I received my author copies this week. Weather being what it is, and having had boxes of books left in mud puddles before, I kept an eye out for the delivery.

I missed the books arriving by a couple hours, and true to form, they were left in a puddle. Luckily, weather being what it's been lately, the puddle had refrozen by the time the books arrived.

The new edition didn't quite hit 1000 pages. But there's over 900 pages of info in it.

Again, weather being what it is...

I attended a dance social with a weather forecast of "maybe yes, maybe no". In Michigan, that means "maybe yes snow, maybe more snow".

To tease the fates, when we were dancing to "16 Tons", I sang my version of the song for my partner:

  You shovel sixteen inches and what do you get?
  A foot of partly cloudy that's sticky and wet.
  There's trucks workin' overtime and ain't it a sin.
  I'm just shoveled out and they're plowin me in
  
  A snowflake is nuthin but water and ice
  You're lookin' at one and it's pretty and nice
  You see a couple million fallin' out of the sky
  And you just shake your head and you ask yourself why

  You shovel sixteen inches and what do you get?
  A foot of partly cloudy that's sticky and wet.
  There's trucks workin' overtime and ain't it a sin.
  I'm just shoveled out and they're plowin me in

  I woke up mornin' when the sun didn't shine.
  The weather channel said that the weather'd be fine.
  I grabbed my shovel and I ran for the drive.
  There's a foot of partly-cloudy by the time I arrived.

She laughed at the right spots, so I counted it a win.

The gods of snow counted a direct provocation.

When I left the dance, the parking lot was wet, but the snow in town had all melted.

Halfway home, that changed.

I drove significantly slower than usual and by the time I got home there was some 3 or 4 inches of snow on my driveway.

A smooth, frosty blanket covering a thin layer of ice.

Halfway up the driveway my car refused to consider this as a viable endeavor.

I did not try to back down my driveway in the dark. I've read that story before and I know how it ends. I left the car there and walked up the rest of the hill. My summer-weather shoes get better traction than the all-weather tires seem to manage.

On Sunday, after the day warmed up, I argued that it's now March. Winter is over and getting stuck in the snow is just so last month.

My impeccable logic convinced the car to climb the rest of the way up the hill.

I finished the week with a trip to Cleveland -- second prize is *TWO* trips to Cleveland, as the old joke goes.

This was for the Concoction SF convention. Concoction is a fun, small (roughly 300 folks) event. What they do that's cool is they have a room set aside for authors to display (and sell) their books for free. I sold a few books including a copy of my Tcl/Tk book.

I managed to sell more books than I bought, though it was close.

One of the folks I chatted with is an author who ended up starting his own publishing house, rather than just release his books via Amazon. I'm having delusions in which it seems simpler to become a publisher than try to get other publishers to actually promote my works.

I'm still trying to talk myself out of this silly idea. I'd have to set up a bunch of infrastructure like web sales, shipping and such if I got serious about it.

I may have an attack of reality and remember I retired for a reason, and it wasn't to start a high-effort/low-income company.

On the way home, I enjoyed (not) the thrilling sight of blinking lights in my rear view mirror.

The issue wasn't my speed, it was the amount of Michigan I'd carried into Ohio and was now carrying home without leaving enough of a deposit. The fact that a significant percentage of Michigan was covering my license plate was the real issue.

I explained about dirt roads and the cop agreed that this was a problem. She borrowed a fast-food napkin left over from lunch and wiped my license clean, checked that I wasn't on a no-fly list and sent me on my way with an admonition to wipe off the plate more often.

I need a license plate wiper, like the windshield wiper, with a heavy-duty spray jet.

This doesn't exist, and I'm thinking I might have to invent it.