And on a side note...

San Fran not only admits the existence of pregnant women, but actually provides them with multiple attractive clothing options. This is quite a difference from Colorado, where in the Boulder/Longmont area I can choose from:

• two consignment stores that carry other people's cast-off maternity clothes;
  
• 2 maternity racks at Target;
  
• 2 maternity racks at JC Penney;
  
• one nice but often overpriced new clothing/ nursing store for expectant mothers. At least they have good sale racks, but regular prices are circa $60 for pants and $30+ for t-shirts, which is a bit much for my taste given that I'll be able to wear them at most a few months.
  

For an urban area approaching 100,000 in population, you'd think we could do a little better. I have to drive to Broomfield to go to chain stores like the Gap, Old Navy, Motherhood Maternity, and so forth. Even the big department stores like Macy's and Dillard's don't have maternity sections in Boulder. So it's been a pleasure to be here in SF and have perhaps 10 shopping options within a square mile of the hotel, even though I've done far more looking than purchasing.

Most of the time I think I live in one of the more wonderful places in the world. So hop to it, one of you local readers who's into fashion or has a great business plan, and meet the needs of the Boulder-area moms. We have nothing to lose but our sweatpants! (And any readers with good online mama-clothing resources, bring 'em on in the comments field, please.)

SF part IV: hopefully not as bad as Star Wars I.

I go home on a late-evening flight tonight so may yet post from the airport if my flight is endlessly delayed.

Today was a lovely day for the end of the trip. Woke up early and relatively well-rested, and went down to the Ferry Building's fabulous farmers' market on Saturday mornings. This trip has been one of those "best of my life" eating experiences. If I could make you all bran/currant/ citrus peel muffins like the one I had this morning from the rather generically named Downtown Bakery, you would be in love with muffins. Seriously, packed with nutrition and the most melt-in-your-mouth yumminess possible in a muffin-shaped package. Had I many many days, I would also have gotten their extremely popular "donut muffin" but I wasn't in a sugary mood this morning.

The family in front of me in line had a family story that I suspect they'll treasure for a long time. A married couple probably late 50's-early 60's and their college-age daughter were in line at the bakery and the guy got bored and wandered off, promising to return in 5 minutes to meet the women. He wandered off whistling, and a passerby thought he was a panhandling musician and gave him a dollar! We teased him that he could keep his family in muffins if he went for a longer walk. :) My father is also a whistler and I have many happy memories of chasing him around the house as a little kid shouting "Kill the bird!" and getting in tickle fights when I caught him. Anyway, happy memories for all. And fabulous muffins.

I went to one last conference session this morning on writing and rhetoric. The session itself was an interesting look at new media in the writing classroom and the tradeoffs between engaging students and teaching them what they need to know to succeed in upper-level coursework and traditional academic writing. I fall on the "blog postings aren't sufficient to equip students to write journal articles" side of this divide, in case you're wondering. However, I got several useful ideas for ways to incorporate video, audio, music, and wikis/ blogs into lesson plans aimed at teaching basic rhetorical concepts. These may prove useful if I get the job I'm interviewing for next week.

I have a teaching interview! Woot! Even though it may not pan out for a variety of reasons (pregnancy anyone?) I'm so glad to make someone's finalist list somewhere that I have been spending my spare hours here planning my sample class. I may get to teach writing next year yet; we'll see how all the various offers and joint appointment possibilities and interviews go in the weeks ahead. But that's to think about after my return home.

After the end of the panel, and hotel checkout, I headed up to North Beach. Had a lovely veggie risotto for lunch at Pomodoro Trattoria, then hung out in Washington Square Park and read the whole paper on the grass in the sunshine. It's around 70 degrees and super-sunny here today so could hardly be a more delightful afternoon to spend by myself.

SF part III: usually the best part of the trilogy.

So today I went across town and saw this.
It was quite mindblowing. She is an amazing artist and getting to see images of her personal life juxtaposed with her more famous celebrity images really gave a sense of where she got her eye for personalities.

I also ate here, and here (actually at their take-out place Out the Door), and here, and had dessert here which I can't recommend quite highly enough. As usual, I am eating my way through the city because I'm really, really appreciative of getting to sit still and have adult conversation or read a paper/ book while I eat.

And the conference? I met Emily Toth of Ms. Mentor fame, for those of you who read her advice column in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Great fun to hear people give advice regarding academic colleagues and how to deal with sticky situations.

Also, I attended a panel with a famous feminist essayist of the early 1970's on the subject of whether gender roles in the household have changed. What was the outcome, you might ask? Roughly: women under 35 attending the panel thought men had changed considerably from the situation described in the essay. Older women (of so-called "second wave" age, roughly 50 and up) insisted that nothing had changed or that things had even gotten worse for women since now they were also expected to work outside the home. Those of us young' uns with statistics on our side could demonstrate that men are indeed taking on more childcare than they used to, but women are giving up free time and housework to spend more time with the kids as well. Discussion showed a more complex issue than the panelists wanted to deal with, perhaps.

SF part deux: the return.

My panel went, honestly, better than expected. We had a turnout of 12 people, which made it the largest panel I went to on the first day. The other two presenters talked about nationality in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and performance art on a traffic island in NYC, so it was a diverse and interesting panel. The performance artist had also been filmed as part of the project and had many relevant insights into how the public gaze worked, after spending 72 hours in a woman's "boudoir" constructed in the middle of a downtown Manhattan intersection. I've met several roleplayers and cosplayers here who had further thoughts about the directions that LARP research could go in, which has been fruitful fodder for my own future scholarly work. Dinner last night was with a few panel attendees at a local Irish pub, with quite the authentic menu and also quite the loud Irish musician helping us to decide what we should do with the drunken sailor early in the morning.

Other panels I've been to so far investigated links between video sports games and steroid use (video game users are less likely to use drugs); death as a narrative device in solo-player console gaming; Brecht's alienation effect in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas; Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, and the new "upscale" male; and gender in World of Warcraft. If it's happened in film, on television, online, or plugged into a socket, there's probably a bunch of scholars here talking about it. As I discovered to my benefit today there are also non-electronic culture groups here, including fashion, commodities, and food culture.

The most interesting adventure to date was a panel led by local Chowhounds. Chowhound.com is a very active board for foodies who live in certain major U.S. cities (sorry, Denver/Boulderites, we're grouped in with the "Midwest"). Five Chowhounds led a panel discussion of all sorts of local and national foods. Then we took a bus and went on a walking tour of Chinatown complete with deli tour, pineapple buns, and a fortune cookie factory. The tour was led by a native San Franciscan who lived in Chinatown as a child and still lives in the Bay area, so he knew the true local spots quite well. (Nothing like a bunch of conference nerds, many still wearing badges, clogging up already busy sidewalks in an area where they can't read the language on the signs.) There were about 20 of us on the tour so it was a great chance to meet people from across the conference disciplines and to try some amazing food together while getting out for a walk on a beautiful day.

SF part I.

Today I’m on my way to San Francisco for the Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association conference. My flight was delayed this morning, but only for about half an hour, so I should still have time to check in and register before my presentation this evening.

This is the largest conference I’ve ever been to as an academic. The estimated number of participants is around 3,000 people, and there are 30 concurrent sessions running at a time for four straight days. Paradoxically, this has the effect of making me less nervous about my own presentation. There are so many options to choose from in every single timeslot that I’m betting my audience will be fairly small. Also, my panel was assigned to the 6:30-8 p.m. timeslot on the conference’s first day, which means many people will skip out to go to dinner and get a head start on their first evening out of town.

I’m speaking on “The Hegemonic Geek: Gender in Live-Action Role Playing.” My basic argument is that roleplaying activities allow geeks of both genders to access hegemonic values that they can’t normally take on in real life. For example, a short, thin male doesn’t usually win fights in your typical high school, but can be a powerful warrior in a roleplaying environment.

I’m looking forward to comments and arguments from my audience about whether this kind of access is good or bad. For example: do males who roleplay combat exhibit more violent behaviors out of game, or does the game give them instead an acceptable release for aggressive tensions? Do females who take on roles such as “serving wench” and “high-borne lady” explore useful terrain, or simply reinforce existing stereotypes about women’s beauty and sexuality? I’ll blog later tonight or tomorrow about how the presentation went, and tell you about the other people on my panel.

On a personal note, I missed my family by the time I hit the bridge to terminal A in the airport. The bug loves the moving walkways, and it felt really odd to be moving through the airport without counting to three and jumping on the escalators. Thanks to recent technology purchases, I now have an iSight, so I can make a video call to them and see how their day was. It’s probably immediately obvious that I don’t travel much on my own, for work or otherwise. It blows my mind that there are women who do this monthly, or weekly, and have found ways to manage emotionally as well as practically. This trip is relatively short and it will be enjoyable (Daytime naps! Cable! See “what I’d do with a weekend alone…” post below). However, one of the reasons it’s so great is that I only do this once or twice a year, so I look forward to it instead of dreading one more set of airport hassles.

No news is just no news.

Now that you all know our big news, there is a lot of "hurry up and wait" going on right now in our household. There's no closure on anything right now but I'm getting used to living in a state of suspended disbelief/animation/whatever.

I'm still waiting on a candidate's reply regarding the job search I've been heading up the past few months. Job applications of my own are pending in two departments here in town and we'll see how that goes; maybe I'll get a chance to beg to teach somewhere in person in a month or two.

I've started rehearsals for a spring show at a local theatre company in Boulder. I'll be stage-managing "The Complete Works of Shakespeare(Abridged)"which will open May 1 at the Dairy Center. This first week has been tons of fun and I hurt from laughing after the first rehearsal, which I think bodes well for the comedic potential of the production.

Rehearsal and time-change exhaustion have sent most exercise plans for a loop this week but we did get a few good family walks in and lots of playground time in the sunshine, so there's something to be built on in the weeks ahead. Doctor's appointment today, so if all goes well we'll get to hear the baby's heartbeat again. This is my favorite part as it reassures me there is actually a creature in progress within.

My father- and mother-in-law were in town this week for skiing and grandchild adoration, both of which went according to plan. It was great to have them here for a few days to catch up on life in Wisconsin, and Miranda loves playing with her grandpa and grandma.

Thus, things are happening which make each day different and often enjoyable, but rather low-key to blog about.

At least, at last.

Still swamped in aforementioned papers and publications.

Still waiting to hear back from our candidate of choice to see if the job search I've been running is finally over.

Still procrastinating about the spring exercise plan due to another cold snap. I am done with winter. Days from now on are to be forty degrees and above, I officially decree.

My night elf hunter just hit 70 in World of Warcraft, so that's sucked up major free time in the past week. That's quite a new beginning for those of you non-players as I can now fly, something I've wanted to do since approximately kindergarten.

And tomorrow, I'll be four months pregnant. :)

Those are my excuses. Some of them are pretty good. What are yours?