30-IV-2024.
On saturday, 20th, we went to Čankovo again, there was mowing and mowing to be done, grass to the balls, to the waist. Good thing that I got into the swing with the švorceniger, so it's quick and easy, and I know the terrain by heart. And then... the cooldown which just passed, didn't quite bring enough rain, there was no water collected in the barrel. To avoid what happened in previous years when the spring was dry and then the fruit was slouching off, I already called Zdravko to put the water here in order. But okay, let me diagnose it first, to know exactly where it leaks, where does it lose pressure... Now to make it work, one has to fill the pump. Because it's not a piston pump, it's cogs, just pushing water - needs water to work, can't start with just air. To fill it, there's a screw that you take out, and then pour into the tiny hole, until it fills. The hole is small, it takes very long. So I thought, these pipes are connected, so if this hole is open and I'm pumping water by hand on the other end outside, that end is higher so the water will flow here and push out the air. Okay, let's try that - I did as planned, pumped out two buckets of water, tightened the screw, turned the compressor on. Lit one and told myself to stay calm, wait until the end of the cigarette to check whether it started building up the pressure at all. Because it did happen at times that it just wouldn't.
At about half the cigarette it just stopped. What is it now... went to take a look, and it showed 2,6 bar, just as it should. Whoa, buddy... I started filling one bucket after another to fill that barrel, as that's where she takes water for what she plants. Well, we'll need one more hose.
We meant to buy the hose the next day in Lidl, it being a sunday and the shops having it aren't open. But nope, to them it's seasonal ware and the season was three weeks ago or some such... the logic eludes me, and I don't really need to understand. We just bought the hose the next day, in that shop that sits on former bager's place, and the clerk was played by some older guy, maybe even older than me, and surely three times slower. May be the owner's father, holding place until they find a worker. I do remember vaguely that she was paired with Paja's son, who lives nearby, just 50m across the railway track. Well, it all remains in the end, not a true šećeranian, we always stuck to the 5km minimum.
And then we extended the hose across the orchard. First we watered the early cherries, there's one by the plastenik [glasshouse=staklenik, but this is plastic stretched over the arches], really huge, and then the blackberries, then quinces, then the plastenik itself (of which we have only the arches, never spread the foil), all the way to 28th. Maybe we skipped one day when it was raining (that'd be the 23rd), went there every day and kept the compressor working even at night.
I managed to mow it all, which rarely succeeds. Usually by the time I get to the farther end of the orchard I can start the near end all over, but this year we went there often enough and stayed an our or two longer than in the previous years, nobody waiting for us at home, we can do as we will.
Meanwhile the stuff happened elsewhere. Go, Stanley and the kids got their passports finally, and got the tickets already, they arrive tonight. As I write this, they have about eight hours left of the trip. Anita can't wait to arrive here, Neša is „ready, but not excited“. On the shots from the airplane, which Go probably managed to send before takeoff, he's coming across as rather morose, but that may be a pose, he's known as an actor. On the middle front, Nina got a job, i.e. she got an offer but the process has a few more steps to go - the employer being the sewers (aka „wastewater treatment“), it belongs to the state, which means she still has to send her references, they should do a background check etc. She put Jan, Kees and Bruce to write theirs, because she just couldn't get hold of any of the people from previous places. My part of the work was to get the addresses and dates of her residences before Richmond, namely those in A-burg, and for the Zrenjanin part she said she won't even mention the current house, will just pretend we never moved from the old house. Why of course, why complicate, that house is ours, all of our documents have that adress, and this house here officially doesn't quite exist... because in Sloba's times it was better that way. And now it's not even crossing my mind to go through formal address change, the less contact with the state, the better.
The money she'd get should be good, 89K$ for starters, and they should all get a raise this summer of at least 4,6%, as sttated in the preliminary report of the agency they hired to assess the inflation lag of their salaries. She also got the kids' retirement from the social [security], from whatever their father's salary was taken from and paid into it, which will be somewhat above 420$ a month per child, plus a one time retroactive six months' worth of payment. There, and just two weeks ago she complained about peeing thin with the cash.
Jan is already on the road, he and [his] son should be in Pest by now, should arrive here on second, right on the day of Anita's birthday. Of course I didn't tell him that we'll already have guests and that I have no place to put them, so I fired up the internet to see what can be found in town. In the downtown hotel it's 59€ for the room... well yeah, may the fourth star fuck you, could have done cheaper... But no, wait, it's for one person in a two bed room, it's 79€ for two person. Don't you tell me. So I went for beeanbees, pedagogically, from closer to remote. The „Kabinet“ closed last year; Berar is even closer, but he's a trucker parking with rooms, you can expect to hear maneuvering any time of night. So I went for the place in my old street, behind the pharmacy where I left so much money ten years ago... First I went through a shock, calling a landline and getting the guy on his mobile on Tara, meaning he succeeded in passing one system to the other. The other thing, the pharmacy owner is his wife. She knows me from somewhere, and I'm ashamed to confess that I don't remember her, nor where may she know me for. So it goes, I was famous in the end, and many knew me and I them not. Set up the room, got told to come pay and get the key the next morning. Okay...
Our hoteliers anoy me so much for charging by person while renting a room. It's per room everywhere, only here... and probably in the rest of our former.
We cleaned the house and put it in order as far as we could, I even mopped the whole upstairs. We moved the simpić [„Simpo“ brand, named after the local liberation war hero Sima Pogačarević] couch into the salon, put our bed to its old place, I took the mac upstairs. We kept the mac downstairs because the Telegram on zmajček was throwing random bullshit - the camera would disappear, its Flatpak runtime kept files in some dubious subsystem of folders. I abandoned the Flatpak version and went for classic, but eventually found out that it's abandonware, latest is 3.6 while current on other devices is 4.8... and then the Logitech camera refused to be recognized in other apps as well, so mac. The I dug out the old A4 camera, don't care that it can't do better than veegyaye resolution, killed the classic version and reinstalled the Flatpak, and all of a sudden it all works and the image is actually better. So no need for mac now, can take it upstairs. Where we celebrated whatever we thought we should, with music from the mac, sitting on that threeseater, without the stupid handrests between us. And slept up there, ah the comfort of our bed. And no more kibla... [the pee bucket, which was named so in all the novels from the gulags; in our case it was one of the 6l bottles].
In the morning we even got up early enough and went to Lidl to get whatever we needed, but nope, the parking was overcrowded. So instead I drove to the pharmacy first to get the key to the room and pay. It took some waiting until the other pharmacist came to take over the shop, and the current one could leave it to show me the room, and the gimmick on how to unlock the gate. I paid, drove around back to Lidl, and there we spotted an empty spot and perform[at]ed our grocery run. All that before 10:30, incredible.
To Surčin we went half an hour ahead of time, to drop to Mere first, but nope, we kissed the door, they work until five today. Okay, we respect the firms who appreciate their workers, retail works even on sundays nowadays and I have profound doubts that the workers are paid any extra for that. So we reached the airport at 18:35, which meant a whole hour of waiting... which then meant we waited until 20:35, because the plane was 20 minutes late, there was some heavy fog in Constantinople, and then they were among the last to disembark. One cigarette on the parking lot, the American Spirit, pretend Indians or at least striving to look alike, not bad, but under that heavy wind it was more to make company to them than a real smoke break.
Anita was dead tired but held on, slept through the drive only. Neša in his most bothered edition, „I am okay but I am not excited“, barely spoke any, communicated in gestures, but he's got style. When he got home, had dinner (hey, everyone eats everything!), he first made friends with the cats (got acquainted with Jimi and Waffle, Rundek didn't appear), then we tried to turn his box on. The inner battery seems to have fully discharged, so it wouldn't budge. We sat upstairs and smoked (Stanley and Anita already went to sleep), and Neša came up and said „I have located the power switch“. So, did you get it to work? „I didn't press the button“. Dry genius, the mocker of our sort...
In the morning we two got up quite early, perhaps as early as eight, and found Go and Anita already on foot. Around 11 I finally succeeded convincing Neša's machine to boot (reports it as no disk, few times, then boots windowses nj7 from it...). The boys are still asleep.
There was a bit of a problem with keyboards, because Raja's is a wireles and just wouldn't, so we plugged Neša's old one once into his box, once into mine, once into Anita's tablet, and eventually settled on him keeping his old one, Anita getting mine, and me getting some old Lodgytekh from the wartime reserve, which mostly works, perhaps one key giving some trouble, still haven't found out which one, we'll see yet.
By evening Neša was still complaining about his machine... because, fuckit, it's a m$, what's gotten into you to try to run a today's version of robloks on a machine six years old or more under nj7, it requires some upgrade etc etc... so Stanley spent a lot of time reinstalling it all over, running all possible updates and not getting it to run in the end. And then she asks him how's it going. Ouch. You're brave, I said, you ask a man who's suffering the m$ how's it going. Luckily, he was already in stupor and just shrugged. In the end, Neša got his laptop with windows ace* on it, and the monitor, and had them lined up vertically, happy in the end. Just when he was so pissed off that he pointed to his middle finger in a slightly fisted hand, and said „I wanted to show you this fingerd. Has style.
In the evening we had two or three [shots of] pear up in the salon, and dispersed to sleep at each one's own time. Anita just loves the staircase, went up and down at least ten times. They both walk on their toes, habit since forever.
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* in tablić, the ace is both a 1 and a 11, choose at will.
Mentions: Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Annenburg (A-burg), bager, Bruce Furlane, Čankovo, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jan Brenkelen, Kees de Cock, Majkrosoft (m$), Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Paja Čkaljević, Ryu (Raja), Stanley Berger, švorceniger, tablić, Zdravko Lakatoš, zmajček, in serbian