Julie Sturgeon's Blog (11)

The Flying Nun So I’m sitting at the gate at Reagan National, minding my own business and trying not to care that the storm on the other side of that window has shut down the airport. (All good stories start with this “minding my own business” gig.) The lady next to me sees me take a break in my book, and starts a conversation. She turned out to be a very nice person – polished make-up, nicely styled hair, dressed rather decently for an afternoon at the airport. She’s going to Bentonville, Arka… Continue

Worst part about a vacation, hands down: bringing back gifts. I don’t mean Christmas or birthday gifts (I stock up on those, too). I’m talking about remembrances for the folks who are grabbing the mail for you every day and feeding the dog. The first few trips it was easy, because you had the endless stock of souvenir shop items to choose from. Unfortunately, I realized in Costa Rica that I’ve exhausted infinity when it comes to teen-age boys. I found a hardwood bracelet for his sister. Serving… Continue

When you read the tourist brochures on Costa Rica, they’re telling the truth about the wildlife. My husband got to hold a baby sloth crawling along the ground. We were close enough to monkeys to take up the entire frame in the photo without a zoom lens. I watched leaf-cutter ants straight from the Discovery Channel, I dodged lizards falling from the tree next to the pool. I declined to hold a poison dart tree frog, although a toxic red frog landed on Ron’s rubber boots in the rainforest. I rode… Continue

I’m a sucker for private transport in a country. I’d much rather deal mano a mano with a local driver as he proudly shows me what is important in his world. We can have a customized conversation in a car, as opposed to a crackling microphone that interrupts my little snooze in the back of the bus. Ah, but then there was Arthur, the gentleman who drove us three hours from Tortuguero to Arenal. Ron used the excuse he couldn’t understand his English, grabbed the back seat and promptly fell… Continue

I just returned from what had to be the hottest place I’ve visited on the planet. Not that I can’t take the heat – when they wrote the line “some like it hot,” they were referring to Julie Sturgeon. What I didn’t like about Costa Rica was my packing choices for this humid, tropical climate. I'll cheerfully pass along my new insights so you can avoid lying naked on a bed, dripping wet, waiting for the fan to speed up: • Don’t take tight-fitting jean shorts. Tortuguero is a rainforest, fo… Continue

OK, what kind of travel agent loses her own suitcase? Not at the airport, like a normal person, but in my own house. It's bright blue, wheeled, carry-on size but I usually check it because my camera/computer bag already pushes the limits on what they allow in the overhead bins. I keep my suitcases in my walk-in closet, and you can see it the second you walk in. Except now, of course, because it's missing. I've now been on the hunt for two months, looking in every corner of this 3,000-square-fo… Continue

Not the ones on my face. The ones in my t-shirts. At least that’s the conclusion I’ve come to this week as I continue to trip over my bag, parked near the bedroom door, still loaded with those clothes I took to Florida. I’ve been home a whole week now. In seven days, I’ve managed to put the dishes hubby left in the sink into the dishwasher. I answered all my emails and voice mails. I downloaded everyone’s camera cards, sorted the photos I wanted to print and sent the order off to Shutterfly. I… Continue

I love road trips. I love my little iPod converter that lets us turn our radio into a speaker so we can sing/yell Cover of the Rolling Stone or Paradise by the Dashboard Light as we drive down the road. But when we stopped at a Ramada Limited in Lake City, Florida, around 1 a.m., my friends and I decided to get two rooms because that means two alarm clocks, two showers, two television sets. We noticed right away one of the rooms had a special commode in the bathroom – it enjoyed flushing itself… Continue

Yep, that’s the title my journalism colleagues have dubbed me at an online community we belong to. I was so flattered they would consider me upbeat, a coach, a role model. But I mainly feel guilty for having snookered them. You see, I stumbled onto this posting the same day my husband got exasperated with me and snapped, “Do you have to be such a poop at times?” – only he didn’t say “poop.” He used the more vulgar version, and didn’t realize his cell phone had unmuted him so that suddenly ever… Continue

Most folks in Indiana know it’s time for spring break because basketball tournament talk cranks up several notches. We usually get one last snow pile we don’t have the mental energy to shovel. Wal-Mart stuffs its end caps with Starburst jelly beans. But me – I know it’s March because this is when I let spam email get under my skin. Face it, there’s so much weird advertising landing in everyone’s mailboxes these days, it’s no longer funny to talk about male enhancement. We’ve all read the pleas… Continue

I live one of those lives where odd, sometimes impossible things happen on a regular basis. Probably no more to me than the next guy, actually, but I’ve learned to keep my eye peeled for them as a source of amusement. (When you live in Indiana, you look for two things in life: vacations and amusement. Well, and IU basketball, but I’m unbalanced in my devotion to the Cream and Crimson.) Let me give you an example: My friend of 30+ years and I always go shopping along Michigan Avenue in Chicago… Continue