Frost

We awoke to our first frost covered landscape of the season. Though beautiful, it is annoying when we have to clean off the car. Especially if we're running behind schedule which, I admit, does happen, ahem, often... By Saturday night temperatures will dip into 20s.

All I want for Christmas is...

Instead of sending Santa a letter, Chris usually sends me an e-mail with his Christmas wish list. I don't comment on it but make a purchase. By the time Christmas comes around he forgets about his e-mail and then he's pleasantly surprised about his great gift. His wife is so talented that she always knows just what to get. The system works. Until this year. He's so excited about what he wants that he's sent an e-mail and then followed up with a phone call (from work) and then talked about it at home. Repeatedly. I get the hint. I am not that dense.

So last night he brings it up again and actually asks if I had ordered it. And, if I hadn't ordered it that he'll do it the next day just to make sure that he got what he wanted. This is unusual behavior so I had to learn more about it. What he wants for Christmas is a new Fallout 3 computer game. But not just any Fallout 3 will do. He wants the "limited edition." And those go quickly he says. Because they only make so many and he just really wanted one. And it will be sold out so he'd better order one. Limited edition or regular, it is the same game, I said. Nooooooo, he replied with a straight face. Limited edition comes with a LUNCHBOX! That was an excited reply of a 36 year old man who hasn't used a lunchbox since elementary school. Oh yeah, it comes with a bobble-head action figure (read: doll) as well. I bet kids won't be allowed to touch it. LOL.

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.

Square peg in the round hole

I've been busy, perhaps more so than usual, so I've not done much blogging. Today's events, however, were too good to pass up. Have you noticed how writing (and reading) about something bad or negative is a lot more fun than writing about sunny days and happiness? Well, that's the way it is and I am using this post to vent my frustrations.

First I need to commend my family for yesterday's major milestone. We've just passed the two year mark of our move and have fully and I believe, successfully integrated into the local life (last major task completed this morning, I'll explain). Finally. It's been a long and at times painful and exceedingly frustrating process. The usual daily grind stuff, I suppose.

This morning I finally got my health insurance. Surprised why it took so long you might ask? Because I don't fit the bill, as usual. That's the way it has to be I suppose. If things came to us too easily, we just wouldn't appreciate it one bit. Right? I don't know. It's hard to be constantly patient without getting stressed and frustrated. Why did it have to take 7 years for me just to get the green card after I got married? It's paperwork people. Bureaucracy at it's best. Less than intelligent rules enforced by even less than intelligent people. So here's the skinny on the latest...

Kids were eligible for health insurance right away because they were minors and Croatian citizens. That was my primary concern and I was glad when that was finished. Chris couldn't get insurance until he had temporary residency which, as you might recall, wasn't that easy to come by. The culmination of it was his three month departure back to the US so we could follow the law and get it done right. Made it through that and many other stumbling blocks in between (read old posts), and he was granted health insurance as well. We paid it on a monthly basis until he got a job in April. Now he's covered through his employment. And that leaves me. Saving the best for last.

Well, any way you looked at it I just didn't and couldn't fit into anything that they had on paper there. I didn't have a job in Croatia to get insurance through work; wasn't a student; wasn't a minor; wasn't self employed (in Croatia); didn't have an employed husband with permanent residence (else I could get insurance through him); couldn't go through unemployment office because I didn't report my status change (loss of job, finishing school, etc.) within allotted 30 days; didn't believe in bribing someone to fix it up for me... I've only missed that deadline by some 6,205 days. Couldn't they just look the other way? I've spent two years trying out all of these options. Certainly it could have been done faster, but this was being worked on along with many other important things like kid's health, immigration applications, home ownership paperwork (a nightmare in it's own right), work (wow, got to pay bills and eat)... Still, luck stayed on my side and despite it all I didn't get sick for two years. That's a miracle in itself, isn't it? I did try to get "fake" employment but that soured as well. At a suggestion of the health insurance office worker, I asked a friend to hire me for 2-3 weeks and then I could quit so I'd have paperwork that I could take to the unemployment office within 30 days of quitting date and qualify for insurance that way. The HR person that was supposed to do that for me, clearly never seen someone with a strange situation like mine (I am one in a billion you know) persisted to convince me of all sorts of things that I've already tried and checked on so I gave up on it. Not worth getting her in trouble with her boss, a friend of mine that was to do me a favor. Besides, she also insisted that she needed a certificate where my insurance was cancelled (something like certificate of creditable coverage in the US) which clearly I don't have and I should have obtained, I suppose, some 17 years ago.

My last and only option, I found out, was to pay one full year of insurance (in arrears) so I could start paying every month for the privilege of using the health insurance. I didn't do that right away because I've hoped to find some other solution as some of the other options looked promising. It wouldn't make sense to just throw the money away. I was determined to try out other things first. I probably did it for the same reason why I refused to hire an expensive attorney to get my green card done (aside from an application fee, a free process) so it took 7 years instead of maybe two. Or the same reason why I refused to hire a real estate agent because it defies common sense to pay someone $12,000 for something that I can do on my own. You should have seen how mad I was when we had to write a big check to the buyer's real estate agent (buying and selling real estate agents split the 3% fee) who was so incompetent that if we left it up to him the closing wouldn't even happen. I collected the right paperwork and brought it over to the closing. We negotiated over the phone until I just plain told him no on whatever he was trying to scheme up. After a while he got either scared or embarrassed to call and all future communications were strictly e-mail. He suckered some poor couple to get the house that was way beyond their means and ended up rolling up all of the closing costs into the loan. What do you think are the chances that they are still in that home? I digress...

So, mad at the system I went to the health insurance office again this morning. Been there so many times that they recognize my face already. Told them what I wanted to do and their suggestion was to wait until I need to go to the hospital or something and then do this paperwork. I could just see myself on the stretcher signing the paper so I could get medical care. I turned the paperwork in to one of the clerks. He processed it and told me I had to go make the payment at the post office. Post offices function as mini banks here so one can pay bills and make other miscellaneous payments there. There are no checks in Croatia (only direct pay or electronic payment). He didn't happen to have a spare payment slip there so he gave me a copy of someone else's with, of all things, their name, home address, date of birth and social security number on it. Oh, lucky day. I shoud have ran with it and gone straight to some steel-the-identity guru so I could get some illegal cash, recover the money I was paying them and go on a shopping spree of a lifetime. So I took the slip, and used it as an example to fill mine out, paid the bill and the unavoidable (excessively high) processing fee for the privilege of paying at the post office, and then I return back to the health insurance office. So I enter back into the smoke filled (yes, you read it right) office to find that the clerk wasn't there so I inquired about him. Then I found out that he went on a smoke break (did you notice the smoke-filled statement earlier clearly implying that they smoke in the office so why even leave when you need a smoke?). So the other clerk goes out for a walk to look for him and comes back because she couldn't find him. Then it occurred to her that she could complete this on his behalf. She went over to his desk, office covered with privacy information (HIPAA alert!), and all she had to do is give me the completed paperwork and take the payment receipt from me. I did comment and said that he shouldn't have given me someone else's name, address, SSN... to which she just smiled and said that there's nothing they could do since they don't have any prefilled payment slips there. I did make the painfully obvious suggestion of just writing the account number and other applicable information on a piece of paper to which she just shrugged and said that they don't think anyone will abuse that information, that they, get this one -- trust people.

Pause to ponder all of this. It's like a scene from a 50s eastern-block-country movie. All we needed was to make it black and white, and remove women from the scene because they should have been home taking care of babies anyway. Except the reality is that it's 60 years later and just down the street are state of the art buildings filled with latest technology. Except the modern age hasn't quite caught up with majority I suppose.

Deep breath...

Now you know why I felt compelled to sit down right after I got back, hair still smoke-scented, fists still clenched. Should I ever get into a place of any kind of power only a few scenarios are possible: I would quit over frustration that I couldn't get things done; I would be universally hated for stepping on everyone's toes or I would be assassinated because I wouldn't let the lazy and corrupt get away with things.

So, how have all my faithful blog followers been? I know, I know, everyone is worried about the financial situation. Trust me, I make sure to read upon it every day. My money is in the bank down the street from you, you know, so I very much care to see how this unravels. Plus, the inflation and economic trouble is present here too. I am still waiting for them to lower the gas price from $7.06 per gallon. Didn't they notice that oil prices went down?

Weather

Weather this week has been beautiful, mid 80s and sunny. Friday to Saturday it'll suddenly drop by over 20 degrees to 62. By Monday it'll be in mid to high 50s, just perfect for us to pull the jackets out and turn the heating on. But, just to keep it interesting, by following Saturday it'll be back to 70s. Welcome to Croatian weather.

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.