21-I-2023.
On twentieth, snow. Didn't get particularly much, and didn't properly freeze either. All the same, Linda had to go out for half an hour, to throw snowballs at baba, while others didn't budge at all. By next day's noon it was mostly gone, the day after it completely vanished.
On saturday we celebrated our anniversary, modestly and unadvertised, just had a bath (well, it's saturday...) and so refreshed sat with a bottle of papazjanija (see 18-I-2021.). It's a tutifruti, different in the added pekmez, which we do when there's not enough fruit for two stills. This one had some of the cherry pekmez, which has gone so dark and thick that it resembled crude oil. Excellent brandy.
And so 50 years have passed since that 21-I-1973.. Time flows. On burundi I just announced „Celebrating 50th anniversary. Good night.“, and next day got congratulations in the range from „...both to you and maam“ to „Surreal.“.
Shitty weather on sunday again, rains and doesn't, blows and doesn't, spitting november. At least we talked our fill - in the evening with Lena, who hosted her cooking show, i.e. parked the phone on the shelf above the stove while making dinner. Recounted her trip to Arizona, how's the work, and most important, told us that at no airport anyone mentioned vaccine or tests. That's important to know, that Nina wouldn't have any problems traveling home.
In the evening I made invitation calls for the next evening, then we spoke with Go and Stanley, also over Telegram. Still have 4-5 people on Skype, don't mind that much. Anita's back in health, we weren't worried, she's strong and otherwise healthy. Neša is somewhat sniffing, but doesn't sound like anything serious. The work goes on, Go is making quilts, Stanley fixes and sells cars, and says he thinks of expanding into onboard computers in cars, while at the same time he can't imagine ever working as network/admin again, he can't understand how he ever had the patience for all that.
On monday, of course, the 92nd frendz parti. All in good mood, specially the kids (even Raja made an appearance). Violet seems to regret not understanding serbian like the twins do. Dragana seems to be better, this week she ventured as far as the Gomex supermarket, which is almost 450m away. Borko, amazingly, didn't have a ready subject to strangle us with, he just started with „interesting what they found when they sampled the deaenay on the Balkan* peoples, and found that the most similarity with Serbs was found in [here go 5-6 sentences to build up the suspense and drag the time] Croats, and also that we have about 30% of slavic genes, and 15% of celtic. How did the Celts get here in the first place?“. Well, buddy, that's easy, they were here before the Slavs. This is where the discussion of genetics was quickly diverted to Celts („how was Scotland settled? The Pirotians exiled their worst spenders.“) and it meandered away in dozen directions. Nina also had a lot to say this time, specially about her giving birth in the Philippines, showed pictures of how she was then etc etc.
Sanda and Linda kept crawling under the table, played with Dragana's bracelets (which eventually were forgotten on my keyboard), they danced, did acrobatics (they can both raise a foot above head, they really are so nimble). She baked 24 kifla (from german Kipfel, aka sickle aka crescent aka croissant) with ground droždine (the bits from the bottom of the pot where čvarci were made). Technology now has them in a gut, like a salami. Roasted two big butkice in the oven, the skin got heavenly crunchy, served two of her salads (pickles with her spices, and the chutney of dried cherries and green tomatoes) and finally the pancakes with pumpkin pekmez of orange color taste. To which Dragana said „now you've killed us“. Borko ate a pancake with the rest of the chutney, which looked like overloaded, and she noticed how he doesn't roll the pancake properly, he folds it in half and then rolls, which leaves both ends outside. But he held it somehow and nothing oozed out, despite the chutney being almost liquid and quite copious.
They left before one, as her leg started fucking her, swelled despite being mostly raised on the stool under the table. The cabbie was precise this time, as she knew to aim him to our future house number.
On wednesday, Alphonse finally fixed that bug, so now when the server didn't respond, I didn't get kicked out, but rather got the response from the browser; clicking the „try again“ button only refreshed the page, didn't have to login again. It could have lost the unread messages, but going n hours back just works, no problem. Though, it's possible that the server was simply inaccessible, and not (as was the actual cause of his error before) accessible but busy with something else.
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* saying „the Balkans“ is stupid, there's only one. I'll agree to plural if you find at least one more.
Mentions: 21-I-1973., 18-I-2021., Alphonse D'Alchembert, Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), burundi, butkice, čvarci, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), pekmez, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), Stanley Berger, Violet, in serbian