It’s funny, the music we latch onto as kids. My dad was the rock & roll fan, and I came to think of any music he liked as being pretty cool. I remember Jimi Hendrix, Billy Joel, The B-52’s, Ray Charles, Roy Orbison, Genesis, and many more, but mostly I remember Joni Mitchell.

My dad is a man of relatively few words, and being raised in a home with multiple siblings, it wasn't always easy (or common) to get time with just him.

They are a downright force, these Buster Bars. Anything from Dairy Queen, really. We're talking about the only fast food option I had as a kid, and the one for which I (still) feel the most amount of affection and loyalty. My neighbors and I used to throw together all manner of fundraising activities as kids, all in the name of getting ourselves to the DQ.

I got home this evening from a very taxing day at work to find a thank-you note in my mailbox. You all know how I feel about thank-you notes. A dying art, surely, but one I feel is so, so necessary. It's just the principle of the thing. And it makes us decent.

Summer festivals that involve book events are just about my favorite thing as an author. It gets you out in the community, you get to spend time with other local authors, and the festival environment means there's lots of traffic.

The feedback from early readers is that most of them like Jeweled better than Schooled. I confess this is very surprising to me, as I figured the universality of school would ultimately leave readers more satisfied than a book about jewelry…which, admittedly, is something most people don’t know about, care about, or wish to read about.

The first story in my new book centers around the Museum of Natural History in New York City. For reasons that seem silly now, it was important that I get myself to the museum during what was my first trip to the city. Even though I realized while at the museum that it wasn't where I wanted to be (and my reason for going would soon enough no longer even apply), in the moment I viewed my being there as nothing short of crucial.

I'm taking a break from new-book-just-out activities to bring you this important seasonal message: I hate cutting the grass. I know. It's so silly.

Surely, this was the real song title they were searching for in 1963.

Today is book party day. (If Clementine is any indication, we are clearly having a hard time containing our excitement. Actually, she has come to love the boxes of books sitting on my breakfast table so much that I haven't yet broken the news to her that they are going away.) Right on cue, the weather has taken a turn for the crappy, but that happened last time, too. Doesn't matter. It's going to be a wonderfully satisfying day irrespective of sunshine.

This poem has special meaning to me. Not just because of all the lanyards I tied in my childhood, but also because it of course makes me think of my mom.

After Schooled was published, someone commented to me that their favorite characters were my parents.

When the first proof copy of Schooled arrived, I remember being flooded with a "This is it??" kind of feeling. All that work, years, and this is all I get? Not that I hadn't known that the finished product would be one measly 250-page book, but for some reason I thought that initial first copy would seem more grand.

Well I can tell you this: I certainly haven't been writing. Expression of regret. Especially since my third book is so juicy...at least I like to think it is...so sometimes it does make me sad that there's still so much left to write and that I've been so busy lately.

The first (and only) time I had been to Montana was just prior to starting business school. Meant to be a team building, get-to-know-you type of event just before we began the school year, my classmates and I were shipped off in 15-passenger vans across the west, Montana-bound.

One of my favorite things to do in NYC is to go to the Times Square museum.

Today is my birthday. I'd say that my age is starting to approach a point where birthdays bring up more dread than excitement, but that isn't really how I feel. Because these thirty-something years are worth celebrating.

Just wanted to say that I spent last week in Florida, and believe it or not (frankly I don't think it's all that unusual although people seem to be aghast when they find out), it was the first time in my life I had ever been to Florida.