24-VI-2023.
On twentythird we finally gathered the girls (Violet, Linda, Sanda) and went downtown. My dear has finally, armed with her new ID, visited her bank (named ridiculously „Bank postal savings“) to get her card. Of course, the card was returned to the central, they don't leave those to sit for longer than a year, and they don't mail the cards anymore, you must come in person with a valid ID, not their own trick, it's all banks that started doing it at once. Don't know whether that changed outside of Serbia too (or first). She'll get another one in a few weeks, and for now she got 100.000 dinars by just showing her ID. Some sixteen retirements have accumulated meanwhile.
The weather was hot and rather muggy, and the girls were all pink in their faces. Went to the Chineses in the former Nama, a bunch of toys but more modest than last year - stickers, Rubik's cubes, and beach stuff: new water guns, sand buckets and shovels etc.
They were so hot that they completely forgot to ask for icecream or cakes, just take us home to AC.
On twentyfourth and twentyfifth we were without power in the evening for several hours. There were a few attempts to turn it on again. Amazingly, most of the appliances seem impervious to these shocks, or the shocks aren't what they used to be, knock on wood, nothing died. But we couldn't take a bath in the evening, so poor man's entertainment was delayed for monday, when at least the power outage lasted just two hours before noon. The LED lights above the bathroom mirror both died (one was blinking at times, last few months, but the other held; now the blinker was dead and the other one shone with about 4% capacity, didn't know LEDs could do that, unless the half dead oscillator made the light period so short).
While pedaling to the shop I noticed the team around an electric pole at a corner, two streets away. The lift truck was dug in but the lift was down; across the street the van was open and they were around it, just cooling off. When I rode back, half an hour later, the truck retracted its supports and its engine was running, looked like they were done and packing to go. But no, it took 20 minutes for the power to be restored, at 11:50. And we can consider ouselves lucky, because with this technology there's a catch, the guys don't get a field work bonus unless they actually stay a certain number of hours in the field, so most of the outages get magically fixed at 13:00. Seems they had one more elsewhere this time.
Lena is selling the house in Lalinski. Her LLC is dormant anyway, and the Njujork municipality suddenly got developed, by government fiat - there's no more such tax heavens since last year, so she doesn't need the address anymore. Now there's a lady who wants to buy it and we agreed that I'd go ahead and show them the place. Which I did on 25th, sunday afternoon, even worse swelter than on friday. It's a jungle, everything went wild, cobwebs everywhere, but at least I could guide them through the living space - the pigpens and most of backyard were inaccessible. Interesting folks and all somehow related - the lady is a sister-by-aunt to the girl across the gate, and that aunt is next house left.
Lena was in Barcelona at the time with her kuma (the 2nd witness, aka bride's kum), said later it was a nice girls' weekend, so we spoke only on monday evening, when she managed to catch some sleep and up, as they landed at 2:00. The lady's husband is offering 600000, which is 5000€, she asked for 6000, but then she's still well off with it. First, we paid for the house, and second, the seeming loss of 2500€ is nothing compared with the saving (one!) on the taxes, as it was calculated in Njujork at a far more favourable rate than in Belgrade or here.
Meanwhile, she has two side project, one for just a day, the other for a whole week, which will both be paid and will count as job interviews.
Džimi led out her four kittens, and Violet immediately invented names for them: Yarn, Milkshake, Apple, Clover.
On twennyfifth I started reworking fes into Python/Dabo. Because I couldn't be sure that it'll properly interpret names of folders (directories, as it understood them) if they contained đ, č or ć (typing this in Byo under wine, I had to find names already containing them, find them via catal6 (nowadays c7) and delete the unneeded chars. I posted a question on the wineHQ forum „why is wine reverting "ACP"="1250" always to american 1252, and after a month there was no reply. So, no hope that it'll ever be fixed, and I don't want to launch a windows every time I want to type something in serbian latin for Byo or other parts of sGradlj.com, ergo move everything to python.
On top of it, in the current incarnation of wine it stopped displaying most of the .png files. Counting on native environment, I assumed the pictures would look better - so, everything moves to Python. That day I just migrated all the data from the fox version of fes, and started coding, not looking too much into fox code, except for my special weighed random rank calculation. By the end of the month I had the thing working except there was no way to tell it to exit - unfocused forms take no clicks nor keys, so I had to make them maximized, showing the system toolbars etc, not fullscreen, so at least they have a closebox.
By fourth of july we went to Čankovo twice, picking apricots (Linda loves them), blackberries (Violet) and tobacco (we two). The apricots finally bore rich fruit, not as profuse as in 2019 but still quite good. Another branch off the old one by the terrace cracked and fell when I was watching, just like the last time. I should stop watching it. On second, we took two kittens, Dženifer and Amelija (or was it Emilija? Violet pronounces them the same) and left them there. On fourth, only Dženifer was there, as expected, she's the nimble hunter, if nothing else she'd catch butterflies and eat them. Amelija is half her size, we don't think we'll see her again.
Talking with Dragana to visit Staša, finally, as we already talked for year and a half, but the fourth colleague took it to himself to make the call and never made the call. Enough of that, we go without him. And here, she made the call, and reported back the same evening - he's going for a bout of therapy until friday, we said we don't touch the weekends, so right after that. And she's in shit herself - her sister is immobile, a fresh widow, and needs a dežurni by her bed most of the time, so she's there for many hours a week, and when she gets home the other sister wants to know how did it go, what did the doctor say, and then a few more people also... she has to rewrinkle her ears as they go flat after so much pressure from the phone. I won't complain for getting no phone calls. Come to think of it, phone was interesting but that was long ago. As a programmer I learned to be weary of the contraption.
And, ah, yes, there's real news: Fayes and Rein are coming in august. They'll be touring Europe, and have reserved four days to stay here.
Mentions: Byo (Byo), catal6, Čankovo, dežurni, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), fes, fox, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), kum, Lalinski Konak, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Njujork, Reinaldo Aquila (Rein), Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sGradlj.com, Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), Violet, in serbian