How much does it cost to fly?

I've spent the weekend searching for airfare for our Christmas vacation in US. At first I was delighted to see that prices haven't really gone up. I expected them to be much higher so this was a pleasant surprise. Quite the contrary, the prices were at par or in some instances lower than they were 3-4 years ago. Good, I thought. Perhaps this won't be as bad as I anticipated. The warm and fuzzy feeling lasted until the checkout time. The taxes and fees have ballooned up to be two thirds of the price of the actual fare. That means that the advertised price is nowhere close to the actual price (like it used to be). In addition, it makes it very difficult to comparison shop. I went through the beginning of the checkout process with three web sites to determine that the final price was about the same. They varied in what amount they allotted to the ticket price and what amount went to the taxes and fees. I knew that I would pay more than last year. But I find it upsetting that the costs have to be lied about like that. As if you wouldn't notice the difference at payment time.

On a more positive note, see you all at Christmas!

Got to brag a little

My sister and I have been working on a pet project for three years now. First we just talked about it over the phone, then we put it on paper, then we started taking actual steps to make something happen... After many, many, many hours of work, we launched an education portal (zbornica.com) on September 1st. That's why I haven't been blogging much. As it turns out, working on a site like that requires a whole lot more spare time than I could have anticipated. Since I have a paying job in addition to this new hobby of mine, I've been scrambling to find free time. In addition, I am just learning the software that runs the site as I go along, so there are still quite a few things that I'd like to have fixed. However, the site is humming along and we're starting to get regular visitors. I figured, within a year or so, we'll have us a decent little site going.

Last week we experienced our very first hacker attack. The IP was "hijacked" and it attempted to download PDFs onto users' local machines and it tried redirecting to their site. This is entirely new territory for me and I had absolutely no clue as to where to start. After much searching, reading, digging and complaining, I managed to locate the evil code and bid it farewell. I am so proud of myself as honestly, I had no clue what I was doing. For now, things are OK and will hopefully stay that way as I've spent a huge amount of time trying to figure this out. I hope this bragging doesn't come back to bite me in the ***. If it does, you're sure to hear about it. Back to work now...

Kids

A friend of mine had her first child several months ago. I finally got to meet the toothless, bald, smile-as-big-as-his-face baby. The worn out saying of "nothing will ever be the same again" just doesn't even begin to describe what that really means. Yes, she's having a hard time as all new parents do. She is just learning to love and care for that little baby. It's actually not until much later that it hits you what interesting and wonderful little people you're living with. Honestly, I wish if I had it written down every time Ivor or Mia came to me with one of their unique comments on the world around them and life in general. They both change constantly so their comments change and it will keep us amused until preteen years (or so I am told).

I don't get ordinary kisses. Mia stands on her tiptoes and lifts one of her feet off the ground behind her (like in the movies) to plant a smooch on my face. She wished upon a star tonight to have a real live pony when she grows up. She declared that it was her "dream come true" when, much to our surprise, there were fireworks so we rushed out into the cold in our pajamas to watch, kids' eyes big as saucers. That was a couple of weeks ago and she won't stop talking about it. At age four and a half she has her life figured out, knows how many kids she will have (2 or 4), what their names will be (I honestly can't remember any more), what pets she'll have (list too long for this little blog), what color her car will be (rainbow).... Today I attended a birthday party for one of her stuffed animals and we had to sing happy birthday in three languages (Croatian, English and German). I must confess though, I wasn't there willingly, she pestered me until I came.

Ivor knows what he will be when he grows up. Few years ago he started out with the usual policeman, firefighter. Now we're getting more specific. He's decided to have several jobs. At the age 7 he knows that he'll start up an aquarium, just like the one in Atlanta and has been researching fish so he can know which ones to get for the aquarium exhibits. He'll also have a hotel and a water park alongside the aquarium so you're all welcome to stay for a few days. I'll keep you posted. He'll be a ninja in his spare time so he can fight off any zombies that might happen nearby. You can never bee too careful I suppose. So on our way to school in the mornings we clock the speed of our car at 68mph to see how fast the fastest fish in the world can swim (called sailfish or istiophorus). Or we slow down to a seemingly slow pace of 30mph which is how fast the fastest shark in the world is believed to swim (mako shark). He knows how chocolate was discovered and how it is made and is curious about everything from electricity to space travel.

There are no boring days when you have kids. They'll leave tiny and sharp things on the floor for you to step on (be careful how you go through the "prickly forest," says Ivor), jump out of the shadows to scare you (funny how they don't even have to learn this one), leave sticky trails on light switches, mirrors, walls and your chair at the table, and will pack your house with treasures like dirty rocks, stray pets (Ivor is very good at this), priceless drawings, broken toys, pooped underwear and much, much more. Much patience is required for the job. Oh, and the pay sucks unless you don't mind getting paid with sticky hugs and sloppy kisses. It's kind of sad to think that they will turn into tired, stressed out adults like me some day.