a melancholy town where we never smile

So, uh, I went to Chicago. And now I'm back.

The business trip aspect of the whole thing, which provided the actual impetus for going as well as the reason why I was doing it on my company's dime, went well. There were some meetings, and some free food, and some drinking with my coworkers, and all of that was good. The majority of the content at the meetings was stuff I understood, if only just. The free food wasn't the best I've ever eaten, mind, but it was free. And, uh... I think I may have sang karaoke in front of my boss' boss' boss' boss, but its all in good fun, right?

Anyway.

I can't even express how good being back in Evanston was. How right it felt, how much like coming home. I didn't see all of the NU crew, but I saw almost everyone on my priority list (sorry lassarina.) I didn't, all things considered, do very much. I hung around with people, talked with them until the wee hours, and slept on my sister's futon (thanks Kate!) The major event of the weekend was, obviously, rollick's Witch Hunt party. Miraculously and in defiance of all precedent I was actually able to go and everything. Perhaps even more miraculously my decision to bring along my family appears to have gone well. Seamlessly even. I don't labor under any delusions that my sisters are going to forge undying friendships among my friends, but it still felt nice to introduce them. I, after all, have been introduced to a pack of my sisters' friends over the years, and it was good to be able to finally show them that I have friends who aren't the pack of freaks I hung out with in high school (kidding! Kidding...)

Coming back to Boston was hard. I mean, it was physically difficult -- there were high winds here, the tail end of a couple weeks of nasty weather, so all of the flights coming into Logan were delayed. They forewarned my flight to buy dinner, because while it was going to board on time they fully expected us to sit on the tarmac for 2 hours after we pulled back from the gate. And we did, so I didn't get back to my apartment until quite late, and as a result ended up calling in sick Monday morning. I just hadn't gotten enough sleep. I hate to burn a vacation day on something that wasteful, but c'est la vie, what's done is done. First one I've used since I was hired anyway.

But coming back was hard emotionally as well. Although I got a chance to actually sit and converse with pax_malificus, king_biscuit, rollick and keystroke, everyone else I feel as though I saw, at best, in passing. Overlapping a couple of hours with jrdameonhv at the Witch Hunt party, for example, was just enough to whet my apetite for seeing that guy again and leave me feeling intensely wistful about the whole experience. I'm bad about keeping in touch with people, even people I want to be friends with, as a pair of recent conversations with spreadnparanoia both exemplified and explicated. I just suck at it, really, and so a year goes by during which I have this whole group of people I consider my friends and I hardly talk to any of them. And then I come home to Chicago, and realize that, and feel like an ass.

I shouldn't track too far down that line of thinking, really, because that way lies madness and despair and all my most deeply rooted fears. And really, I'm having a hard enough time dealing with the fact that it'll be months before I see any of those people again, without heaping that kind of tension on my shoulders. It was quite literally a taste of home, and it left me wanting.