I am obsessed with planning travel! Not just traveling, which I love, but the whole planning process and all the details that go into it. I subscribe to all these travel blogs and airline forums and research hotels and activities and destinations for hours on end, and I volunteer to plan trips for everyone I know.

As long as I'm able to actually maintain a career where I can write full-time, I'll be thrilled.

Friends would not say I'm a laid-back person by any means.

The closest I get to any sort of 'designer' items would probably be my weakness for jeans - they don't have to be any particular brand, but I'm willing to do almost anything, go anywhere, spend obscene amounts of money for that elusive 'perfect pair.'

If you have learned how to disagree without being disagreeable, then you have discovered the secrete of getting along - whether it be business, family relations, or life itself.

What I really am is a homebody. I was a homebody even before I had a family. My days are filled with home stuff.

Some parents let their kids sleep at other people's houses, where they drink alcohol, watch TV for hours and God knows what else. But if you say you have to get all A's and practice the violin for two hours, then they consider that abusive. That upsets me.

I thought it was unfair to ask school kids to integrate first. The parents should lead the way, not send out the children as advance troops.