• When you travel, take note where you leave your suitcase. A metal luggage rack would be a good choice.
• Check behind a hotel headboard with a penlight. Pull back the linens and check for fecal stains on the mattress seams and ticking.
• If you do wake up with red welts, assume the worst! When you return home, put all your laundry immediately in the washer in a hot cycle to kill them.
• DON"T use a bomb or bug spray you can purchase at the local grocery store. Now is not the time to go to war alone. Call a good pest control company ASAP.

Summer is here!  How do I know?  It took me 15 minutes to get to the causeway yesterday.  Those of us who live here forget how spoiled we are.  We’re used to jumping in a car, and having the road mostly to ourselves – then summer comes!  Forget about it!  Now there are 4 lanes of traffic (not just road) as people come and leave the island.  I wonder how many cars cross that road daily.  We used to have a toll (I know, I know; 35 cents wasn’t much of a toll), but now we just zip right by the vacated toll booth. 

Want to go out to eat?  Well, get in line – literally!  We locals resent having to stand in line to go to dinner.  After all, we’re LOCALS. 

But I have to admit, I actually love summer here.  The Village is hopping, people are having fun, and with most of the island on vacation mentality, we have some lively conversations.  “Where are you from” (or the southern version, “Where ya’ll from?”) is heard quite frequently, everywhere from the gas station to the grocery store.  And the young people especially like the summers here, where they can go to the beach, hang out at the pier, and actually find a lively night life in the Village after dark.

I especially love Sunday afternoons.  That's when I can ride my bike around the island see many of the vacationers packing their cars to return home.  I remember vacationing in Nags Head during the early 80’s.  How I hated going home!  At that time, I lived over 200 miles from the ocean.  Now, I don’t have to pack up and go home; the best part of summer for me is knowing I get to stay here!