13-VII-2020.

On 5th and 6th and 9th and 10th we took the girls to Peskara again - once on bikes again (and they both fell asleep on the way back), once taking the car (because Violet also came with us), twice with the van (because we all went). The kids just love it.

Nina skipped the 9th because the replacement desk and nightstand came (from Ikea, south of Belgrade) and she was putting them together. The old desk is a flimsy cardboard job we bought here and didn't like at all, but it served for the time being. It sat in our former bedroom, aka blue room (white again since 2016), and the sticker foil which pretended to be the proper surface material for a desk has peeled off in several places. This Ikea stuff seems to be cut by robots, it's maximally precise.

On 7th we finally wore masks for the first time - of course, the nice comfortable ones that she had sewn. Went to Lidl to get groceries. They didn't have the nice ratcheting screwdriver from the catalog. I never have a good one. Had maybe in the 1993, when we moved into the house, it saved my wrist when I was assembling the beds. But any other one I got in the last decade was chinese junk, including the two that Ender brought me six years ago - the mechanism on the one with the T handle fell apart in less than a year, and the other one is barely holding.

In the afternoon we went to Borko for another drinking evening - 17th frendz parti. Met a few people along the way, most of all Milena, who promised she'll grab Boba by the ears and drag him here first chance.

Borko still hasn't received his retirement paperwork, his last salary was in june, so when she asked him how is he going to survive this interlude, he said "well next time you come here, you bring your own sandwiches". He did make another pot of his excellent baklava, which he packed for us to carry home. Dragana didn't want to take any, but he insisted and I made some good photos of the dispute. So she eventually took two pieces, and we took the rest. Nina loved it.

On 8th, Lena and Milan went downtown to the old city, to take part in the general demonstrations. They wore corona masks and diving goggles. The latter helped a lot against the monthly supply of tear gas that the police dumped on the streets.

We made more noodles, two or three times. Too many eggs, too few people. So the noodles are a way to preserve the eggs for the winter, when the hens will lay fewer eggs. We used to do these in the big room downstairs - one couch would be the place where we'd lay the flattened pieces to dry a bit, and the other couch is where the finished, final-cut noodles would be laid overnight to dry. Now we're doing it in our bedroom upstairs, with our bed serving for intermediate phases, and two clothes-drying racks hold the finals. A couple of weeks ago I bought two plastic barrels to hold the noodles - a 60l for the wide (about 8mm) and 40l for the narrow (for the soup) ones.

On 9th I went to the dentist again, lost the lower #5 left. No disorientation this time. On the way home met the guy who previously owned Eva's house. He used to be a stiff drinker, last time (on Vir, 1988) I saw him take something like 0,15l swig of brandy from the bottle, pretending it was water. Nowadays he lives in Subotica, doing real estate, and the market seems to boom there. The Hungarians are buying too - not only locals, but those from Hungary too (the border is just about 20km away). Says he knows at least 120 people from here who moved there - engineers, doctors, various managerial staff who were supposed to be well off even here. I appointed him the ambassador of our city in Subotica, or at least the cultural attache.

On 11th we went to Čankovo, doing almost nothing there. She was trying to get the compressor to pump up the water pressure in the tank, but it wouldn't go over 0,2 bar. I took the trimmer (T2, švorceniger broken) and mowed few dozen of acacia saplings. Checked on one of the larger trees I'd like to fell, and it seems my trick of cutting off a ring of the bark is working - upstream of that ring the tree is drying, so when it falls it will be much lighter. So perhaps once when I have the time. She tried to pick some fallen fruit for the next batch of brandy (including about 2kg of apricots) but there wasn't enough of it so she dropped the whole matter. On the way back we picked four burgers (again, pljeskavica is not a burger, different recipe), the fourth one being for Violet. Nina cut that one in half and offered the other half to Raja. Kyo's diet for the last few years is 50% chips, and the rest about evenly spread between fries, cookies, mac'n'cheese, water, sometimes cereals, cakes, icecream and strictly nothing else - no meat, no vegetables. Last time we barbecued, he tried about 1/8th of a ćevapčići, and kind of liked it. So... this time, he ate it whole, with "this is actually quite good". We theoretized about what's his total intake of nutrients, but then he keeps growing just regularly, so we assumed that his body knows best. Still, this was considered a major cultural event, and pictures of him eating a pljeska were briefly made famous in the family network, both sides of the puddle. Actually, this may be the day when they had a long evening chat with Fayes.

In the afternoon we took the girls for a bike ride, but Sanda is the GPS these months, and being on the front bike (she used to be with me for months, but now they switched) she just points her finger. This time she took us to Springfield.

On 12th, however, we took them downtown, and stayed there for almost two hours, even though there was nothing. The only feature was the weddings, so the gypsy brass band would appear around the entrance to the city hall every thirty minutes, play the two or three things that hey prepared (mostly Bregović's stuff, very little of the traditional), then disperse until the next wedding party appears. The clean shaven square with zero features (unless we count the horse with a king on it) creates strong echo so it carried over to the main street quite well. We later realized we saw fewer people downtown than we see around the two blocks at our community center. All because you can't buy bread, sausage or milk on the main street. The content is banks, banks, insurances, exchange offices, banks, cakeshops, cafes, boutiques and mobile telephony providers. Almost all of it in english. So, no foot traffic. And the weather was unseasonably cold in the morning, but in the afternoon it was just perfect for a walk, a fresh breeze and scattered clouds.

In the evening I called Borko then Dragana to schedule the next sitting for tomorrow. But then Jaca called on the landline. She went down to see who's calling at 21:30, and when she came back I just asked "who died". Because there's no other reason for anyone to call on the landline that time of day. It was Teja. The funeral is the next day, and so I called the two again to postpone the sitting for tuesday.

So this 13th we went to her village across Tisa, on the old road to Novi, and attended the funeral. Everyone wore masks, and for those who didn't have them (i.e. me, because mine stayed at home, she carries hers in her purse), Jaca's husband provided. The priests were obnoxious as usual (wore no masks), actually the first assistant sang quite badly, and of course, for what little I couldn't avoid hearing, mentioned the deceased not at all, just chanted their advertising. I hate advertising. On the daća, however, practically nobody had a mask - partly because you can't eat while wearing, partly because we were in private now, in a rent restaurant, and the inspections don't cover such places. Žuca was also there, mostly with us. Her husband was related to my uncle.

During the weekend the statcounter.prg (the web service, not my code) stopped working. On 13th they restored the service and added the guesstimate for the missed time... which means they went the way all american programmers (or at least owners of IT firms) imagine their carreers: then we get rich and we all go fishing. They left nobody at the shop, they didn't even hire two guys across the globe to sound the alarms, the cheapskates. So I canceled my subscription (which is about 50$/year), the only difference between the paid and unpaid version being the size of the log they keep. Until it expires, next april, it holds last 50000 visits, then it will go back to just last 500. I can download my stats at any suitable interval and that'd be it.

14th had Dragana and Borko for frendz parti again, the 18th. She made one of her fabolous gulašes, simmered only for 6 hours, on our homemade noodles (wider ones). Dragana started her drinks sparingly, and a couple of times I poured only half a shot for her, but as it went... some time after midnight it was "ok this one shot and we go". That was three shots before the end, we parted, in good mood, around 2:30. I was wise to take all the photographs during the first hour, and then forget about the camera.

15th in the afternoon, Žuca came to see about my retirement paperwork. Nina scanned and printed everything I could find, while we got the twins on bicycles and rode downtown (still rather empty, even on a workday, perhaps a quarter of what it was 30 years ago). So when Žuca came, I only had to fill one form, and then we went into the garden to just sit and talk, sit and talk...

16th, Nina went to visit Vera, on bicycle, carrying Linda on her back, while baba carried Sanda on her bike. The schoolmate wasn't at home, so they sat a little with her mother and came back. Along the way, they passed Eva's place and saw the big news: debelamačka is open again, third time at the same address! Since two days ago. We'll make plans...

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Mentions: Čankovo, ćevapčići, daća, debelaMačka, Dobrivoj Gunaroši (Boba), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Ender Aquila (Ender), Eva, frendz parti, Jasmina Sentović (Jaca), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Milan Nastić, Milena Požarić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Novi Sad, Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), Springfield, statcounter.prg, švorceniger, Vera Vraneš, Vesela Senić (Teja), Violet, Živana Armatović (Žuca), in serbian