On 20th, big inventory of brandy. Put together the half-full casks, not mixing anything with anything else - it's all exactly as it says on the label. And I mostly wrote new ones, marker on the masking tape - the marker is not permanent, so it fades.
On 21st went downtown twice. First to the social, to submit my retirement paperwork. The guy there is fresh, so it took some time to understand that Žuca already put the rest of it into the file, and then a phone call to learn that it's already in Novi, under processing. Buzzed around, called Dragana to pass the time and announce that we'd resume the sittings on 24th. Signed the petition to close the carcass processing plant, which is south of šećerana, and which generally worked fine since the eighties, but since the last year they cardinally fucked up something (owned by Matijević now) and the stink goes all the way to bus station, sometimes ruža, even felt it all the way to Čurda once, and there are accounts of it reaching downtown. The rose of the winds has almost no south wind here, it's mostly norwester or southeaster, with some north or northeast, but when it blows from the south it blows slow and takes days to change. The stink lingers likewise. For seven saturdays now there's a citizens' protest parading by their gate.
In the afternoon we took the girls to a different park this time - past downtown, by the court building, on the quay by Students', where the DBA office was in 1989-1992. Nothing much there, but good shade, look at the lake (nee river). Then we went to the main square, had ice cream, lemonade, then a tiny pizza, went home. Everyone happy.
Žuca called while we were out, said everything was fine but the guy is a noob so he didn't quite see everything - I still need to bring my soldier's booklet (i.e. ID, from which they can see when I served) and an account number where I want my monthly to land. Will do on monday.
On 22nd we were sitting in the yard all day, making brandy. Got some 10,5 liters from three batches of tutifruti, good. The twins were mostly splashing in the little tub, which starts with warm water and ends still OK when they're done.
On 23rd, in the morning, Go was the first (of course, it's her late night the day before) to wish me a happy birthday, then Lena to wish us both, then I to her, and then Nina with "happy birthday to all who celebrate it" - which is the proper civil add-on when wishing someone a merry red day in their church's calendar. I was specially annoyed to be included around krismisses and eesters, as those should not apply to me, I explicitly ask to be excluded, I'm not yours, period. Did that on each forum, and it seems to have worked, at least I don't remember anyone forgetting the "to all who celebrate" on burundi and even on UA. This year I stopped paying subscription at UA, as Alphonse doesn't fix the bug which logs me out every few days, when his server has maintenance. Same thing happens on burundi, but it automatically logs me back in - IOW, the code in the page recognizes the situation and preserves the cookies, so next time it tries (now automatically!) if it finished, it gets me where I left off, I may not even notice that anything happened. But Alphonse has gotten lazy, and there's perhaps just thirty people left, and I don't need it for work - hey, I'm officially retired starting today! - ergo pedal. I rarely even log in, there's now about three weeks between logins, and the last two times I tried I couldn't see the messages except the first one - the treeview on top wouldn't expand the first time; the second time I got a white page, nothing. Tried in Waterfox, tried in Firefox, same.
In the afternoon went to Čankovo to get more fruit - five buckets of plums, plus some grape, white peach, pears, tomatoes, apples. Got drunk in the evening, with the good hare krišnja (kruška+višnja, pear+sour cherry) brandy we discovered during the inventory. It's good that we have this policy of trying out the badly labeled caskets. The peach that Stanley and I made in 2015 was thus found bad and got redistilled; the 2013 peach was originally good and popular for a day, but when we found it we didn't like it, and redistilled it (in batch with the tutifruti) this year. The hare krišnja 2018 was goood. Bit of a headache in the morning, cured by first half of the coffee.
On 24th I went downtown to submit the missing paperwork and started with picking a bank where to open an account (didn't have one). Tried for Banka poštanska štedionica (stupid as stupid name - "bank post office savings"), but they had a dozen people waiting outside with some printouts in their hands, I guessed some state dole came again, so they were the cashier's line, and I only need to open an account, so I went for the door and couldn't possibly guess which way it opens. Generally, all front doors here open inwards (which is such a reflex that it took me a few years to accept that doors to public spaces open outwards in the US), but nowadays it's not a rule anymore, all standards are under revision, so I tried both ways. Some lady came from the other side of the door, yelling at me, thinking I was yanking the door (which I almost started doing, thinking it may be stuck, another common occurrence). Like what? I'm supposed to know your rules for today, right off the street? Told her "fuck yourself, I'll open an account somewhere else!". Skipped Societe generale, lots of space and too much modern gray-glass-polished metal design, quite hidden and still having people wait outside. Skipped Halkbank, who the fuck are you, Adiko, same reason, came to NLB, Nova ljubljanska banka... actually lublanska - they do say "Lublana" in Ljubljana, and the acronym isn't NLJB. It's in the same building where Čelik was upstairs and this was actually a supermarket (NuProm's, of course) before it was a bank. I was getting chits as "warm meal" replacement, valid in there, and once a month we'd buy a cartfull of stuff for those chits, including a carton of cigarettes. And it was a bank before it was a supermarket. They didn't have anyone waiting outside, and even some AC inside - I didn't sweat my shirt out until half an hour later. I asked the guard how does it feel, guarding a bank and every now and then a masked person comes in. I did feel weird myself, putting on a mask and entering a bank, finally!, and I'm empty handed. Yeah, he said, you don't even have a bag...
So finished that, filled yet another form at the social, and sat to have a smoke and dry some sweat off myself, it must have been 36. Tried to call Dragana to tell her we won't schedule the sitting for the evening, but having no glasses I missed and got Dragan - which was good, I wanted to hear what's going on there but didn't have any reason to call him, so accident served well. He's moving to Kladovo, got a job and should complete the rest in a couple of months. So you're selling the apartment? Done already, I'm dismantling the furniture as we speak. He promised he'd pick Boba and Milena some time during his remaining two weeks here, and visit us. Didn't happen. Them we didn't see since march (actually saw her alone, once, while walking to one of our drinking evenings).
Tried Dragana, but she didn't respond. She then called me, when I was on the bicycle, almost at home. She was in the bath. Ah, I'm always missing the best parts. So she'll be on Tara first ten days of september, she also went to Peskara a few times and has the ultrasound check tomorrow. Hopefully negative. We all want to be negative these days.