27-XII-2020.

Last night Lena posted an image of herself and Milan, embraced on the couch, with her desk and the new year spruce all lit with a string of LEDs behind them, with a remark "pay attention to details". And sure enough, she had a ring on her left ring finger. Today she came up on skype, video call. I had an unfinished cake on the desk, and both twins on my lap, with their tablets between them and the keyboard. Yup, they're getting married. When? They decided to look up the date... on the bottom of the munchmallow box, the best before date. It will be in june.

Well, we still have lots of that brandy dad made. Of course, it's all loza, he had a vineyard, but Lena said "I think mine was apricot". Go didn't quite get the details reference, not knowing that Lena rarely has anything on her fingers, but that was cleared up in our chat on 29th. She's doing more things with her 3d printer and actually wanted to buy us one here, just trying to do something good with all the money while it's worth something. It's an uphill battle, though, because Stanley keeps making more... and she still has most of the stash from her gaming industry days (which ended eight years ago) and keeps getting the rent for the house from Nina's kum. The rent is minimal, I think 750$ or thereabouts, but the guys keep the house in shape, replace and fix things as needed. They did repaint it, mostly gray, but hey, as long as I don't have to see it, I don't care - it was in our colors while we lived in it.

The day was great, the temperature went up above 10, so we took the twins downtown, to catch some air. Bought them some wooden toys, two wheels on a stick propelling butterfly's wings to clap, and both broke before we got to the other end of the main square. I went back twice to the seller/maker, and got replacements. The guy drilled the wing's axle in parallel to the grain of the wood, thus making a weak spot. I told him he should make it under a different angle, explained why. "Gee, I didn't think of that". Wow, you moron, you are trying to make a living out of woodwork and you "didn't think of that"?

On 30th we took the twins with us to visit Magi's mom, bring her some sarma. She was amazed with them. We now have the keys to her building and apartment (new lock), checked, both work. Magi said later (after talking with mom) that she's also fascinated with twins - Loba has twin sisters, who were so emotionally connected, it's amazing. Most of the pictures I took were out of focus, because the previous evening I took the eos70 upstairs to make a shot of the festive lights in the neighborhood, and it wouldn't focus properly, so I switched to manual and forgot to switch back. A few had to be accidentally good enough and those I sent.

In the evening I finally emailed Melanija, with just a HNY and connection check. It's her university email, and with the zig-zag academic carreer I well thought that it won't reach her - uncle Bayes may eat it as spam, the address may be dead (found it on the university's page, and we well know how those aren't refreshed even annually) etc. But no, she replied right away, remembering how she awaited my letters, which she kept until two years ago, when they finally sold that apartment downtown and moved her mom closer to the university in Novi. Also something about the recent years being a blur while the old memories stay sharp and bright. Well, well. Didn't mention any of this to my lady, because while we are in an open relationship (which is a liberty we haven't exercised in decades), Melanija is, to my reckoning, the one person I should not mention. I once blurted something which was understood completely the opposite of what I meant, and it remained a sore spot. So having a little harmless secret adds some spice to these years. And yes, she's in Boston, their son is 32 and has a PhD in mathematics. Lecturing on university here and there, looking for a tenure.

Raja and Violet are now mostly in day shift again. Two days ago he was awake for almost 24h and was dead tired in the end. She's getting weaned off her old tablet, which suprisingly survived this long - his tablet, and the spare kitty tablet (which I understood as the kiddy tablet, the east coast pronunciation often being so, until I saw it has kittens on the sheathing) have both died in the last 15 months.

There's also a postcard from Burt with him somewhere on an empty street somewhere in Arlington, usual greetings. Sanda found it, pointed to him and said "that's baba".

The kids loved the fireworks at midnight of new year. There was no central nothing, it's neighbors, one in every 3-4 houses fired something up. So it's 2021, fresh and unused. I fired about two dozen of "HNY!" and "SNG!" (as language applies to recipient) messages on both phone and skype. Dragana replied first, in her usual all uppercase, with "...and it must be better than the previous".

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Mentions: Dom omladine, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, gimnazija, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), kum, loza, Margita Gunaroši (Magi), Melanija Tisarević, Milan Nastić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Novi Sad, Reginald Burton Cape (Burt), Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sarma, Slobodan Šumić (Loba), Stanley Berger, Violet, in serbian