09-III-2007.: 2007-03-08
Met with David yesterday. He seems to have one in every port, so he came to see me and to spend the night somewhere in the neighborhood (prob'ly within 30 miles). There's an off chance that he may try for the local clinic, as that's the place where the first IVF ever was performed back in the eighties, so that would be an important notch on the belt.
We met at some semi-fancy place on Atlantic avenue, on the parking lot - synchronized to within a minute. It's actually an ordinary shack, wood and drywall, but location and paint do the rest. We went to the dining section - left side of it, the kitchen and bar being in the middle, and I asked for an ashtray. Ah, sorry, the smoking section is on the right side. Good, specially seeing as it is heated. The weather on the coast is actually quite cold until about mid-april, with the heat inertia of the ocean and prevailing winds from it. As I wrote to dad, "granny Marta finished her smoke break and went back to work", i.e. it's fucking cold again.
(The photo is the only one that's actually good, if we don't count the one waiter made of us, with flash. The standing figure near the rear door is a statue of an American American chief, of the kind that once stood by tobacco shops.)
He ordered some scallops and other morsketina (v. house dictionary), he seems to know the menu as well, and we talked a lot about this "rag tag bunch" called Firriver. This was supposed to be my negotiation for the work, but then I was already working for a couple of weeks, starting earlier, as usual, this time because James has quit and went back to bank to work. Seems like a beginning of a beautiful friendship.
The Feds app was inherited from some dutch doctor, who wrote it (in fox, of course, the doctors' preferred language) and then it outgrew his capabilities, so he passed it to Jan around version 4. It's currently at 5.2 or thereabouts.
Nina had a minor accident, decided that the yellow light will go red by the time she reaches the line, so she braked. The guy behind didn't think so, and rear-ended her a little. Just minor damage, wrinkled bumper.
Lena had a nice expression - "deja vu amnesia", the feeling that I forgot this before this time.
In email, Škrba's story about the new topic on sezam, about those "who may be killed without any damage to civilization". And on the list he found those who forever keep the remote in its cellophane bag. Shaming worked, so he removed the bag from his remote (for the sound system), and within a day managed to drop it into a plate with šampita (cream pie, very sweet, thin pastry on the bottom, thin chocolate on top, the rest is just sugar and egg whites). He cleaned it two days.
My current tagline at UA is "That's not my last name. I'll have more.".
me: I may come up with my five, if only you stop putting SF and fantasy on the same shelf.Nick: Tell me five movies you liked and I bet I can give you five others you may not have seen and would like. Caveat: if you mainly like sci-fi / fantasy I probably can't do that.
Dad is selling the vineyard, finally. I got worried that he's still driving the trabant - which is barely functional - with his lead foot. Luckily, nothing ever happened. Some prospective customers would come and look when the weather dries a bit.
Mentions: David Berton, Feds, Firriver Fertility (Firriver), fox, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), house dictionary, James Olsen, Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Nick Greene, sezam, trabant, UbiquAgora (UA), in serbian