damn, why do I do that so often, just hitting return in the wrong place. Info I wanted to add: xfce guys say the following on their website: Xfce 4.2.1.1 has been released quickly after 4.2.1. It includes a fix for a bad bug where panel loses its configuration when saving the session in 4.2.1. The Sourceforge server has been updated, and other mirrors will follow soon. as far as I can see, there's still 4.2.1 in portage.
xfce4-4.2.1.1 is in the tree