I haven’t given an update on the weight loss regime in a while, so I thought today should be the day.

Total pounds lost since January: 35
Final weight loss goal: 100
Pounds left to lose: 65

But that’s a two year goal, so I’m doing okay so far. I realized the other day (as I was talking to M, which is pretty much a daily given), that I was reaching a point where I was going to need to really start dedicating myself to an exercise program if I wanted to continue losing at the rate I’m currently losing. There’s only so much you can cut your food intake, you know? If you’re already eating healthy, then something else has to give. So that means regularly scheduled exercise.

Frankly, I’m rather meh about that. Exercise requires sweat. I hate sweating. There’s only one form of exercise worth sweating for, and I’m single, so that’s out. Dang it.

But I also haven’t worked out regularly in a long time, so I wanted to start slow and build up. For me, that’s going to mean yoga and power walking on the treadmill. I think I can do that and not feel like someone beat me with a crowbar the next day. I’m hoping if I get really good at the working out thing (ha ha, Crys made a funny), I want to start lifting weights and get really awesome looking arms. No more arm wings! Those who have chubby arms know exactly what I’m talking about there.

Wish me luck on the next round of Project Get Healthy!

I’m doing my monthly blog over at Aphrodisia Authors today, talking about rereading favorite romance classics.

PCA/ACA 2010 National Conference
St. Louis, Missouri, March 31 – April 3, 2010
Call For Papers: Romance Area

(Conference info:  http://pcaaca.org/conference/national.php)

Deadline for submission:  November 30, 2009.

We are interested in any and all topics about or related to popular romance:  all genres, all media, all countries, all kinds, and all eras. All representations of romance in popular culture (fiction, stage, screen—large or small, commercial, advertising, music, song, dance, online, real life, etc.), from anywhere and anywhen, are welcome topics of discussion.

We are considering proposals for individual papers, sessions organized around a theme, and special panels. Sessions are scheduled in one-hour slots, ideally with four papers or speakers per standard session.

If you are involved in the creative industry of popular romance (romance author/editor, film director/producer, singer/songwriter, etc.) and are interested in speaking on your own work or on developments in the representations of popular romance, please contact us! 

Some possible topics (although we are by no means limited to these):
Popular Romance on the World Stage (texts in translation, Western and non-Western media, local and comparative approaches)
Romance Across the Media: crossover texts and the relationships between romance fiction and romantic films, music, art, drama, etc.; also the paratexts and contexts of popular romance
Romance High and Low: texts that fall between “high” and “low” culture, or that complicate the distinctions between these critical categories

Romance Then and Now: representations of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Modern, Postmodern love

Romancing the Marketplace: romantic love in advertising, marketing, and consumer culture

Queering the Romance: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender romance, and representations of same-sex love within predominantly heterosexual texts

BDSM Romance and representations of romantic/erotic power exchange
Romance communities

New Critical Approaches, such as readings informed by critical race theory, queer theory, postcolonial studies, or empirical science (e.g., the neurobiology of love)

The Politics of Romance, and romantic love in political discourse (revolutionary, reactionary, colonial / anti-colonial, etc.)

Individual Creative Producers or Texts of Popular Romance (novels, authors, film, directors, writers, songwriters, actors, composers, dancers, etc.)

Gender-Bending and Gender-Crossing / Genre-Bending and Genre-Crossing / Media-Bending and Media-Crossing Popular Romance
African-American, Latina, Asian, and other Multicultural romance
Young Adult Romance

History of/in Popular Romance

Romance and Region:  places, histories, mythologies, traditions
Definitions and Theoretical Models of Popular Romance: it’s not all just happily ever after

As we did for the past two years, the Romance area will meet in a special Open Forum to discuss upcoming conferences, work in progress, and the future of the field of Popular Romance Studies.  Of particular interest this year:  the new International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) with its affiliated annual conferences and scholarly publication, Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS).  

Presenters are encouraged to make use of the new array of romance scholarship resources online, including the romance bibliography, the RomanceScholar listserv, and the open Forums at the webpage of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance. 

Submit a one-page (200-300 words) proposal or abstract (via regular mail or e-mail) by November 15, 2009, to the Area Chairs in Romance:

Sarah S. G. Frantz
Department of English and Foreign Languages
Fayetteville State University
1200 Murchison Road
Fayetteville, NC 28301
(910) 672-1438
sarahfrantz@gmail.com

Darcy Martin
Women’s Studies
East Tennessee State University
P.O. Box 70571
Johnson City, TN 37614
(423) 439-6311
martindj@etsu.edu    

If you have any questions as all, please contact one or both of the area chairs.  Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.

Dear Parking Enforcement Officer,

While I realize that you were just doing your job this morning directing traffic on the first week of school, and you were doing so inside the parking garage because apparently licensed drivers in the state of California are too dimwitted to know how a parking garage works, but I digress.

Where was I? Oh, yes, directing traffic inside the parking garage. I have to say, sir, that I am more than a little irritated that you stood in front of the ramp to the second floor and forced me to park on the first floor. While I understand that I arrive early and the first floor is never full when I get there, I arrive early for just this reason. When I am early I get to pick where I park and am not forced to park in just any space that happens to be available. There are, in fact, reasons that I don’t park on the first floor, such as, in that particular garage, the way you have the first floor arranged is almost guaranteed to bottleneck traffic, make people mad, and cause accidents.

Thus I park in a very specific area of the second floor. Not the same space every day, of course–I’m not that OCD–but in the area that is the easiest to get out of and the least likely to get me stuck behind some minivan trying to stuff itself in a compact space.

So, I am annoyed with you and with other drivers that made it necessary for you to be in my parking garage this morning and disrupt my perfectly planned and normally well-timed parking experience.

Also, because I had to jockey for a space with the fifty other cars you forced to park on the first floor, you made me late for work.

Fuck you very much,
Crystal

One of the big differences between my old job in Utah and my new job in California is the kind of university I work at. In Utah, I was still in a medium-to-large city, but in California, I’m right downtown. Which means dealing with the occasional tweaker, crackhead, alcoholic, homeless person, and/or…general crazy person.

That’s the background for this little story.

So, I was leaving the library yesterday and walking down the street to the parking garage when a man in an electric wheelchair came speeding up–I should note here than he was driving in a remarkably straight line for someone who reeked of whiskey–and stopped right in front of me. He stares at my chest and said, “I don’t know if she has children, but I told that lady she had nice breasts.”

I blinked. Tried not to snort. Stepped around him. Kept going and hoped he didn’t decide to follow me in his very fast wheelchair that could SO beat me in a race.

So. Um. Thank you, homeless man? I’m not sure if he was talking about MY breasts, since he said “she” rather than “you” or if I was measuring up unfavorably to some chesty broad in his mind, but…okay.

I may, apparently, have nice breasts, but maybe not. Still not sure how that would relate to having children, unless he thought the nice breasts were due to breastfeeding, but…perhaps applying logic here is giving him a little too much benefit of the doubt.

Okay, I’m not really that entertaining or funny, but I’ve been entertaining people lately. I had dinner last Saturday with the very pregnant Gemma Halliday, where I gave her all the latest gossip with me and told her all about RWA, which she had to miss because she has her belly alien about to hatch. I got pics of the baby belly.

Being author-types, we went on to the bookstore to sign stock and found our friend Shelli Stevens’s new book.

We were also randomly amused by some classic harlequin titles.

Then, on Monday, I ran around and scooped Kate Pearce up from her house and dragged her into San Francisco, where we sprang IASPR President Sarah Frantz from the airport during her million-hour lay-over for some food and chattering. The restaurant, suggested by Mr. Pearce, was fabulous. Don’t tell Weight Watchers, but I totally had the chocolate cake with fudge sauce and ice cream. Mmmm.

Sarah and Kate.

Me and Sarah.

Today on Smutketeers, the awesome and multi-talented agent/author Deidre Knight!

Come visit!

M sent this to me. I am still cracking up. It’s kinda wrong, and yet…bwah ha ha ha!

Lucienne Diver aka Agent Awesomesauce is blogging for me over at the Smutketeers today.

Come visit!