24-II-2024.
On thursday we already started removing stuff around the house. By saturday evening various bottles and shavers vanished from the bathroom window, toothpastes and brushes from around the mirror, random bits of plastic from the yard (which will never be completely gone until the mower finds the last of it), some obviously excess and unusable garments, unfinished icecreams from the upper section of the fridge (I ate those), almost all of the junk from the upper two drawers of my desk, toys from the bathtub and lavabo, and eventually my desk got its turn. I dumped at least seven mice (each still somewhat functional, and mostly not - wheel won't or clicks wrong) and left only three new ones, two slightly used, one unpacked. The cables I grouped - separately the youessbeesee, separately what plugs straight inside the box (power cables, SATA, flat disk cables), separately for sound (the midi cable, various bananas, arsyuys), separately video (several veegyays, even unpacked, some crosover with arsyuys), separately the rest of youessbees. Junked lots of stuff - a 100 Mbit network card by TP-link, the remote for the car adapter which cast the music from a thumb drive to radio (stupid gadget, what's the use of a remote in a car, and besides, it never worked), the transport blockers for the washer, most of the phone cables (which were once a treasure, never had enough, now I can't imagine how did they multiply so), at least three DSL line splitters... one chicken fodder sack, for 10kg, was half full with that, the rest with the junk from the desktop and from that wooden pot on the shelf above the left monitor, where we keep the bills to pay and various things that used to be in the drawer but had to move them up, beyond kids' reach. Discarded few years' worth of old power and gas bills for the old house and Čankovo. Stored somewhere a few dozen postcards from Burt.
Made one batch of noodles as well, but didn't slice them all, she left some as they were for the lasagna for the next frendz parti, which we are planning for monday.
Nina called each day, ten to thirty minutes at a time. At first, only Raja and Linda came with her to the house, while the other two stayed with Fayes. She got the internet working, eventually, the higher technician had to sit with her on the phone for good half an hour, they reset the modem a dozen times, got it working and they don't understand how.
The kids found it interesting and immediately at home, even the two who don't remember it at all. The first impression: granma doesn't know how to make pancakes. Of course, american pancake differs from ours like ass from eye, that's not it. The american one is more of a palm sized biscuit, 3-4 mm thick, one which one pours maple syrup. Our pancake is filled with pekmez (for kids, it's nutella, didn't succeed in talking them to try pekmez), or cheese, which can then be baked... well, that's where the bacchanalia actually begin.
Her pipes drip in a few places - by one toilet seat at the junction where the hand shower hose is attached, which she installed while she used cotton diapers, to wash out the turds. Just cold water, or else it could double as a bidet. The other place is where the thin, 0,25 inch pipe for the icecube maker in the fridge connects. There, under the kitchen sink, is the real chaos, because Rein brought his majstors to install the trash grinder, wherever he got that idea. He invented some story that there's a law, the grinders somehow became mandatory... what I remember on the legal side of it, was that these grinders should be banned, because they make pasty trash which is not the kind the sewer pipes were designed for. While installing that, they moved the reverse osmosis filter to the side and they seem to have fucked something up in there, and the power line as well.
The deck is falling apart. The upper level needs some paint and couple minor fixes; the lower level was completely rotten, there Rein and a pal of his already removed the planks. Part of the reason is that the rain from the roof dripped there and made a ditch beneath, where water collected and mosquitos multiplied. She plans to install a gutter and be done with it.
They didn't really fuck up the power, it's that she and Rein, five years ago, had together, in the last ten minutes before leaving for the airport, switched off the fuses for almost all the circuit, leaving perhaps just the lights, and now both failed to remember to check whether all of it was turned back on. Suddenly both dish and laundry washers and the dryer were operational. The frying pan we bought her last week has passed the exam, she made pancakes just like baba (she visited Costco and filled her kitchen, stuff being nicely cheaper there, the 60$ membership, once was 45, will pay off in two visits).
Fayes had another pearl of her own: she put new curtains in the living room, light and dark. But the dark ones are perhaps two feet wide, and that's a panoramic window, which leaves about a meter or more in the middle which can't be covered, so at night anyone passing by sees inside. Usable as much as the virginian window shades, foot wide on a five foot window. These are at least obviously fake, made for just decoration's sake.
For this talk I still kept the temporarily plugged in Raja's old speaker from 2010, and afterwards I gave up on the idea to reorganize the cables behind the monitors by hanging them on the shelf, but have rather moved the network cables behind zmajček, ditched the american power strip - it held only the cable for the left monitor, don't see why, replaced that with one of yet unpacked power cables found at inventory, and also stopped trying to keep the right speaker in that tight corner between the right monitor and the machine, moved it to the right desk. And, voila, the sound ain't that bad at all. Found a good preset for the equilizer, and... ahem, this is like it used to be, music hits it while I write this. And I can see the desk behin the left monitor, which I didn't, for a number of years.
On monday we went to get supplies. The bill in Lidl was below 7000 (it didn't fall below 11000 for years) even though we bought quite an amount of meat, including two whole chickens, two sixpacks of mineral water... Some more in Roda - beef hearts and liver for gulaš. This time we didn't buy any water (except knjaz), chips, sweets, icecream, čikine nogice (v. house dictionary) and other kids' enjoyments, that's what did it.
And we finally visited the furniture salon and bought an iron. Even the old one we didn't use much lately, only for shirts and tablecloth, and with the kind of shirts I wear, lack of ironing is not a problem at all, after wearing them for half an hour they settle completely. But now it was needed for the tablecloth, so okay.
In the afternoon I finally took out the unimer (our generic name for multimeter) and checked the batteries which were strewn around my desk and some on the shelf. Surprise - only two out of fourteen were exhausted. Not too bad. And perhaps if we get them out from various toys, if we ever remember to do that... or it's too late already, I think most of those are already packed.
In the evening the frendz parti met in an orderly manner, they arrived on time, and this time they brought along with wine no chocolates, but coffee. Finely ground, turkish, will serve us at the garden. The brandy, the william pear, sat just fine, Borko didn't go overboard and Dragana didn't complain when I kept pouring more. We had to pause a bit when Lena called on Telegram, they all told her how great she looks, Borko even recommended that she should not give birth at all, but raher stay looking this much beautiful. The lasagna turned out famously, just didn't get eaten as much, because then Nina called, created a distraction, and in those twenty minutes the lasagna cooled off, so only Borko went for seconds. Around 23 she said „okay just half a shot more“. I told her not to crap and filled hers up... because nobody wanted to switch to wine, the rakija was excellent, and it's still to early in the night to stop drinking.
Then I remembered that I'll give them a tour of upstairs, but then maybe not at this late hour, we're on third [shot] already, but no, doesn't matter, they were eager to go up and see. (... 10 words...) They were amazed, said it's a grea thing that it's got the same floor tiles all over, and that it has that terrace - Dragana even insisted on opening the door and taking a peek out into the dark, there you see the van down there - they said next time we'll have to do the party up there in the salon, it's great. And the tiny bathroom they found just sweet.
After midnight there was a moment of „okay pour one more and then we go“. Did I say... And I almost forgot to mention that Bosa greeted them... and, just like ten years ago, she didn't offer any other point of contact, we won't hear nor see her. I recounted her email and that was it. Then Borko remembered that Bosa and her husband were once tennants at Brata's. Small is the city.
The dispersal occurred around one thirty, and only at exit Borko remembered to mention the org. committee, the meeting is on thursday, and he's got one bad news, the theater fucked us off. Eh, I'm really curious to see how will it all look in the end, when it comes to happen. The back and forth until then I plan to skip.
Twennyeighth. Nina's mirko finally died. I know it's not the one from 2004, that was black, and this one was there by 2009, so guess 2007. Well, the 70$ lasted some dozen years and a five year break, and even then it tried to work for a bit. Sanda cried on our virtual shoulders, says the taste of food is different everywhere, and there's nothing that's the way she likes it... tear after tear. By the end of the talk she finally agreed to try the chips, and that went somehow, she even asked for seconds, twice. She stopped puking yesterday and her temperature fell to normal. Linda, on the other hand, came with a conviction in advance, that everything's going to be great, and it also came true. She found a heap of toys, she even changed into a mermaid princess with a light sword (!). Yesterday they managed to unburden the door from garage to yard from whatever was leant on it, and she and Violet had a run all over it, slid down the slide even.
Nina finally found where to order Podravka's pašteta, a box of 40 small cans arrives by saturday, and we sent her a recipe for bread, pizza and langoš dough (it's all the same). She got a hot air oven, roasted some wings in it, Raja ate at least four - it's the first time he ate meat which wasn't ground. It'll all settle.
Двајздевети. Нисам честитао осми рођендан нашим кајсијама и брези, а намеравао сам. Бар сређујемо ситнице по кући - разноразни натрпани буџаци се сад виде, убацио сам сијалице у лустер изнад каучева (где смо их повадили и оставили да се то суши, ту је цурила вода од пожара) и средио и лустер у предсобљу, најзад погледао шта је са бравом на плавој соби - класика, сишла врата, треба да се протестерише пар милиметара на оквиру на довратку, што сам још преклане урадио за гаражу, звао дилера те набавио дувана... На списку су још и кочнице на мом бициклу, да дотегнем, оно прошли пут је било довољно али не још како би требало. И поподне смо најзад отишли да пазаримо порцелан итд за горње купатило, до краја дана све и стигло. Увече звао *** нема ги падеж _ГоранСич:4 овди ***, каже доћи ће од недеље, уторак-среду.
Twonyninth. I didn't congratulate our beech and apricots on [their] eighth birthday, though I intended [to]. At least we're doing small stuff around the house - various cluttered corners are visible now, I screwed in lightbulbs into the chandelier above the couches (where we took them out and left it open to dry, that's where the firemen's water came down) and also did the chandelier by the staircase, finally took a look at the door of the blue room - classic, the doorpane settled down, needs filing down a couple of millimeters in the frame piece, called the dealer and procured [some] tobacco... On the list there are also the brakes on my bicycle, to tighten up, what I did last time was good enough but still not right. And in the afternoon we finally went to buy the porcelain etc for the upper bathroom, which was delivered by the end of the day.
*** нема ги падеж _би овди *** послала видео како *** нема ги падеж _ванеса овди *** проба америчку кокаколу. Тачно је знала шта следи и била спремна са нанишањеним телефоном. Почиње са тим како је отпила, па спустила лименку, па гледа у даљину, па у плафон, па мало жмирка, усредсређена... и диже палац и каже „у реду је“. Никаквог одушевљења, ал' се није ни мрштила, ово је само „може да прође“. Сви који су пробали кокаколу и тамо и овде су нам рекли исто, овдашња је боља. Највероватније што се овде ставља прави шећер, а тамо меласа.
Mentions: Bosiljka Šain (Bosa), Brata Avramov, Čankovo, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), frendz parti, house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), majstor, Mališa Borkovski (Borko), mirko, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), pašteta, pekmez, Reginald Burton Cape (Burt), Reinaldo Aquila (Rein), Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), Violet, zmajček, in serbian