I share a Gmail account with my wife, so am I going to get kicked off of Google+ for using the wrong name? And which would be wrong? To use both or to use just mine when the account is both of ours?

So you've been using a major UI for years and can't "remotely get used to the damn thing"? Does this speak more about the ribbon or you?
Seriously, it's not that bad. It even pretty much makes sense when you try to get used to it.
As with the differences between a GUI and Command line, it's probably not the best way for performing repeated, complex tasks, but for the majority of users it is user-friendly and intuitive.

I actually had just started warming to the hover-url-in-address-bar feature when the next beta version removed it. It took me a fair while to start looking for addresses back at the bottom of the screen again. Come to think of it, it does kind-of make sense to have all URLs in the address bar.

You get different CSS skins? Consider yourself lucky...