Flails Positive and Negative

Positive:

I'm leaving tomorrow for the first of two conferences. The first is PCA in Seattle, where I'm giving my paper on "The Problems of Fanfiction and Literary History" and speaking on two roundtables, "Shame, Gender, and Cultural Capital: The Problems of Reading Fanfiction" and "What is the Future of Vampire Studies?" And of course I get to hang out with my gang of friends and soak up academic geekiness!!

Negative:

Turned down yet again, this time a proposal for next year's MLA; the panel was on Radical Book History and I wanted to talk about reading women's manuscript circulation as a form of participatory culture. *angry sigh* I think I just need to give up and write that whole thing as an article and kick it out and have done.

In further unfun, my roommate for next week's conference, ASECS in Pittsburgh, had to bail, so I'll be all by myself at a conference I've never been to before. This is discouraging. But I figure, worst case scenario, bring an extra book and I can get some work done in the evenings, maybe. *optimism*