In the morning I chatted a bit with Lena, to report the state of mac affairs
it will stay on oweseks or whachamacalit, and for anything I need and it asks for my ID card, I'll find an open source app to replace it
so then, I'm taking the machine away from apple just like I took these away from tiny pliable
the stripe in the ef keys line is a mighty thing, works excellent and is somehow the best shortcut between a touchy screen and Das Keyboard
And amazingly, many apps written for linux, in mac version know how to use it
sound is excellent, and the image too... movies look much better and I even understand the dialogs :љ
and even when I plugged in my black speakers, see now how with the same mrz files and same speakers the stereo doesn't pull to the right anymore
I strongly miss page up and down keys, and home-end... I just got used to always have them
well even the OS is done high quality, but with wrong intention, as far as I'm concerned... the finder is worse than the files exploder...
doesn't tell you where you are, there's no .. button nor is it shown in the list, the horrors
It has it all but it's hidden. .. is CMD + arrow upwards. I think the path also shows up with CMD. It tries at the same time to be a consumer computer and a software development machine.
but my double commander works :)
and just needs to get the telegram on it and to see whether the connection will crap now
And I managed to cram telegram on it, and lo and behold, the smileys appear on the touchie... much simpler than on a linux or on a phone.
Then I found something for the camera, and it isn't much, really, its jaypeg compression is a bit overdone, but okay, it'll be okay with Telegram. It's also got a dictaphone app, but the sound is somewhat silenced, on replay I didn't understand what I said. It would probably work better with headset and a microphone under the chin, but has only one jack, probably four wires. I had one gadget like that, but that burned too.
Around noon Boba called, to check whether we're available around six, they'd drop in. Sure, just come. We meant to drop by Svetofor at the time, but that need not be today. And for afternoon we already scheduled to make noodles and knew we'd be done before that time, we're a well played-in team, and in the end it did happen that way. Noodles, finally. In detelina they didn't have 60l barrels, so I took two of 40, won't be enough, one batch of kilo and a half of flour and 15 eggs makes 20 liters. We aren't keen on pressing them to fit more, it breaks the noodles smaller. At least we had the space to work, we laid the strips on our bed to dry and did everything else in the salon. While I carried the strips to lay them there, I unshod myself, because my slippers are still dusty and on tiles that means slippery. The floor in the bedroom is really warm; on the landing and in the salon it's 2-3 degrees colder, for she was airing it.
And we were done by 17:00. We didn't have the two round plastic cake trays, those have burned, we still have the rectangular orange one, but it went okay, I maneuvered it well, and the noodles were also a tad drier and didn't stick to it, they were easy to spread. All in all we were back in the swing, will have to buy more barrels.
And around 18:30 here hey were. Not just Boba and Milena, but also Jagoda, Milan and Dragan, the whole bundle. Well well, the surprise is a full success... we didn't suspect at all, and you came at the right time. We were all in good mood, and even the first thing on the agenda went right: when I asked „who drinks, who drives?“, Dragan answered with a proper „we all drink, we all drive“, just like it was back on 31-I-2011.. I told him to take a look at the exhibition, right here on the terrace - the two shelves with casks. He noticed KR23, kruška (pear) of 2023, so okay, that's today's poison. We kept delaying the first sip, however, because my dear was all busy, to slice and lay out the delicatessen, to find another chair, this, that. And then Boba remembered that I promised to show them upstairs, the newly baked homebuilder... and we all went up there. First they praised the banister as well done, then they went on looking around and trying to imagine everything as it were black as those exposed beams... It did leave an impression.
When we finally sat around the table, I said „okay now it can be that we had a cheers“ and we sipped. Dragan immediately went „whoaaah... this is as if I have bit into a pear... more precisely, into a pancake with pear pekmez“. Amazingly, Boba and Milena usually drink just water or juice when they come, and this time they leisurely had a shot and a half, rest of us two shots.
The kids were shy at first; eventually Milan came a couple of times to get some help composing a sentence, regardless of the two understanding serbian. I guess he wanted to say something to Violet. Later they left the yellow room (where they sat behind the closed door and weren't heard for a whole hour) and moved here to the couches, where Milena joined them and blended in so smoothly that, when at some point I noticed she wasn't at the table, I failed to spot her among the kids.
A belated story about that last lunch at zanatlija, on 07-XI-2022., surfaced. Turns out Nina wrote a critique of it somewhere online, telling it straight as it was, „ambient ten, food ten, don't try conversation as music will not be quieter“. And so recently Boba happened to visit there with some friends, and a waiter recognized him and asked him whether he wrote a critique... He was clueless, what's this guy talking about, but then asked around. Aha, so it does hurt... well no matter, you are that kind of tavern, better that future guests know it in advance than to have them cunting for being in wrong place.
Boba went out (... 2 words...) to the terrace to check out our collection of power tools, to see what he may need to buy, what he will need right away and what maybe later. Conclusion: drill, jigsaw, hand circular saw, grinder. Everything in order and affordable.
In other news, Milan broke fast one evening. He lived for 43 days on no food, just mineral water and a daily dose of some protein mix of bare 100 kilocalories. Lena cooked something he loves the best and... he didn't resist. Nothing wrong with him, except 20kg missing.
On fourteenth, on burundi, on the xate [cyrillic h is х, pretend confusion is done for fun, except when caused by illiteracy and not pretense] topic, I wrote this, because comrade Fikret kept bitching for a whole month about yoochoob cooks who destroy good food for the sake of bullshit which dog wouldn't eat with butter, but look courageous on the screen.
On a similar topic, if anyone remembers how a dozen years ago I dirged how the ćeten halva [minced sesame seeds, sugar, little else] is nowhere to be sold with taste of ćeten alva, only with vanilla taste. Didn't want to buy that, if I want vanilla I'll take an icecream.
The next similar thing: chestnut puree. I ate it two-three times fifty years ago, some in Novi, some in Zagreb [that would be 22-XI-1974.]. And then no more. It appeared briefly in the supermarkets in late seventies, was just as good, then vanished. Then fourtysome years of none.
Around 2011 we found it in a cakeshop, two corners from Terazije, a siti something (or cić, don't know whether it was in english or hungarian), and it was not even close, sister. Whoever made it somehow managed to walk, for all of his life, only the streets without any chestnut trees.
And then last winter it appeared in Lidl, packed like butter, about 150g brick. A bit thinner on the taste, but still the right stuff and all good. We bought it several times, and then they got the vanilla flavored version. Which seems to sell much slower. The remaining original chestnut puree with the chestnut puree taste sold out quickly, and the vanilla dragged around for a few more months, and eventually vanished. The same marketing genius who said it must have vanilla to sell faster, now decided that not even vanilla helps, people don't like chestnut puree.
Fuck you in your dumb heads, you experts, who know better than us what we want.
On fifteenth we went to the industrial zone right behind the new cemetery, Boba told us that there's another russian store open, some Mere (which could read as „measures“ or „[they] measure“ or even a new noun of neutral gender, depending on emphasis), which turned out to be an even simpler hangar than Svetofor, with identical assortment of goods plus a few things these guys don't have, just that it's at third of the distance. Clocked the bill at 11000, because we did find a bunch of things these guys didn't have, plus the stuff we regularly buy (peanuts, cashews, dry plums, cotton candy, cake rolls for Raja, some kind of salami (which is a lottery, we'll see), a basin, water (6l bottle of water from Golija at 80 dinar, it's 94 in Lidl), yeast, breadcrumbs, macaroni, tuna steaks, bunch of stuff.
When we returned, we made another batch of noodles. We're back in the švung [swing, but in her father's way of expressing it].
Linda ate almost five pancakes. Sanda didn't want any, she was eating cotton candy. But when granny suggested cotton candy in a pancake, she had to try it. Then the last one was with both nutella and cotton candy.
In the evening we finally saw Lena via mac, and look at how the connection is stable, both image and sound perfect. So it was the fault of the machine - both gugolj and nanovo are old, and this is from 2018, six head processor and 16 gig of memory. We'll see when we talk with Go.
She's looking great, the pregnancy glow is emerging, and the nausea is receding, it's the third month and it gets easier from here, now she doesn't have the need to take three hour-and-a-half naps a day, all okay. She'll be in Greece in a couple of weeks. We'll meet on tuesday, Nina is taking Sanda and Linda to the embassy to get them new passports, and then stays with Lena for the night and flies to South Dakota to meet that guy, and we return home with the kids to sit them for those seven-eight days until she returns. And when the passports arrive, she'd be getting ready to pick and pack everything up and return home.
With Go we spoke on seventeenth, chatted for a good hour and a half, connection excellent... so it really wasn't the connection, it was Wirth's law. Machines are as they were when they were bought, but the software is more and more demanding. The mac isn't new either, it's from 2018. It's just new enough.
I finally had a proper look at Neša and Anita, even succeeded in taking a few shots - on the mac I parked a few buttons I'd use frequently on the touchbar, and which take long to reach by typing or the touchpad - the keyboard layout switcher, and the shooter of the screen. So now I have also this shot, there'll be hot peppers in Seatlle.
The eighteenth was just a perfect day - no such wind as the košava the day before, nor rain as before that, so I took that to go downtown, to get the twins' passport photos printed. I parked by Dom, though at the opposite end, where the measures and weights control is now (an imposant building, which I never saw anyone enter or leave). I also took the eos70, mostly to take shots of how things sit, what was torn down and what was built. The tiny pressed clay house in Jevrejska, which I shot a few years ago, is gone and the lot is still empty, nothing sprouted there. Two houses lower, where I can't even remember what was previously there, something with empty commercial space on ground floor, some majstors finishing the last moves, apartments upstairs, someone's going to pay dearly for them.
When I crossed Gimnazijska, look whom I see - Džole. Ow fuckit, I see him once in fivesix years and he always looks the same, which I immediately recorded on three selfies. We chatted at length, asked how was Duda, said she had herpes last year, well so did mine, which is why we went to Peskara only once, just the garden, still, brandy... Said how come, I always knew you as a rocker, intellectual, independent mind, and now still, brandy? Don't divide the two, why not both, they can go together, and do nicely so. And, um, do you grab something on the side? What for, and when, I barely leave the house, don't even visit those retirees' union parties, because the organizing committee always somehow includes a certain hag whom I try to avoid. And even if it would happen, I wouldn't like it to become anything serious, just like in the old Lala joke, „what if you get to like it?“. Well there you go, while I went far astray... So you got what you deserved.
I somehow hit the right passage where Mongol has the shop, so talked a lot with him too. Printed the pictures, charged me „for you, 200 dinars“. He complained about the printers nowadays, they keep coming up with new stupid tricks, he bought a new one and it just wouldn't work and keeps showing some nebulous error messages, so he went to yoochoob to see, it's all written there, and found it spot on: „insert the print head into the printer“. Because they just started packing it separately.
On the way back I dropped by Neša the butcher, he's lifted prices but had really good goods - bacon, sausage, white sausage*, even švargla. All so good that she kneaded and baked a loaf of bread, so we don't eat these goodies with that starch extract, but with proper bread.
Had a nap after lunch, while she took the girls to Springfield. Then some drizzle began, and Nina sent me to fetch them. I found them there, alone in that big hall, and just approached her from behind and „I came to tell you that you didn't bring cigarettes along“. The twins were in play all the way, it seems they already had developed winter melancholy and have waited for a chance like this to just run around. And it's good that I came, because they were exhausted and I don't know how would they walk that one kilometer back. The rest of the evening passed in incredible silence.
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* i.e. liver sausage, which is not your liverwurst, see pašteta for explanation
