Conference and Beachcombing

[lavendertook]

I'm going to the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando tomorrow to deliver a Tolkien paper on Friday--wish me luck! I've been majorly stressed out the last two weeks--Raceail09 absorbed so much of my energy and emotional life these past 2 months, as with so many of us, and that put me behind in getting my paper done, but I finished it this weekend and that has been a load of stress off. And luckily nothing overly stressful came up at work the past few weeks. Now I'm stressing over packing and have some social anxiety over the conference, but I should have internet access, so I will be somewhat around, though I'll be more behind in replying. So I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with commenting. There's also some things that have been bothering me that I've been wanting to post about, but I need to create some filters and I just haven't been able to find the time.

I'm pleased with my pregnant transgendered hobbit paper! It's much tighter than the article length paper I wrote a few years ago (before I even found slash fandom!). All those years in grad school, so I can say "I love hobbits and here's why" in theoretically enhanced language. Hey, it's a stupid life, but someone has to live it. I'll put the paper up in a locked entry later if you're interested--so many posts I want to do and never get to doing! I want to revise the article length paper when I get back--I've refigured race as gender in the paper which is problematic, and I need to go back in and work that through now that I've got more ideas on how to tackle it. Anyway, making sure I submit it to Mythlore, as Verlyn told me to do years ago, is on top of my to do list for this summer.

I'm looking forward to seeing ithiliana and aprilkat again, and meeting a couple of other Tolkien fan LJers, and meeting esmeraldus_neo, hopefully it will be OK for me to talk with supergee, and hopefully I'll get to see a couple other old friends and acquaintances.

Then I'm going to rent a car and drive down to Sanibel Island for a couple of days to collect tiny beautiful shells and walk on the beach. I'm looking forward to listening to a cd jan_u_wine sent me on the way down. And of course there will be photo shoots of hobbit dolls on the beach for upcoming storylines. The only bad thing about traveling is not being able to take my kitties with me. OK, back to figuring out what to wear and packing.

Comments

[melyanna-65.livejournal.com]

Awww, I can't wait to see your pics when you're ready!

That icon is lovely, isn't it? You know I'm a hopeless kitty lover (like you) and dear mole_caz manipped that pic of Frodo adding a kitty for my birthday, a couple of years ago. It just begged to be an icon too! I think that Frodo and a kitty are my perfect idea of what happiness is!

*hugs*

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

I'm in total agreement! *cuddles*