11-III-2024.
Almost nothing doing. We do small stuff around the house, nothing big. I finally got around to finishing the remaining section of the app to generate pages for sGradlj.com, the ethnography part. Bit by bit, it'll be something as well. And of course, I wrote a lot of Byo, filling in the gap between september of 2004 and march of 2005, which was mostly empty.
On twennyninth we came by detelina and bouht radish seeds, plates for noodles (my old trick to rotate a round cake plate while it sits in another, the motion lubricated by dry noodle bits doubling as ball bearings) and ten apricot saplings, of late ripening sorts. We planted them in Čankovo the next day. Nothing new was stolen, but there are traces of entry.
Кајсије увелико цветају, и тамо и овде. Што рече Васа на форуму, одлично изгледају и сви су се услови стекли до првог априлског мраза. Видећемо. Ове касне би требало да буду отпорније на то. Бар имамо младог лука, већ четири-пет пута смо га јели, а расадила је и неких 400 комада дувана, већином вирџинију, можда четвртину кентаки. То смо паркирали горе у салон па раскречили собне мердевине преко тога да на њима виси светло.
On third we spoke with Go and Stanley and the kids, at length. They started the passport process. Neša asked for compensation, „bubble tea for my trouble“, and was then surprised when they returned home right away, he thought they'd just pack and go. Just like Raja thought when Nina returned from Dakota.
On fifth we happened to be all in the same chat, i.e. while we were talking with her, Lena called, it was her weekly scheduled time, then we opened the communal chat so we can all see each other, then Go saw it and chimed in, but by then Lena had already given up on attempts to talk, because it was first Sanda and then mostly Linda who'd steal the limeligh, walk close up to the phone and talk, talk, couldn't stop her. During that talk Nina replaced the bath tub faucet - just the fat end which holds the shower switch, which was stuck and wouldn't budge.
Nina, then, has a heap of problems, fixes them one by one. Some guy came and replaced the cable for the water heater, the old one was low gauge and the breaker tripped whenever it turned the second heating element, and there was no way to keep only the first on. Then the ambient thermostat - the battery holder fell apart; heating - the cable to the gas burner box, where it operates the ignition and the fan, gets moist and trips the breaker some time after the onset of rain, and starts working again some time after its end. On top of all of it, the kids are still getting used to what food is available there, and they're spoiled and picky to quite an extent. On the evening of 8th it took her four hours to feed them all and wash the dishes. Luckily there's now the dry fryer (aka slim frajer), which I guess Rein bought, it's interesting now - one evening she fried four [chicken] thighs in it, had enough for her, Raja and Violet. Raja even fried some things himself, he likes to experiment with spices. Now only to get them into habit of not destroying the inventory...
During one of these conversations, on exactly the topic of what the kids eat and what not, she mentioned how Raja asked for čikine nogice (v. house dictionary) and then didn't really eat them. Right there he jumps into the talk and says he did eat them, yeah right, you nibbled a bit and left more than half of it... and how did you know what was this about, we were talking in serbian :).
On tenth, exactly at 19:00, Dragana called. The next frendz parti is tomorrow.
On eleventh we finally went for supplies, didn't [do that] for a while, and we don't need much anyway. Went to Mere first. I almost got myself some footware to wear around the house - ever since my clogs fell apart (v. 21-VIII-2023.), I wear those slippers from Lidl, which are narrow and I developed something like a callus on the side (!), but nope, this is plastic, lined with some synth fur, she has something of the kind already, fits snugly, is comfortable and encloses the foot, sweats soon. Watched ourselves passing some 20-30 meters of shelf where until recently we found a lot to buy, and now don't need any of that... snacks, sweets. We saw they have that dry frajer (fryer). There was some confusion about its size, the price tag mentioned 4,6 liters, costs 5600... nope, will buy somewhere else. Went to the furniture salon, they always have stuff. But no, they have one fo 5l for 9000 and one of 7 for 23000. Don't you tell me. The girl there says it's all swept by women from the hospital, they got vouchers for eighth of march. They don't have a fruit and vegetable dehidrator either, same cause. Went to Tišma to get wires and plugs, while she went to their other wing, where they keep the light fixtures and appliances, and they never had any fryers. So we drove back to Mere and got that cheap one, which was actually 8l.
It stank for a while until the plastic aired out, but the pogačice turned out incredibly, I've never seen them expand so much. These were frozen, two tiles of 80x80x12 mm. We're entering a spate of experimentation...
In the afternoon we talked with Nina and the kids, then with Lena. Milan is in Frankfurt until thursday, so she's a bit bored. The belly is progressing nicely, the baby is kicking, all okay. At some point a couple of days ago she was feeling half-nauseaus, so she topped the dinner with a glass of water... and immediately puked it all out, felt better right there. This stopped happening weeks ago. At work she had an excellent idea of some feature to add in the code, something that they can do in the day, and their competition has already anounced as working on it and upcoming soon, but someone else got the task to implement it. She felt she should have got it, but Milan said „extra work is never a reward“. Then that guy really did it in one day, but then there were bugs to fix, unwieldy solutions, and at least ten things that should work differently, a week's work ahead. Her mood improved on the spot, this could have happened to her...
I showed her how I finally wiped the keys on the keyboard, they were really smudged. In the name of guild pride I intentionally skipped the F1... real programmers do not use it.
We stayed with her until 18:40, so we took of to the frendz parti that much later. Just as we got out on the street, my phone rang. Vasa, comes at nine tomorrow. Okay, we're went out for a walk right now... so can you do a bit later, we don't know when we'll come back from the walk... okay, ten it is. And the walk was a masturpiss, some screwy wind blew, we both tied our hairs. Didn't even drop by to get wine and desserts, had the wine from the last time. The wind ceased only for the last three corners, and miraculosly it was completely still around Lesnina, where it usually blows even when it blows nowhere else, it's one of some five places in town which make their own wind. We were about ten minutes late, which we made up for later.
Borko was already there. We brought the mystery brandy, the one which we guesstimated few years ago to be some mysterious tutifruti with a lot of pear (v. 25-III-2022.), but later couldn't find it again until we did an inventory, well it was the reason we inventoried, and it turned out that the cask was mislabeled as apple 2019. What we thought was pear was not really that, feels more like lots of apple and plum. Nobody even tried to guess the taste, it was just said to be „slippery... slides smoothly“.
We had the last of friday's beans for lunch (we skipped it on sunday in favor of scrambled eggs) and, I just knew it'll be so, Dragana cooked rebaked beans with sausage :). I did remember how dad often happened to have beans for lunch at work, then come home and have beans again, which didn't happen with any other dish.
The conversation zigzagged a lot, as it usually does, from explanations of mechanisms of building a sentence in hungarian (and finnish) language, over Dragana's stay in Bečej at some friend's who owns a hotel there, which he manages to fill only when there's some festival or a sports team staying for preparations ahead of a season, then we went on planning a trip around that, then how are kids doing in America... all over the place. Amazingly, the matter of org. committee fror the anniversary never came up, excellent. We stayed until 2:30. The cabbie was our Vlaja once more, he rides again and so do we. It felt a bit uncommon to return into an empty house.
In the morning my phone was behaving, turned its modem off, so when I rebooted it (that helps) I saw a missed call somewhere around ten, saw it was Vasa, coming right away... And he did, around 11, and went on doing stuff one by one. Right at the door he announced „professor, guess what - only yesterday I had yet another case which was solved by one drop of šivanol!“.
About the crapper he saw he screwed it ten years ago, the sewer hookup was too low, so he chiseled the tiles to lift it, and then replaced the tile with a new one, so the connection tube is not necessary at all, it's all ship shape now. He didn't even screw it to the floor, just sealed it with silicon. The shower faucet is phenomenal, when you close it not a drop comes out afterwards, and the jet shoots straight, no spraying around. Wish I had the likes of that downstairs. And he mounted the water heater where he once already did, in 2013. The temperature setting dial is on its bottom, though, and it's mounted quite low, but then that dial is easily accessible from the stairs and you even see what you're doing.
While he and his apprentice worked, we had lunch. Small potatoes and the patties from the frajer... The patties soft and juicy, only the surface isn't baked crunchy like from the pan, and the potatoes even had dark edges, just as juicy and soft but feeling like young potatoes inside. And this frajer is no big deal, it's a small oven, heater above and a fan on top of it. Thermostat, timer, done.
On wednesday morning that guy from second gimnazija called, re org. committee, to see why I stopped coming, and to talk me into returning, said the proposal for hiring a band was fucked away, the 2ndd and 3rd gimnazija were against it, and the plan is to... I said don't tell me anything, I want to be surprised when I come as a guest.
Mentions: 25-III-2022., 21-VIII-2023., Byo (Byo), Čankovo, detelina, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), frajer, frendz parti, gimnazija, Gorana Sredljević (Go), house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Lesnina, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Milan Nastić, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), pogačice, Reinaldo Aquila (Rein), Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sGradlj.com, Stanley Berger, šivanol, Vasa Lakatoš, Violet, in serbian