02-XII-2014.
Bought a food processor, and named it Hasan II right away. Contrary to the order how we named them back in the US, when this chopper was the 1st and the salami cutter was the 2nd. We simply bought them in different order here. The Hasan reference is from an old Popeye cartoon from probably the fifties, which was rerun on our TV in the sixties and seventies probably dozens of times, where he raids Ali Baba's cave, and the frenetic guard with a huge sabre runs him around and keeps shouting „Hasan chop! Hasan chop!“.
The reason we bought it was the bunch of horseradish roots that we got from dad. There's an endemic patch of them under the spruce. They grow deep, and if you pull one out, the root breaks where it can, and later a new plant grows from the root. If you don't pull it out, it grows regardless. Indestructible.
Not that there's no horseradish to buy, but what's on offer defeats the purpose. They let it evaporate, so it loses the bite, doesn't clean up your sinuses and nasal cavity, does nothing. We've even found some, from Centroprom, which contains 29% percent of horseradish - nice, what's the 71% then? So, just like dozens of other things, if you want it done right, do it yourself. Amazingly, there were nice rainbow colors where the ground pieces stuck to the transparent plastic lid.
Of course, we did it on the terrace. The evaporation from such a big surface of it being suddenly exposed to air is something to be reckoned with, and not for the faint of heart. Dad used to grind them outside, in the back of the yard, and would return with his eyes all red and eyelids swollen. But then didn't have any nasal problems for at least a month, regardless of winter.
Bajlo visited on 4th, probably just to see the kids. Just had coffee and a little chat, nothing much. On UA I remembered the „big I am“ from 01-XI-1995....
I guess the final trip to the pharmacy was on 6th, judging by the shot of an ad „goat milk - house delivery“ pinned to a tree nearby, that I shot with nokla then. We had sarma. Ender's evolution on the subject is an interesting issue... first, back in 2008 or 9, he shyly tried to eat some, took a couple of bites and left the rest. Then gradually, he not fully joined the camp, but went into peeking into the pot to see if there'll bee any left for seconds. Next time, he'll graduate to the point where he'd explain to us that „sarma is not a need, it's a must“.
The winter being still mild, for smokes we sat on the terrace, by the little camping table. The three kittens were getting quite cute, but we couldn't decide their gender, so I took a shot of each's butt, tail up, put them together and sent it to Lena. She has someone who'll take one, and that would be the fuzziest one. Turned out it was a female, but the guy didn't mind.
The new chimney guy came on 8th and did the full thing. While writing this I noticed that I have a shot of his receipt (just 200 dinars, to compare with the 6000 that his previous partner charged last time), and that there's his mobile number on it - so I finally wrote it into my phone... in 2023. Meanwhile, whenever I needed chimneys cleaned, I had to catch his accountant (the guy's just couple of houses beyond Zvezdana) to get the number, and then kept losing the number. Now I got it... when I don't need it anymore. But, just in case.
On 12th I took Nina and Violet to the „30x30“ exhibition in KCZR (Kulturni Centar, neé Dom), where a bunch of young artists had one work each, in arbitary technique, the only stipulation being that it's 30cm to a side. Lena just wanted to check on a friend of her from her painting days, who had one thing there. Lots of interesting stuff, but this cube of layered glass caught my lens from many angles.
Mentions: 01-XI-1995., Dom omladine, Ender Aquila (Ender), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), nokla, sarma, UbiquAgora (UA), Violet, Zvezdana, in serbian