are too, and that things are different now. I'm really quite scared about that, and at the same time quite startled how at home I feel. This house has been my second home for a while, I suppose - but this time I remembered about the smoke alarm in time to close the door to the utility room when the beef was smoking, only I couldn't leave it closed because the boys need access out there, so instead I opened the kitchen window which instantly drew one boy and then the other, and I worried about the insect-screen because honestly one slash and a cat would be through it, but so far they have both behaved like gentlecats and just sat there gazing through the mesh and sniffing the breeze and yearning. Which is a bit like me, really.