...but I have been clobbered with work, bureaucracy, technical mayhem, and con crud/bronchitis. The last two items complicate dealing with the first two on multiple levels, and this has been making me very cross.

That said, there have also been many moments of simple satisfaction and outright elation -- my creative groove is back in the house, and raring to move some things closer to done. (Which it can't until I slay a couple more deadline dragons, but it's a lovely feeling, that "I can't NOT write this" rush -- and what's even better, I'm feeling it toward multiple projects, and as lagniappe, I've gotten very vocal, unsolicited encouragement for one of the biggest (and scariest) of 'em.)

(And if the feeling evaporates, well, there's plenty of house to clean and lettering to lavish attention upon.)

The rest of my Chicago trip was fantastic (and now feels like ages ago). In addition to the conference, which was a very good time indeed, I also attended morning worship at Second Unitarian, danced for hours in a red dress I picked up at Hollywood Mirror, lingered over tapas at Mercat, and wandered from Greektown to Buckingham Fountain and other Windy City treasures, much of this in the company of friends old and new, and some of it in much-needed solitude. While I wouldn't recommend staying in a non-conference hotel in most instances, it turned out to be the right decision for me this trip - lodging away from the mayhem helped me concentrate on non-conference matters and recharge the functional-in-society batteries as needed.

And speaking of Chicago and travel, Connie Voisine's This is for the silver of highway blew me away when I read it earlier this week. passion and its unreasonable vaults of soul, indeed.