On sunday we, primarily i, got up later, because we celebrated for ourselves, before sleep. I think we got to the fifth shot of apple...
During the day I did the pictures from the previous day, all 169. Then mostly cooled off the afternoon, doing pretty much nothing.
Today, then, Lena comes up on skype, sends us an extra photo with cutting the cake... which somehow didn't work at first, these cakes are somehow locked now and the key was supposed to be... well, never mind, they managed. The photo is, of course, an inscenation just in their style. She says the company split at 22 and they didn't go from splav to splav. She walked home barefoot because the sandals chafed her feet and the sore spots bled. The apricot they didn't even open.
While she was on skype, she checked the barrel with apricot that we picked on wednesday, and said can't delay, this is ready to distill right away. I took out the kettle, gas bottle, tabarka (the condenser), kept coming in to get the beaker, alcoholometer... and during one of these forays Lena just said "oh shit I have a meeting now ciao" and cut the connection. The distillation went surprisingly quickly - first, I've split the amount into two batches almost exactly right; second, the methanol drip started at 35 minutes both times (to differ from cherries, cherry/cherry mix and cherries*, which started at 70 or worse; the whole batch was done in 2 hours, while those took 3 and then some; we got 9,3 liters, and from those we got 4 each time. Excellent, this. I was finished at 17, by 18 cooled off a bit and washed and put back everything, by 19 even had the time to take a shower, 19:30 here come Dragana i Borko. It was so hot outside that she not only had a top without the back, but also had only two rings on her fingers. This was the jubilary 50th frendz parti, but I didn't count them until december 2023 so we didn't know it.
We drank apricot, three shot each (not the usual two shots them and we three) and I showed the whole wedding, with photos. Then we switched to... well, them two to tikveško roze, while we went for beer, because last time in Lidl I found, on the discount shelf, the pilsner urquell, which we stumbled upon in 2000 and perhaps twice thereafter. Dragana was wondering at me drinking beer. "I know how to" I said (which is just "umem" in serbian), "just scarcely remember it... and I had a period, 1970-73, when I just couldn't" and then told them the whole history. Which led to other stories, discussions and whatnot, with which we can fill six forevers and not be finished, we rinse our mouths and feel fine. Borko, however, came up with a bunch of details about Vanji's carreer while in Big Ćale's erc (and he didn't know that everybody called the guy that). Before that, after his brief stint in some brick and tile production and then in the brewery, he had a job in the kombinat's science institute, where he doodled something, like, studied matters, whatever, generally did nothing. Then Fefi brought him to work in erc, where he likewise did nothing. How he's known everywhere and liked nowhere. For two years he was designing Grain, the never-to-be-done project initiated by Big Ćale himself, about the field chart, tracking the cultures per field over the years, which was later the subject of one of those meetings at Bole's in may 1988.. The project was Big Ćale's pet, who then, after two years, pressed Vanji to show him something to present to prospective customers. He cobbled it together in two days, and it was just an endless series of menus, one leading to another, no tables no forms no reports - nothing anywhere. Just menus. And, said Borko, it was never done. Wrong, I said, Brlja began collecting the data and samples for it from Ledinje in 1998 or so, they were our customers then, and when he split from Avai, he finally did it, perhaps in 2007 or 2014. Super, so less than thirty years...
Then we babbled some about engrbian too, about the humbling approach of the rest of the world towards the west, I said how we don't know how to boast ("da se kurčimo" - to dick ourselves out), what's it to me that S. Petersburg is the northern Venice... wake me up when they start calling some western city the south Petersburg. Or when anything in the west is named in imitation of the rest of the world. Find me a toilet paper in serbian. Find ten picture books from our writers. Find ten items of cosmetics in serbian. Because we lack the will to exist, as a nation, as a culture, and we're gladly accepting it. And not just us.
We dispersed at 1:30.
The next day, 13th, we went with kids to the pool. We voted and everyone wanted pool, only Linda wanted Peskara. We'll go there some other day. There was no spot on the parking lot, so we unloaded and I drove around to park at kantina. The water in the kid's pool is too warm for days now, you feel warmth on your belly and back when you dip. Then it evens off a bit, but still, every ten minutes I had to wet my head. The kids grew an appetite - two packs of tiny donuts, a pack of fries, and a burger for Raja (well, just 100g, he can do twice that much, he's growing). Several times he went to drink water from the tap, on his own, which was a first. The same Raja who wouldn't even touch bottled water if it wasn't properly cooled, just a couple of months ago. The strange day when you say okay to kids more times than you say no or have to explain.
Before sleep, we sat to finish off the two bottles that we keep upstairs and empty them slowly. In three light steps we got to the shakeup of yesterday's tale of Vanji and... how did that man manage to insinuate himself into almost any major project I worked on. Making The Gram, okay, he may have got there by hunch, before knowing exactly what was in it, it was still all naive and I'm not quite sure he got there when it already took shape. But the later things - the project paper to DBA - this is where he came to see me when it was already in the process. I wouldn't rule it out that he somehow got wind of what's in the making and saw an opening to insert himself in the project. It not only worked, he even got to be the manager for a few weeks ("in founding"), four years as chief of commerce (or whatever it was that he was doing), and in the end he got good amount in court and bought the vineyard with that cash, and now he's some name among the local vintners (of which two thirds is self-advertising, but then the self-advertising is the essence of the trade). And in Szoftex we pulled him in, because someone was supposed to do all that paperwork, talk to doctors and coerce the confession on what they really need to have in the PolC, and Joška and I simply didn't speak enough hungarian for that then. Did he get the job done? Yes he did, he drew the system, of which two thirds remained, and the other five thirds was mine. Huh? Well I redid one third of what he drew, quite differently, then went on and added four times more. And he completely fucked up the MEC app, because he insisted that each phase in the history of a box of meds should be in a separate table, which complicated things immensely, and that thing never flew right.
And then she went with the litany of his bereaved customers - Tereza, Arpi/oma, even dad and who else whom he sold crappy old boxes at prices of new, then remembered how Brlja and I never quite knew the finances of Avai - that one byzantine spreadsheet was the closest we got, and that was completely useless, we could see nothing in it but pure entanglement. How exactly I knew that, after clearing out dad's brandy sales piggy bank, I won't be seeing him again, and that's exactly how it was.
But yes, the impression remains, that through three companies, three projects, he tagged along with me and each time somehow managed to be the boss, while his contribution remained minor, but that's his talent, to insert himself and to impress. Maybe the only time he really worked was that stint in Libya.
On 14th, still hot weather but murky, don't know whether that's saharan sand or just vapor in the air. Dry, hot. We didn't feel like going to the water, Violet's sleeping schedule fell apart (though, we could have, she was awake in the afternoon), Raja woke up with sore throat and squealed for half an hour until he ate something, baba made mufljuzi** with bananas and chocolate chips and he had a few, throat healed. Instead of going anywhere, we made more noodles for the soup, the eggs are piling up, Lena said don't bring me eggs until we use up what we had before the vacation, to Boba we forgot to give last times, so make thin noodles, there's still room in the barrel.
Then at dusk we took Sanda and Linda to Springfield. It's getting crowded there, nobody gives a fuck about corona anymore, waiters wear no masks, guests neither, except the father of some girl, at least when he was in the kids' playroom. The girls played with his daughter almost all of the time, and weren't bothered by other kids. On the way back we had to turn on the bike lights, it was dark enough, only her bike's light shone left and up (because its holder loosened and she had to put it in the handlebar basket). Shines great, it lightened up the front of each house we passed, as if we're a police chase. The atmosphere was insane, everything blazing as in "Fire walk with me", and a few rain drops hit us. They both scream with pleasure. Perfect.
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* fuck english... under cherries I mean sweet cherries, and under cherries I mean sour cherries
** muffins, but we renamed them by similarity, as early as 1999. The term "mufljuz" denotes a shady character, who'll fuck you up as soon as he gets a chance, one you can't trust