Last April it was dark and early and my bed was shaking. Alas, I was not having mind-blowing sex. I was lying in bed alone at 5:36am which is a time that I am almost never awake unless my cat is very hungry and I have forgotten to shut the bedroom door. As the movement shook my brain awake, I realized what was happening.

I was in an earthquake! In Indiana! Finally!

I have always wanted to be in an earthquake, just to know what it feels like. I know people sometimes die in earthquakes, so I didn’t want to be in one of those earthquakes, just a safe little earthquake where the ground moved and the plates rattled and perhaps a picture fell off of the wall. I don’t live in California though, and I don’t have any plans to move to a major fault line, so the possibility seemed slim. But here I was, at 5:36am, experiencing my first earthquake and it was awesome. I couldn’t wait to blog about it.

Then I realized, wait, no, I can’t blog about my first Indiana earthquake because I run a weight-loss blog and even as clever as I like to think I am, I couldn’t think of a way to reasonably connect my earthshaking experience to health or fitness. Maybe the shaking burned calories? Um, no.

That’s when I decided – I’m going blog about more than just weight loss. So, instead of just blogging about fitness, health and the size of my ass, I’m now going to blog about fitness, health, the size of my ass, and whatever else I feel like talking about if it’s funny, informative or worthwhile in any way. Let me repeat that and put it in bold for those of you freaking out about my booty – I will still blog about fitness, health, and the size of my ass. I’m going to expand the scope of the blog to my entire life, and those topics are definitely a part of my life. I’ve actually started doing this already, blogging about a gay pride parade and a blogging conference to see if anyone would notice. No one gave me any flack over it, and they rather seemed to enjoy my parade shenanigans. Now that I’ve dipped my toes in, I’m ready to take the full plunge.

To reflect the change, my blog bought new shoes, put on its prettiest dress and got its hair done. I’ve redesigned the look of the site, though I kept the same colors and fonts. (I wanted to give it a makeover, not enlist it in the witness protection program.) All the same information is here, just better designed and more beautifully presented (hopefully). I’ve tested it as best as I can, but if you find any bugs, email me at with your operating system, browser and a description of the problem. If you know how to take a screenshot, that would be helpful too.

I’ve also changed the name from “Half of Me” to “PastaQueen” which should be easier to remember since that is the actual domain name of this site. I toyed with calling it “PastaQueen Plus,” but that sounded like I was going to start shopping in the women’s department again. If you link to my site, I’d be very grateful if you updated the name of your links so they say “PastaQueen” and so they link to https://www.pastaqueen.com

Why this is a good thing

Again, hopefully no one is freaking out. This is a good thing, ok? My blog helped me figure out a lot of my weight issues and was a vital tool in self-discovery. One of the things I love about blogging is that it helps me figure myself out. I heard a great quote once, “How will I know what I think if I can’t read what I write?” Sometimes I don’t really understand what I think about an issue until I’ve written about it. This was very helpful to me as I was losing weight.

However, I’ve noticed that there are other areas of my life that would equally benefit from some self-analysis and probing. But I haven’t written about them because I only write about health issues here. In that way, blogging only about weight loss has been limiting me from thinking through other topics that I’d like to figure out.

I thought about starting another blog just for non-weight stuff. I designed a template, bought a domain name and posted some entries. Then I nearly collapsed on my keyboard because I could not keep up. There are only so many things I can accomplish in a day, and at this time writing two separate blogs is not one of them. It also felt odd to segment my life unnaturally. Weight and fitness are a part of my life like anything else, and it seemed weird to be splitting myself in two like that.

I’ve always seen this site as a personal blog disguised as a weight-loss blog. When I’ve told people at conferences that I write a “weight-loss blog,” they seem uninterested because they think I only talk about how many Weight Watchers points are in a Snickers bar. When in reality, I think they’d like reading my blog. By opening up the floor to other topics, hopefully more people will feel welcome hanging out here and we can all meet new and interesting people who otherwise wouldn’t check this place out.

Beyond all that, I don’t want my weight to be the most defining characteristic of my life. That’s one of the reasons why I lost weight. I did a TV interview a couple months ago and in the green room another guest asked me, “Do you count calories?” I remember staring at her perfectly made-up face and thinking, “Wow, out of all the questions in the world that you could ask, that’s the one you’re asking? Seriously? Who the hell cares if I count calories?” And then I told her no, I don’t, but I probably eat about 1800 a day, and then I got started on that with a cinnamon roll. I’m very proud of all that I have accomplished, but I don’t want to be waving my fat pants around 20 years from now and saying it’s the only thing I’ve accomplished. It is time to evolve.

Of course evolution is change, and change is scary and unknown, even if it is for the better. I’ve built up a great community around this blog and I’d hate to have that evaporate. But, I also know I can’t keep on doing the same old shtick out of fear that I will become less popular or that I may lose readers. I’m not going to pretend that my weight loss didn’t happen. I’m not going to bury it or stop talking about it. I’m just going to talk about other stuff too. So, bear with me as I figure this out. I don’t know exactly what the mix will be. I’m just going to feel my way. Hopefully you’ll feel it out with me, and you’ll find it an entertaining and worthy read.

It’s time for another earthquake.