ben ben benko blog

The day to day

So I just posted a big long composition on an interesting aspect of Croatia's economy and I realized that unless you have some real interest in Croatia and/or economics, this may not be all that interesting. So I thought I'd give you a little update on a few other things and a photo or two.

In the spring I plan to spend a lot more time outside taking photos of Zagreb and sketching some of the amazing architecture they've got here. So I'm sure I'll make you good and sick of all of that stuff at some point, but until then here are two photos of stuff within 5 minutes of my front door. The first is from one of the tram stops I frequent, down the street on which we live during a particularly nice sunset. The second is one of my favorite buildings we pass on our way into the center. Neither are my best photographic work but I thought you might enjoy them anyway.





This week we also had some fun with plumbing. The pipes and some fixtures in this apartment are over 50 years old. The valves have all been replaced over time with plastic valves. My line of work in the US has made me a bit of a plumbing fixture snob, but I think most people would agree that plastic valves are not a good idea. So after we replaced the bathtub valves more than once and they were still leaking, I convinced H to replace the whole thing. He decided he could do it himself. It ended up being quite an undertaking, requiring many trips to the plumbing parts store. And more than once the scenarios from the Cosby show were brought to mind where Cliff volunteers to "fix" things around the house and Claire cringes and secretly calls the repair man. But in the end, I have to give it to H. He did a great job and we now have a shiny new faucet set that works wonderfully. Here are two pictures of the project. The first is the darkest moment,the second the brightest.





Finally this week we undertook quite an ambitious painting project. As a kid I was always creative and a good amount of that has carried through my life, but somehow I actually never ended up with much training in any aspect of the fine arts. We still don't have anything hanging on our walls so we decided why don't we buy some paints and canvases and make our own art. So after quite a few hours we ended up with a painting we are pretty proud of. H gets the credit for design, composition, and actual painting. My role was as advisor and color mixer and I think our colaboration resulted in something better than either of us expected. However, I don't want to post a photo without the artists consent so you'll have to wait for that one.

posted by Liz @ 2:40 PM