CURRENT MISSION

to find every adventure more fun than the last

ABOUT ME

I'm a lot of fun. I love to cook. I love to travel. I love red wine. I like movies and books and exercise and being outside. I'm a history nut. I spent twenty years as a journalist, so I'm very good with a declarative sentence. I have strong opinions about politics. If you don't wanna hear them, you probably shouldn't bring it up. I love people.

PHILOSOPHY

Peace on earth, good will toward all human beings. I think the world should be colorblind, genderblind, and all that happy hippie hokum. But if everybody in the world felt like me, I could take those peace signs off my car.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I don't know yet. I'm just getting started, but my son, who is staying with me for a few months, has done this a pile of times, and he's teaching me.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Um, my couchsurfing experiences, I am absolutely certain, are probably a little different from the intentions of this program. I've stayed in homeless shelters all over the country and slept on the street. Until my son introduced me to this, the only time I heard the term "couchsurfing" was from a homeless person. I have over the years opened my home to many people I already knew or knew only slightly, for example: when I was in grad school in Amsterdam, a young girl from Germany was crying because she couldn't find an apartment. So I took her home with me for a month.

Interests

I love to write and I do it professionally. I'm interested in people. And politics. The former pleases me, the latter disappoints me.

• books
• cooking
• wine
• red wine
• cheese
• exercise
• politics
• movies
• traveling
• socializing
• history
• journalism
• languages

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: I love the movies where something at least once blows up (anything from the Poseidon Adventure to Inglourious Basterds)! I like science fiction (the new Star Trek, Wrath of Khan is also fabulous), historical films (Les Mis, The Lion in Winter, the cartoon version of Hunchback of Notre Dame... who knew Disney could actually get something right?)... I completely abhor romantic comedies because I find them to be neither. I do like stuff that's generally funny (Super Troopers, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the more irreverent the better).

Music: I find Leonard Cohen stuff really good. I like Kris Kristofferson and Neil Young and Ray LaMontagne and anyone whose music is just poetry they're singing.

Books: My favorite books are, of course, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, East of Eden, anything by Vonnegut. I read tons of non-fiction. Possibly one of the best big books of non-fiction, aside from anything Howard Zinn wrote, is Constantine's Sword. It's by some Jesuit guy who quit the church.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Given birth. Not so amazing to you maybe, but I was quite astounded!

Teach, Learn, Share

I want to learn about people who couchsurf! And if their moms worry about them. And if they have to text them the addresses of where they're staying like I made my kids do for me. I want to meet people who are that open to the unexpected.

I can teach you how to cook. I can teach you how to make macaroni & cheese that'd make your children cry... for more! I could teach you how to speak a couple of other languages really poorly. I can teach you about homeless populations and why they need to be treated with respect and compassion and should never ever ever be left in the dustbins where I find them.

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Canada, Egypt, France, Greece, Guatemala, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Turkey, United Kingdom, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

Netherlands, United States

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