Family milestone

Last weekend marked another big milestone in our family life. All of you with kids will surely appreciate the importance of this important event. Mia finally accepted that she's a big girl and that she needs to use the potty, not diapers. She's still wearing a diaper at night but hopefully that will soon go as well. That will mean an end of a 6 and a half year "dirty diaper" period. Wow! It sure doesn't seem like it.

Meteor

Apparently exotic events take place around here as well. On Wednesday around noon a meteor estimated to be about 100kg (say the size of a large person) flew over and exploded in the air and the pieces scattered about. They're looking for the meteor remnants now. No, I was not one of people that reported the sighting. I believe I was in bed taking a nap at the time. :)

Hot dogs and more about the weather

I've discovered that things here (like hot dogs) go bad in the fridge in no time. It turns out that it's not the fridge that's at fault, nor the food products... It's the fact that they don't seem to put as many preservatives in food as in the US. I'd say that's a good thing but it sure gets annoying. Mayo and sour cream will last for a measly couple of weeks (unlike months as I've grown used to). Same for hot dogs (will last 30 days from day of manufacture) and other similar prepackaged meat products. Since it is getting expensive to let our purchases go to ruin, we've decided to start freezing all items that would handle it and then cook them directly from the freezer. Sounds like a solid plan! By the way, hot dogs don't come precooked and ready to eat either. And they don't sell hot dog buns either...

Here is a little update on the heat as well. It's finally let up a little yesterday. Temperatures have been around 100; with no air conditioning mind you. We're slowly recovering and hope that the worse is behind us. After many, many sunny and hot days that have turned into drought, yesterday it stormed. The power went out and the wind got quite strong. We didn't even realize how strong the wind got until it was over and we saw that two of our neighbors roofs got picked up by the wind and tossed to the side. I also hear that many people had minor roof tile damage. Fortunately, we were fine other than being without power for hours. Today, weather is back to normal. It's been sunny though not quite as hot.

The heat is back

High temperatures are back to make sure we remember it is summer. Today's forecast is 96 and tomorrow's 97 degrees. I heard that the heat is supposed to persist till mid August and then a nice cool off (probably the end of the "real" summer) is to begin.

We've been working on our apartment but haven't spent the night there yet. There's just so much to get done. I've spent the weekend moving, sorting and putting up our clothes. Chris spent the weekend cleaning and we're both exhausted now. Kids are excited and won't let us take a break. They're ready to sleep there and enjoy their new place. :)

The move is on!

The great migration has commenced. We got the key some 10 days ago and slowly our things have been trickling to our new home. My dad and Chris have moved just about all of the furniture and the storage room we rented looks quite lonely now. We've managed to put together all of the closet shelving on our own and it looks great. The kitchen cabinets aren't quite done yet. Most of them are up but the sink hasn't been delivered. We hope that the kitchen will be wrapped up tomorrow so we can finally plug in our pretty new fridge and so we can give our dishwasher a test drive.

There is quite a lot of cleaning to do. As furniture and boxes are dragged and construction folks are still doing minor repairs and touch ups, the dirt is being tracked in. We still need to polish all of the floor (hardwood is standard here, there is no option to choose wall-to-wall carpeting). The kitchen cabinets need cleaning as well and that is going to be quite a task.

The first day to sleep there is planned for the next weekend. We have to wash all of the linens and towels s well as rewash all of the dishes. We're also waiting for the phone line to be connected. Having that is essential as we both work from the house. The Internet connection is a must these days.

We hope to have some pictures to share with you soon.

Croatian movie stars

Even little Croatia has it's international movie stars and all the scandal that goes with it. A couple of days ago I read in the paper about Goran Visnjic and the paternity suit he's facing. That certainly doesn't fit his image of a nice, married guy with a kid (from the marriage). I just popped open Yahoo and saw the big write up about it. For those of you that don't know, Visnjic is a part of a cast on ER. He also starred as the bad guy in Practical Magic with Bullock and Kidman.

4th of July

Happy Fourth everyone! Enjoy your burgers and the fireworks tonight.

Summer in the city

July 1st marks the true start of the summer in the city of Zagreb. It's as if overnight everything changes and only on September 1st everything returns back to normal. July 1st marks the beginning of mass vacations. Literally! The city loses a large number of its some 1 million inhabitants who all migrate elsewhere for a while; primarily the beach. By Croatian law (and in many other European countries) 4 weeks (20 business days) of vacation is guaranteed. Most people choose to take most or all of their vacation during the summer. As you might imagine, that doesn't necessarily leave enough people to keep the businesses open. For example, at my bank, they will work from 8:00am to 2:00pm only during these two months. Other months of the year they have two shifts and are open till 8:00pm I believe. Many other businesses will follow suit and close their doors for the part of the day they are typically open.

It's not just businesses that are affected so significantly. I was very annoyed to find out that our daycare will be combining their groups for the summer. The kids and teachers get reshuffled as most of the kids and teachers appear not to be around for large chunks of time. As I got properly Americanized and workaholicazied, such behaviors are strange and hard to comprehend. Maybe some day in the future, we'll be able to do the same thing. Yours truly will be working hard all summer trying to make a buck. As things look right now, my July will stay quite busy as American calendars don't quite realize its summer. Maybe its the air conditioning in the US (not quite common around here) that made everyone forget about the summer.

I understand that Italians do the "gone for the summer" thing to an even greater extent and some companies will flat shut down completely for a month for vacations. Can you imagine that?No wonder Italians seem to be so laid back.