05-VII-2014.
Woke up still remembering a funny dream. We like went to kinta to watch a concert in some club, a couple of blocks before Arpi's corner, Gogol Bordello were supposed to play. The guys at the door were kind of nasty to me but she passed before that. The concert was over anyway, we crossed paths with the guys hauling equipment out. So I took a bus and next thing I saw I was approaching the railroad in my old street. The asphalt was as usual, but there was some work on the cobble part, which is about 10m on either side of the tracks. They put some bricks with a groove on the bottom and a corresponding bump on the top, sillicate white, and three bricks were taller than the rest by that bump while the others had flat tops. That's a bit too much to play a speed bump (aka lying policeman, as called here), I thought, and then saw that what I thought was an unfinished part was actually a stairway downstairs. Underneath, there was a staircase and an arch... seems like a public urinal. Then I notice a guy, sort of familiar, in a raincoat, regular coat underneath, loose necktie, drunk as hell, grabbing his balance every five steps and then losing it again, ambling around the crossing (there's a street right on the side), luckily it was around 23:00 so no traffic, orating about the need to spread this act of cultural terrorism, we should have these under each pedestrian island, it would change the minds of... Next, a pal of his with a fića puts me on the back seat and starts maneuvering, driving backwards, stopping, backwards again, stopping... trying to turn the car to get us somewhere. This reminded me of several situations when I got in someone's car late at night and ended up far away from whatever home I had then, which I could have walked to... so I said "if you're going left, you can drop me at the next corner". Which would be complicated in a two-door car, so I dropped out of the whole dream.
Woke up and told this. Then after half a coffee, took her downtown (well, almost - this side of the main street) to her maturski (41st, they failed to organize last year), wanted to lift some cash from the serekeš but there was no parking space, our little community center being rather busy on saturday mornings, so I went home and wasted time writing more entries into Byo. Generally felt like doing nothing, after last evening's exertions. My right thumb was still yellow from all those apricots.
Warmed up the paprikaš, baahed around ppp, wrote some more, and then Lena rang on my cell phone - her bus is passing that last village before the city. Time to get her.
Went by the grocery again and got the cash this time. She tried to make me confess what's for lunch at least four times, I dodged each time. It was (... 25 words...) (she says it's hard to cook for a vegetarian, but it also inspires her). The surprise was complete, she loved it and next day she took the rest to Belgrade. Her negotiations for a part-time deal on the side (i.e. a tezga) are progressing slowly but smoothly, we'll see. The loyalty to the employer is excluded, they flat refused to employ her, and told her to open an agency (equivalent to, roughly, S-corporation, except that the company account is separate from her personal one, taxed separately too), so she's a free agent now. They do have a contract, but I guess it's full of loose ends.
I slept for a whole hour. Then the thin lady from the neighborhood brought a plant, some climbing weed, which she was supposed to try but didn't, and returned the seeds, and all the other seeds had failed. Now these returned seeds sprouted and, well, we got our share of the project. We'll try to make it grow up the fence behind the garage, so to stop the weeds from the Aleksa's (and Juliška's) side seeding our side (Aleksa and his are still abroad, a whole year now, and will probably stay until "the decade of the Rroma" expires next year... then we'll see if they'll still keep getting all those subsidies there... not Austria, the guy was expelled, perhaps Germany or France). While we were talking, she appeared, on foot.
So the news from IV6.73: Vanji was advertising and giving away his wine, at least three kinds of, Eči is 94kg now, full armor of self, Đenđi loved the fish čorba, poured three plates; there were 10 ladies and only 4 frajers (IOW, Kid wasn't there); most of them had their children in Hungary - either studying or getting jobs or entirely moving. It seems that most of them got children much later than we did, so many are still students. After that lunch, about half of them went to Vanji's vineyard.
Meanwhile in Virginia, Nina was packing for their trip to Florida. The bi-annual visit to Ender's aunt there. The hurricane Alfred was only type 2 and didn't make landfall yet, just had lots of rain and that's all.
Later in the evening, around 23:00, on some clinic in Belgrade, Zeki died. We didn't know until next morning, when Lenka called. Funeral on monday. We were kind of expecting this, he was in the hospital for at least a month now, went through several surgeries, and not only his legs weren't working, he lost motor control of his hands as well.
Four days later, Lena and Milan were together. The Zlija is, finally, in the past and will not be mentioned except in after-the-fact analyses.
Mentions: 03-XII-2021., Aleksa Pajkov, Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), Byo (Byo), čorba, Đenđi Todorov, Ender Aquila (Ender), Endre Felbab (Eči), fića, frajer, Ilija Ćirilov (Zlija), IV6.73, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Jovan Dimijan (Zeki), Juliška, kinta, Lenka Dimijan, maturski parastos, Milan Nastić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), ppp, serekeš, tezga, Vilmoš Baranji (Vanji), Zoltan Kadar (Kid), in serbian