Cost of Living

This one really blew my mind. I just read the Forbes' article listing the most expensive cities in the world. You know what the shocker was? Zagreb placed 49th, ahead of LA which is 55th as only the second most expensive city in the US (NY taking the top US honor, ranking 22nd). So maybe we should have moved to California instead? You know, to save some money.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/23/cities-expensive-world-forbeslife-cx_zg_0724expensivecities.html

Independence Day

Initially, I planned a barbecue for family and friends but, as is customary here in Croatia, July isn't a good time for such events. Everyone leaves town to start their long awaited vacations. American Chamber of Commerce in Zagreb organized an Independence Day picnic and rodeo, so we welcomed the event. It was fun despite the extreme heat and an excessively long and slow line for food. The bottom line is that kids had such a terrific time that the annoyances for us adults were worth it. We took my niece with us, and the five of us headed off to the local ranch for barbecue, ice cream, music and fun.

Rodeo, the main event was quite delayed so we nearly missed it. Still, kids managed to stay awake despite the late hour. Mia even got to see her first fireworks ever. In an awe of a four-year-old she proclaimed: "This is so neat!"

Once on the road to get back home, all three of them (10-year-old included) promptly fell asleep, absolutely exhausted from the day. I hope that we get to do it again next year.

More pictures (scroll to the bottom of the linked page): http://picasaweb.google.com/mirjana.phillips/200806.

The "sky" is back in place

The unfortunate plaster falling incident turned into quite an ordeal. Last 3-4 weeks have been consumed remedying the situation. After the initial damage, contractors came out immediately and made repairs at their expense. Naturally, the mess followed. It took a while to clean. Then just as we had them scheduled to come out to put on finishing touches by applying some nice ceiling paint, we came home to another mess. Another section came down as you can see from the pictures. Then the following morning another large section came down. This time we were home and heard it happen. This was clearly turning into a larger problem. Unbelievably though, through the whole ordeal nobody got hurt and nothing got damaged.

After a couple of spirited phone conversations, we were left with two options. One would have been to try to fix up the damage. Second option was to work on the entire ceiling (kitchen, dining room, living room) to prevent any future problems. Naturally, we picked option two which was better in the long run. In the short run, however, it made things interesting.

So, bravely, we forged ahead. The kitchen cabinets were emptied and taken down from the walls. On an extremely short notice, we managed to get the same company that put them up, to come over and dismantle their work. The entire living room/dining areas were emptied out except for couches and the dining room table. Things were all over the place. Pantry was relocated onto some shelves in the stairwell in front of the main door like a modern mini art exhibit, and the rest of the items simply scattered all over, literally. It was almost a bigger mess than when we first moved in. For 3-4 days we didn't have any use of the kitchen at all. Kids slept in our bedroom and we slept in the multi purpose room upstairs. Cleaning became the word of the day for an entire month.

Since we went through the trouble, we figured that this was just as good of a time as any to finish up some of the things that were still on the list. So, I hired an electrician to come out and put up light fixtures and ceiling fans (ceiling fans in residences are a novel concept here) throughout the whole home. That, of course, meant that the mess spread all over. 14 fixtures purchased over the last 12 months were put up over three days. Kitchen cabinets stayed down for a while but we managed to cook despite that. In the meantime we purchased an island vent hood for the kitchen. While the cabinets were down we had the wall, ceiling and cabinets prepared for the vent hood installation. That is now ready and the vent hood will be installed in a few days.

I also purchased three colorful bar stools. Kids love them and often choose to eat there while they watch what I do in the kitchen. I got some plants for the place and now things are looking pretty good. Before you know it, we won't even remember the mess that was the last few weeks.

More home improvements were going on at the same time as the ceiling repairs. Before this event came to pass, we've ordered some big-girl furniture for Mia's room. Furniture arrived just at the "right" time and was assembled right before the ceiling repairs started. Her room was completely reshuffled. So we had to make space for her old furniture elsewhere. That was a mess in itself. We turned her crib into a full size bed. We had previously purchased a frame kit just for that purpose and had a mattress at hand to use (until then the mattress was just sitting on the guest room floor waiting for us to take care of it). Turns out what they sold us didn't quite match the headboard and the footboard that we had, thus we couldn't assemble the bed. Should have seen that one coming from a mile, er, kilometer away! Chris and I tried a number of creative solutions over a period of days but weren't successful. Finally, with help of my dad, I found a carpenter. We took the bed to the carpenter's workshop so he could properly drill new holes and make custom hardware so that bed could be reassembled. I was relieved when we got the bed home. I figured that we can get at least one room fixed up. Man, was I wrong or what! The holes had to be drilled slightly higher than their original placement. Once we assembled everything and put the mattress set on, the bed was so high you'd need a ladder to get in. It was sad and very comical, all at the same time. The decision was made. We were going to just toss the whole thing and get a different bed. Then we wavered and decided to give it one more shot. We would look for some bed slats to replace the bedspring, thus reducing the monster bed height. Here is a word for you - standards! Every single thing you can think of has different standards in Europe and US. Everything from electricity to bed size, sheet size, tables, chairs, plates, threads on screws that are otherwise same thickness (found that out the hard way)... The bed slats (which here come neatly framed so they couldn't be trimmed down) would have been 1.75" too wide. It looked like the fate of the bed was sealed; junkyard eagerly awaited. Refusing to throw in the towel, and at Chris' suggestion, I went by a home improvement store, got some wood, had it cut to size (for free) and we made our very own, homemade version of bed slats for the guest bed and it looks awesome! Phillips 1 - home improvement mess zero! Next person that comes to visit us, will get to try out the bed and how wonderful it turned out. We did, however, toss the bedspring. Chris didn't say anything but I think he felt strangely pleased to be able to exact revenge on the heinous bed, when he took the boxspring out to toss. He insisted on doing it alone. "It's not heavy, it's just large." So I got reprimanded by neighbors for making my husband lift heavy objects all by himself. Spousal abuse? Naaah, when we travel our suitcases usually weigh more and he has to carry them nevertheless.

In conclusion, we got one killer place to show off. Granted, it usually looks like it's under a brutal toy attack (toys take turns, different toys on different days) but other than that, the place looks lovely.