Tired

Life is slowly returning to normal. I'm back in my own home, which I found I missed quite a bit, and not just because I have an awesome TV. This will probably hurt my whole "run away from home at 35" plan. Also, I still think it's awesome that I have long-range plans that ultimately result in "run away from home." Anyway, I was actively thinking of writing up an AtF post, but that required more time than I really had. Then I was thinking of writing up the next post in the Story of Storytelling line, but I'm really friggin' tired and want to go to bed. However, this past weekend was the Illinois Storytelling Festival, and although I managed to miss most of it due to a neurotic schnauzer, hospitalized grandmother, the general need to be in three places at once, and the fact that I was conveniently living really, really far away from my own home (which I rather missed) that's only about four miles from the ISF's new digs at Dominican University, I was still there long enough to see some cool things that are worth a bit of reflection. It was actually really weird, since I drove in a little early and stopped at home to check the mail and drop some stuff off that I wouldn't need and that would make packing up and heading home today that much easier. I ended up stopping at the bank that I tend to visit when I need to hit the ATM and am not at the office (there's a branch of my bank conveniently located on the first floor of one of the buildings in my office complex). I now live in a part of Chicagoland that I didn't really spend much time in before moving. It's all familiar now, but for a brief moment as I walked out of the bank it felt alien. I was a tourist in spite of the fact that I was a half mile from home. It's just a strange feeling. Oh, and in the realms of things that are ironic, at least to the Alanis Morrisette level, my Guild meets in a Lutheran church. The Northlands Conference is held at a Baptist camp/resort thingy. The Illinois Storytelling Festival has now moved to a Catholic university. So I get plenty of church, just not as a parishoner on any level.