02-IX-2004.
On 29th we went to Richmond again, brought the necessities. Went looking for a pechop, aka pet shop, and got directions to one „across three bridges“. Found it alright, although we didn't even notice any bridges, as they went over some tiny creeks, nothing to see there. Nina bought a new guinea pig, replacement for Mića. Will call her Chu, because she's so fuzzy (čupava), has at least six of those little typhoons, places where hairs spread radially. The pattern is such that I often have to look really well for that glint in her eyes, to see which end is facing me.
In front of the next building there's a bicycle frame locked to the fence. Everything is missing - pedals, seat, wheels, chain, even brake pads.
It seems we had good time there, even made sushi (at home, brought along?). At home we found a largish Moon (not full, wouldn't be so low in the west so early), but the clouds were good. There's no good moonset without pollution.
Today we finally put together the kitchen sink. No countertop, the furniture is still open. I laid it on two slats, which I then tightened with strong steel wire. Works that way, and will for a while. The tiles we glued to the wall, we didn't glue. This horse strong glue takes so long to dry and set, and won't dry because the material is not porous enough - on one side it's cinder blocks, covered with several layers of who knows what, ceramics on the other. When we removed the supporting slat, all the tiles started sliding down the wall. So, later.
She painted the staircase on her own...
And the fridge is incredible - it was among the cheapest, and has all the space you may want. The spaces in the door are wide enough to fit a galon of milk, or two rows of bottles. We managed to fill it only when we stocked the groceries to take to the girls in Richmond. When we took that away, had space galore again.
In that apartment every wind was howling, because the entrance was open, the façade was ribbed, with those plastic sheathing boards, and a few windows had gaps. Every wind there sounded thrice stronger than it really was, while here it's so quiet that most of the winds we don't even know about. Only the aspirator's tunnel's hatch claps up and down when it really blows. The aspirator is a recycler, needs no exhaust tunnel, it blows the filtered air back into the kitchen, so we're thinking of a way to shut off the tunnel somehow.
I heard that Richmond got 30cm of water then, but the kids weren't complaining. They're on a hill anyway - about a kilometer away there's such a descender that it looks like Balkanska street, except by width, of course.
Пише ћале
When I was driving home, in the street next to yours, just by the house of Nina's friend Vera, I shod the rear left tyre with a nail from a horseshoe. What can I say. I replaced the tyre during the worst swelter (it was around 14 hours), and mom was waiting for me for the lunch and worried what may have happened to me.
I got a piece, what they use to make the stiletto tip strong, out of my tyre, the piece of plastic with a nail, and no damage to the tyre. It's four years now that I'm running with these tyres, and they're at just half the warranty (which is 60.000 miles or rather 96.000 kilometers). Few days ago I checked the pressure, the front pair lost 0,05 and the rear about 0,1, and I drove about 2400km since the last balancing of the wheels. I'm really surprised how good are tyres made here.
Curiously, here during the second world war they had gasoline on the dots, although they had oil to exceed the needs. The real reason was the tyres - they wanted to cut down on the tyre wear and tear, because the Japaneses held all the places where the caoutchouc* tree grows. Didn't have the synthetics yet. Then they probably swore to become independent on the matter of tyres, and achieved the quality. Which they compensated by becoming dependent on foreign oil :).
did you send that CD and pictures to Draginja Sejina in Chicago.
I wanted to take a look first, so I did that yesterday, i.e. I tried but it was encoded in some format for which I have no codec (coder/decoder), so saw none of that. Now I have to go send the paperwork for my travel expenses, and I'll send this too on the same run.
Third of september.
Lena goes to school on tuesday (7th) because it's Mayday :) on monday. Today they called from the city's something for school transportation, and told where her bus will be (because we told of address change when the bus schedule was already made). It looked rather far, half a kilometer at least. They told me to call again when their network recovers in a few hours. Then we found a different place, two corners from here. The bus is there at seven something, and until she sees the actual arrival time, she better be there at 7:10. It's some four good kilometers to her new school, so she'll get to know the streets in the whole stretch in between. The classes probably begin at some point after eight, end at 15:20, so she returns when she returns. Considering how complicated this driveout is (a 600 kids school has 40 buses!), it's to be expected that there will be delays the first week, until they all learn their buses. And not only because of embarcation, but until the drivers learn their routes. They change every year, whenever they lose some eighth graders and get new sixth graders.
At work, Jüzek seems to create more confusion, everything works better when he's not there :). I'll meet David in NY on weekend. He's attending a seminar in Bentonville in Arkanzas (should pronounce it Arkansaw), then comes to NYC on friday. I stay until tuesday.
Fourth.
We assembled the washer/dryer aka fridge fridge. Wasn't easy, it's huge and takes a lot of work in the narrow space behind it, to hook everything up - the flex chimney tube for the exhaust, hot water, cold water. And the power was also a problem, don't remmember why when everything else was already there, so I got it through a hole in the wall and then tried to affix the outlet flush with the wall, without really opening it and drilling holes to screw it to the 2x4 in the wall in this dark narrow corner. Tried with glue, applied from the back, cut a hole in the wall from the other side, but it didn't set fast enough, so the cable would drag it into some slanted position. Fastened it to a slat, which I then tightened with a vise, then all of that with a larger vise from the other side, but no. Eventually let it hanging like that. We can't get the hang of that glue.
Then it came to connecting all that - the power (which I had to untie first, the contacts in the outlet are wrong, the ground expects a square prong, and of course I put it wrong when I assembled it), cold water, hot water, dirty water drain, hot air exhaust. The first problem was water - it started peeing everywhere as soon as I turned the valve. The valves are soldered to the pipes (3/4 inch copper), so how to replace them now?
Then it occurred to me that in the valve, while I was staring at it (like a calf...), I noticed how simple the mechanism was, a rubber ring below and one above... hmmm... if it pees whle slightly open, could it be that the upper rubber still didn't close the upper side of the valve? Perhaps if we open it fully... look, really, it stopped. So did the other one. Alright, push the machine into the corner, flip the switch. The machine is incredibly quiet, when it spin dries it, it sounds like an airplane taking off, but softly. If the laundry distributes so that it shakes, it stops, shuffles it slowly for a while, then tries again. And when it started pumping out the first round of dirty water, we had a flood - of course, the drain is clogged. Got in the car and went to Lowe's to buy an auger, which we called brajan right away, after Brian Auger - pronounced Ožer, Oger or Odžer - the famous organ player from the seventies. Drilled it some and now it works smoothly.
The dryer is in the upper part, and we don't need to run it much, as the laundry leaves the washer almost dry. For one, it uses very little water and detergent - we barely see any water - and then it spins it thoroughly, and then shuffles it back and forth for a few minutes, to shake it loose, so it wouldn't wrinkle in the dryer. Pleasantly surprised with all this, after four rounds of laundry (two a day, until she washed the month's backlog), that she was almost disappointed that there was nothing more to wash :).
And ah, yes, the hot water hose. American washers have no water heaters in them, as far as I can see, you're supposed to supply house's hot water. Which means there's no cooking of laundry, no 90° setting. Instead it uses stronger detergents and still the laundry is never properly white, it turns grayish after a while. We are not the only ones complaining of that.
On another image I see we bought a table grinder. While it didn't see much use sharpening tools, we did find other uses for it the next year. Price in Glotz, nothing, 20$.
The kitchen sink... the dress rehearsal seemed a success, I washed my coffee mug. The problem was the premiere, when she washed some amount of dishes and we saw the drain taking forever.
So yesterday and today I spun brajan from all the sides where I managed to insert it (and it's six meters long), I even took the whole wire out of its cranking case and plugged it into the drill, so spun it on power for who knows how long, still nothing. It drains but very slowly, it takes four hours to empty when both sides are 3/4 full. May have to try with a longer wire. I'm seriously running out of ideas.
And we finally got rid of the old carpet. I tried out one of the boxcutter sets (six cutters, 2$, Glotz) and cut it in pieces, then laid them into the trashcan. Luckily, the trashpersonae don't know that there's nobody in #2, so we can use two cans when necessary :).
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* the Frenches should be shot periodically for their spelling, or at least their Academy should be disbanded and replaced with a new one
Mentions: Chu, David Krakovski, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Sejini, Vera Vraneš, Yisaac Kwiatnik (Jüzek), in serbian