Hallo, America! You didn't all have to rush to the airport to welcome me back to the warm bosom of the mother country, but I appreciate the gesture.

Of course, the warm embrace got a little cooler when the first thing I saw upon deplaning in Dulles was an entire store filled with shirts that read, "Don't blame me! I voted for Romney." Can we just retire that as a political concept, elephants and donkeys all?  It's not patriotic to hope that your country will fail so that you can gloat.

My parents, bless, picked me up last night at the airport an hour outside of my hometown. I'd been in the car for less than a minute when my mother told me not to be such a brown-noser. But she hasn't yet told me, with a glint in her eye and a tongue in her cheek, that I'm a Nasty Bit of Business*, so I'm counting this one as a win.

I told  my parents that I've been having back and neck problems from, as my friend Ch.  told me, gathering all my intellectual discontent between my shoulder blades.

"We'll, no wonder, if you're always hunched over a computer or a book in that unnatural position," says my librarian mother, "I've always felt that you were going be a wizened, contorted old crone by the time you were 40."

"This is going online. Right this second," I mutter from the back seat.

"Just so long as you're not all bent over as you type it," floats back the inevitable reply.

  
Washington, DC
Thanksgiving, 2012