It's not displacement if there's nothing to displace

Had a lovely day at Kepler's bookstore in Menlo Park yesterday. They were having an SF/F afternoon; I did a panel with Ellen Klages and Pat Murphy and Marie Brennan (supposedly "Which is better, SF or F?" - if we'd come to any kind of conclusion. it would've been "don't be silly"), but mostly we hung out with those folks and
Effie and Arley and others. Saw Steve Erikson and Tad Williams, but not to talk to; met Andy Weir; that sort of day. And signed lots of books, including a hardback edition of my Dragon in Chains (by Daniel Fox, which is me) that I do not believe I had ever seen before. (Just tried to order a copy from Abebooks for my brag shelf, only to have the order process fail on me at the last gasp, "Service Unavailable - Zero size object", whatever that may mean). Grr, and double grr: if Ballantine were going to put out a hardcover, they could've had the decency to send me one or two. Oh, and let me know they were doing it. People, really...

(Nosing around in Amazon, it looks like there are hardcovers of both Dragon in Chains and Jade Man's Skin, but not Hidden Cities. I suspect there were book-club deals involved. But I still think they could've sent me copies.)

Meanwhile, I have mostly been cleaning the kitchen, making inroads into sorting out my desk/office/life, reading proofs for other people, throwing out stacks of newspapers, planning an onslaught on the mud room - anything but writing. Empty vessels may as well be filled with scrub-water, say I.

I wonder...

Is there anything more intrinsically ironic than a disintegrating feather duster?

"How much dust?" "Too much dust!"

Okay, that's enough for cleaning of today. My arms are itchy and my breath is coming short. (I have an allergy. My British doctors gave me a charming piece of paper, that says I am forbidden to vacuum and someone else must always make the bed.)

Wine will wash the weary dust away. I shall drink wine and read Leckie. (Her Special Missions group is possibly a little too much like Special Circumstances, but hey: echoes of Iain are everywhere, and not necessarily a bad thing. I shall regard it as a conscious tribute, and read on.)

The boys' food bowls have disappeared from their constant and proper place; Barry is anxious. (I have washed them, and left them to dry; I don't propose to replace them till boys' tea-time, at 8.50. Besides, Barry is always anxious about something. Right now he's sitting on the wine fridge staring at the empty feeding-mat, but if he wasn't there he'd be somewhere else, worrying about something less obvious.)

Foodstuffs upcoming, apart from the boys' tea: late this month, of course, it's Thanksgiving and I must roast a bird. In December, of course we're marking Hogswatch with something large and piggy. A month after that, I have a bad feeling that I may have recently committed myself to making a haggis for Burns Night. Oy. Nothing to stress over there, then.