I made a decision today to – really and truly – not post about politics on Facebook.

This is not to say that I won’t talk politics with people, in person, where it’s somewhat slightly less liable to be all shout-y and misconstrued-y. I’m not apathetic, nor am I apolitical. I’ve just seen too many “discussions” get real ugly, real fast. It’s icky. I’ve tried to point out how polarizing the rhetoric has become, and I’m just not getting anywhere, certainly not on Facebook, so I’m taking my opinion ball and going elsewhere. Bounce it off a wall for a bit until I can find someone that wants to play fair.

Like maybe on Twitter.

Anyhoodles, I think part of my problem is that I’m still recovering from a week on the West Coast, where I absorbed far too much information on database software at a conference, sang a No Doubt song (rewritten to reference said database software) on the deck of the USS Midway (video of that…eventually), stood in buffet lines and ate a lot of heavy conference hotel food, and made the singularly EPIC mistake of going to see Tony Clifton “perform” in Los Angeles. If you don’t know who that is…look him up; I’m too exhausted to even TRY and explain the whole Tony Clifton thing (and to any Tony Clifton fans – this is not an invitation for you to try and explain the Tony Clifton thing to ME; I get what he’s doing…I just think he’s doing it WRONG).

BUT. I also saw Peter Murphy perform at The Roxy, which was stellar, and made me feel twenty years old again, if only for a few minutes.

I got in a little quality time with my best friend, had some of the best Ethiopian food EVER, and then made the second EPIC mistake of the week, which was to take a red-eye flight back to Boston. Ugh. BRUTAL. JetBlue gives you a little care package containing a sleep mask and earplugs, which is nice, but then they tell you NOT to cover all the way up with your little fuzzy travel blankie that the aforementioned database software company gave you for being a presenter at the conference, because then the flight attendants can’t tell if your seatbelt is fastened, so THEY WILL WAKE YOU UP if they can’t see it. And for some reason this made me very stressed out, so I would doze fitfully, then jerk awake to make sure I hadn’t covered my midsection with my fuzzy travel blankie. It was terrible.

Yes. I know. First world problems. Whatever.

So I got home this past Sunday morning, took a nap for about an hour, then went back out because it was my brother’s birthday, and he’s HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY OLD, plus my parents are in town and they rented this cute little beach house and I kind of wanted to go to the beach and maybe wash the airplane/Tony Clifton psychic grime from my spirit. And my niece Kaleigh climbed – unprompted – into my lap. And I felt much better.