05-VIII-2022.
Nothing big going on. It's a draught, a temperature drop from 36° to 32° comes as a true refreshment. Every 4-5 days we visit Čankovo, I do whatever I planned (sawing off the cherries which grew through the front fence), she picks tomatoes (180kg so far). We went on 2nd again and gave up on the remaining plums, no good. Usually a draught makes the fruit sweeter, but not this time, not sweet at all, no taste, and not too much of it. Won't be making any brandy this august. Year with a 2.
Milk is 90 dinars this month, until further.
Just let it be noted that espyesse's youth (Sloba's party inheritors, I guess it's them, who else) are late this year. Since 2017 they have regularly cleaned around the monument to Koča Kolarov and comrades, erected about 3km out of town, where they were shot. They'd bring trimmer and pitchforks and cut the weeds and stack them on the side. It was always ready by 4th of july.
This year the place spent almost whole july in elbow high weeds. They mowed it just a few days ago. Now why were they late this year, and why did they wait for 2017 to start, is beyond me.
She took out the potatoes in the yard. From these eight squares she got about 10kg, not too large, but good. Then the next day I went through the soil with a small shovel and a stool, thoroughly, and got a couple of kilos more, about 15kg altogether. Had we had the time to bring more soil, it would have fared better. Considering the draught and how the surrounding trees (two apricots, birch, fig and we aren't sure that walnut is completely dead, the cut roots kept dripping for months) suck out the moisture, this is an achievement.
On thirtyfirst Milan and Lena came. The barbecue turned out right. Api scared the cats so for a few hours we could walk around the yard without worrying that we may step into one. They say the apartment is mostly finished, it's the kitchen cabinet that's still pending, they need to pick a fridge and report the dimensions, as it has to be fit in, and then the design can be completed. They plan to move in by early september, optimistically end of it. Searching for better jobs now, the Frankfurt outfit becoming bullshit now. It was nice until the big money walked in and enforced the insane growth rate. They went from the initial eight to some 240 people, now reduced to just 100 - which is still insane. By this time they have accumulated quite a pedigree, so they can pick a job, again a telecommunistic one, for even more money.
On first the 79th frendz parti was at Borko's (his what?). Dragana was a few minutes late, despite our slow walk, dropping by Roda to buy the wine and chocolate, even sitting a couple of minutes on the bench at the building entrance - we still arrived at 19:28, whole minute ahead of our regular time. Borko had another theory again, that we should colonize at least Mars by tomorrow, because the Sun will run out of fuel someday. Nice waste of mouth for quite a while. At some point we noticed that it's the two of them who keep talking, we retreated from the chat. Eventually they did come to some conclusion or at least clear positions, having said what they had, and then I wanted to interject with some joke, but no. They took two more minutes repeating and underlining and pointing out what they already said. The master of education, dragged her into his game of repeating the matter and she didn't even notice.
We tried to move to the terrace, but the pigeons made a chaos and two nests there, what with a whole egg in the corner. Twice last year we sat outside, when he won some battles, but he's still losing the war. The pigeons are stupid, but stubborn.
We stayed, I guess, until one thirty. For some reason there was no message from 566 that the vehicle arrived, but then there's the time on the call: 1:16. The cabbie said we come across as some proto hipsters from previous era. Yes, more or less.
On fourth I finally announced on burundi that Byo is already online, and that all the links in my tagline, that I had for the last five-six weeks, lead to it. And yes, my mysterious reader was the one who was the prime suspect. Someone asked „and have you lectorized everything thrice, so we don't find any mess, you don't want to be remembered as such“, to which The Reader said „I went on reading it... and tough shit regarding the errors :). They probably are there but I keep missing them, despite maliciously searching for them.“. So that day they clocked some fifty visits, then another six the next day and that was it. Just Melanija clocks one a day, always the same one, seems to reload the browser regularly. Well at least she's holding a finger on that spot.
It seems to be a bit too much, this is page 2375 (okay, some duplicates were erased), it's the „too long, didn't read“ syndrome. Mine is to publish it, and I got a few lines of praise, what more would I want:
„And interesting it is - very. A chronicle of time and space, with a mild humorous note, devoid of mythomania or selfenamoredness“ (The Reader)
„really all te kudos. Te structure is excellent, storytelling is excellent, and te story of te new avatar is excellent“ (dr Faré, haircut latin)
On sixth, in local news, I see Mire and Zorica were in Spain again, this time on foot, well part of the way. The article says they walked 600+ km, which reaches Trieste from here. Guess their bikes got a flat tire, so walk. They rode them to such vacations for years.
On seventh, in Čankovo, she picked tomatoes, but since this was the fifth day since last, not the regular fourth, she saw that the neighbors have helped themselves to the largest ones. In four days enough of them ripen, we come and pick them and they get nothing. This time they saw that we didn't, so they did.
The new hand pump, of „Nostalgija“ brand, turned to be excellent, it doesn't go dry for days, so we had to pour water into it only the first time, to soak the leather gasket. The underground water level fell so much that the hidrofor manages to pump it (to water the tomatoes on only one line, the distributor for four lines being stolen a couple of weeks ago) for about an hour and a half, and then it can't keep up, the motor turns endlessly and can't build up the pressure. It's so for about three weeks now, so I was thinking of getting a new hose of about 40m, attaching some kind of funnel to its upper end, and pump by hand, to at least water the quinces. They are grouped and I'd get some effect this way. The rest of the fruit is just not worth the trouble.
I brought a better saw blade, a true foxtail, and cut more of those wild cherries around the middle fence. The best cherry tree now has some air and sun, and I treated it, and the other one next to the terrace, with two buckets of water each. Their leaves were just too limp.
The storks have left.
On eighth we finally had a decent rain, after more than two months of sunshine or just paltry drizzle, as fell when I was making the papazjanija brandy, but that left the soil dry within two hours. This time even the temperature dropped to decent, and two days later the soil is still humid.
Bilja emailed, when I reminded her to bring the phone unpacked, as if used. Says „I appologize, is it really possible that I didn't reply... really uncultured of me .. maybe it dropped off my mind wen I had te corona 13-th of Juli. It is understood, I will unpac it and put in my bag. We arrive on 11-t, see eac oter ten or on 12-t“. (this time she switched to haircut latin in mid-sentence, imperceptibly)
Today (10th) I have put the nokla, hopefully for the last time, to charge.
Nina chatted some with Lena and she reports that she applied for a job at serbian m$, says it would look nice on her seevee, and they hire a lot in Belgrade these days, she could get some rather senior position. Nina said „it would be as if I worked at IRS“. What she tried to clear up her taxes, and paid some lawyer outfit 5000$ for, drags into third year now. Wasn't the smartest mvoe... She still ended up owing some 20K$ to federal, which they wrote off as uncollectable, and now Virginia wants its share and threatens seisure and these shysters says is beyond their contract. She then scanned the contract and sent it back, highlighting the paragraph where it says that it is them who have to deal with it, they signed and got paid. They thanked her for reminding them and went to pull their hairs out.
Eleventh was a long day. In the morning I was fighting the word indexing in Byo, the python version, where I screwed up the if-elif-elif-else statement so it skipped most of the words except those beginning with underscore, which were then the only ones I kept checking so for months I thought it was all OK. Then rewrote but forgot those, and went on to check, worked right this time... then I let it batch process the whole (which has grown to more than half a million words by now), while still in the debugger. Then saw that I omitted thes underscored (which later become links, when it generates the pages) and ran it again, this time without the debugger. Much faster, of course. I had this snafu a hundred times, when I let a long process in the debugger, and then kept estimating whether it's faster to stop it and rerun without. This time I don't care, I'm retired.
In the afternoon went to the garden and took the kittens with us, four of the april batch. The fifth was too nimble and they didn't catch it. We took a different route this time, another section of the beltway is finished (was scheduled for 2013, to be finished in 2014). Not bad, I always love a stretch of unknown road, it looks quite pretty with the fields around it (wheat is cropped already, corn and sunflower will start any day, though due to draught they are about half size). Now instead of four traffic lights and two narrow streets I have one light, one narrow street and one nasty exit onto the main road... and made it in about the same ttime, while this is a few kilometers longer. At least most of the trucks will now be off the streets we take.
During approach to the village, one kitten shat. But okay, I do 50 kmh there, open the windows. When we let them out of the box, they didn't disperse, but rather stayed around and explored the surroundings, even came back to us. She picked another 10kg of tomatoes, though she won't cook it, the new shelf is full, this is to eat... but who knows, she may make a few things. I took the foxtail saw to the rear of the garden, and trimmed the accacia, stacking the thorny branches over the hole under the fence, where they come in.
When we came back, the gang decided to go to days of beer. This year they rescheduled it to week earlier than before, as their parade was rained on last year. Could have better moved it to july, to cut the draught, rain is forecast for saturday and sunday again... So we stuffed ourselves into the van (which took some time, Nina is never in a hurry when going somewhere, and there were four ladies' hairs to do). Found a place to park in the same location as three years ago. We were smart to start earlier, around 18:30, before the rush. So we made our tour from Žitni to the center and back. Already on Žitni we met Žuca, towing her granddaughter and kumica (kum's daughter or granddaughter), took pictures with them.
Then bought some toys, cotton candy, then a bottle of water to wash the sticky fingers and cheeks... On the main square, just framed Nina for a solo shot, when Joška finds himself in the frame. „You fell into my shot!“ „I tried to fall out, but you were faster“ „You'll fall out just fine, no worry“*. He's got a new shooter, a mirrorless Sony (which I read, the hungarian way, as „šonj“ and he got it right away), then Nina came with more questions about it, and then it was five minutes of camera talk. Told us of his son, who wanted to visit aunt in the US, has hungarian passport, but nope, not good enough, needs a visa. Because there's now a bunch of Russians with hungarian passports, so now they let only those born in Hungary without a visa. And he's a residence risk - single, no property, no permanent job (still specializing anaesthesiology), Amers strongly dislike the kind.
Nina brought kids' tablets, to try to catch a few pokemon, as they do in the neighborhood - go for an evening walk and they hook to the internet on her phone. Downtown we had a public free network since long ago, I remember they were shooting a video, sent it to facebook, then read comments from their friends, all without moving a butt from a chair, sittin on a pavement cafe. Few months ago it stopped working, because all of a sudden they couldn't agree who should be paying for that. There are many active networks on the main street, but all locked, ask the waiter for the password.
Then we stumble upon Veca, took her grandson for a stroll, accompanied by Sneca's husband. I mostly chatted with him, she with her. I managed to tell her, in parting, that Byo is online, and later in the evening she asked for an url, and I see she read about ten pages, more or less at random. The month's counter so rose from 66 to 88 in a few days - ten from Blitva, who only skims the pictures, one from Melanija, and it also counted one of my own check visits. I'm blocking my own by IP as the blocking cookie doesn't seem to work, and the IP changed again at last blackout (few minutes only, zmajček worked on UPS, but the router and probably the whole area were down).
Upon return an email from Bilja was there - „there were no problems with transfer . Would you like for us to meet tomorrow morning so I can pass it to you? I am in te domaćin's object in Karadiordiev park 65“. Now look at that, its next to banatskakuća. While writing this I was waiting for another email to schedule the time and then get on my bike and take her (them? she said something in plural) for lunch, and now I know where.
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* wordplay - „fall into“ is „drop in“ or „accidentally jump into“; „fall out“ is „turn out“, i.e. „how did it fall out“ is „what was the outcome of it“; specially, „fell out nicely on the picture“ is „looking good on it“
Mentions: Api, banatskaKuća, Biljana Lajković (Bilja), burundi, Byo (Byo), Čankovo, domaćin, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), frendz parti, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joška Apro, kum, Majkrosoft (m$), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Melanija Tisarević, Milan Nastić, Milorad Škanata (Mire), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), nokla, Snežana Stojanović (Sneca), Vera Stojanović (Veca), zmajček, Zorica Škanata, Živana Armatović (Žuca), in serbian