Got my 2nd paycheck (1103,92$, as per file I downloaded from the bank), or perhaps it was third (as Zero was giving them away mid and end of month), and this time I took it to the Wachovia which was about halfway home from work. Opened an account... it was a rather different experience than what it used to be back home, where I opened one about three times, at two different banks (one was visited twice, as I had to have some kind of a gyro account to get the money from that hospital job). This time I didn't have to stand by the window, I sat with a rather young girl and she handled all the paperwork (nothing much, now that I think of it, but some of the papers were of unknown purpose), and was finished in about 30 minutes (except when she was asking for the passport, and I walked home to get it, and found it in my pocket). I deposited the paycheck and went home. Paid rent 850$ two days later, got 150 from serekeš on 13th (when my card finally arrived).
The phone line was connected already, Burt announced he'll call when he's about to arrive, one of the following weekends. To someone from an email list (I guess it was aman, what with all the shit that was happening at home), I mentioned I was taking my lunch breaks at home. Truth be told, I was quite used to go home and eat only after work, but we generally worked 7 to 15, not 9 to 17. So the lunch hour was something I took at home. Didn't call, she generally never liked mixing home and work, even calling home from job, we just had a set time. The drive was short, about six blocks. Nina would be at school until perhaps 15:00, Lena, being in the first grade, would be home for lunch.
...For a while, we used that futon as a TV - i.e. left it facing the big window, and watched the squirrels. Just next morning there were four of them. We have them at home, but never saw them so near the houses. Well, I've never been in a house in a forest.
...ingredients in an unfamiliar oven. The result was good, though it may not have been what Beta intended. So, of course, we talked about the potential availability of things like European sausage.
Meanwhile, she made a really good musaka (row of sliced potatoes, row of minced meat mixed with eggs, another row of potatoes, cover with mixture of eggs and (possibly but not necessarily) fresh cheese or sour cream), paprikaš (almost like goulash, but the potatoes or noodles are already added), and a Russian salad (mayonnaise, boiled vegetables - potato, green peas, carrot; pickled cucumbers, we added corn beyond standard recipy, and it turned out to be nice; ham (or boiled chicken or other meat) - all cut into 1/4" cubes and mixed), and they all tasted like at home, except for the Russian salad - wrong spice in the pickles, but it evaporated soon.
the habit of getting into a car and going somewhere rather far just for fun on a Saturday is new to him, an alien concept.
Or, rather, forgotten. By the time I had a car for my private use, everything was already too expensive. We even didn't think about visiting friends at the other end of town, fearing they'd feel obliged to visit us - and then we'd both have to pretend the fridge was full.
...phone is working since yesterday afternoon. They couldn't find the house first, and you have seen their buildings when you left 29. They got lost within half a mile from their yard. American system of assigning house numbers is a miracle of higher order that is not given to mere mortals to understand :).
...I didn't feel like a refugee for any single moment. At the embassy, there was one guy (a Belgrader, seemingly) who was in charge of the Yugos, and he was just trying to get us into a decent queue. When he heard "h1b, appointment at 8:30" and saw my approval, I could plainly see the change of attitude in his face, sort of "from despise to envy".
Radio's fine, both channels. We don't play too many records, not before we buy a vacuum cleaner. There's already too much dust around. We should have bought it today, but I didn't cash my salary, because I wanted to open a check account. I just discovered the banks don't open on Saturdays. At home, both banks and shops were equally open, 8am - 6 to 8 pm, and open at least until 1pm on Saturdays.
It could get only one FM station, until I took a shirt hanger made of wire (I wanted to write "wire shirt hanger", but I know I don't have any wire shirts), and screwed it where the antenna cable comes - and now I'm having 21. Two of them are playing sixties-seventies, but there's just a few of the European bands. I can hear Kinks, some Zeppelin and Animals, and, off cross, Beatles & Stones, but no Tull, Floyd, T Rex, Focus, Aphrodite's child, Oldfield etc. To compensate, I'm hearing all the Motown and Beach Boys stuff, well, beyond my needs.
OK, got to send this now and then move all my stuff to another machine. One guy just left two days ago, and I'm inheriting his machine because of some special software installed there. Don't ask me if I hate migrating my things from disk to disk - I do. It's a PITA, but then I'm getting a 17 or 19" monitor instead of this 15". And I'll change the keyboard, the right shift misses at least 80%.
From other aman mail, news that there was an attempt to assassinate Vuk Drašković. A handshake message from Rade and Gradek.
On business front, some Hossy stuff between me and guys at home, responding to some questions they had two days ago. I was moved to another machine today, and it took hours. Actually better than the old one, which was some temporary crap; this one I inherited from Walter, who has left to pursue a career in music and related business. The machine had a name, Wonka, which I later understood was from some crappy kids' movie (and a recent one at that, so this isn't some Rosebud thing). Had a 200 MHz processor and IIRC 256M of RAM. Not too much disk, perhaps one of those single-digit-gigabyte jobs (well I left a 2G disk to dad just a month ago, didn't I?). Rather fast for the times. Ran NT4, I guess.
The guys at home are supposed to patch a few routines ASAP, because this is the interview season, which lasts next 3-4 months and has to be done pretty much from scratch each year. The philosophy is "it doesn't have to look nice, just sew it up and fuck on". Then I had to wait a while because the hardware guy had a day - the Exchange server crashed (not the whole machine, just the service) and trashed the message database (every app wants to be a database when it grows up).
Went up to pay the rent - the landlord's office was in the same building anyway, and he was renting the space to Zero too. I wrote a check and insisted on getting a receipt (every time, which the various girls who worked there usually did by default).
Go was babysitting for some neighbor of Greg, some doctor, for three days. I'd drive her both ways, with some extra company in the evening, as the rides of this kind were still interesting. They live in them suburbs, where there's mostly forest and the zoning proscribes at least 30 yards between houses or some such measure. She'd see them to the school bus in the morning, get them from the bus in the afternoon, and then just make sure they don't burn the house until the evening. In the meantime, she got a pack of empty cassettes and went on recording whatever music she could lay her hands on - bunch of Soft machine, Procol Harum, even a full "Four way street". I'll really have to buy a tape deck, this itches.
Sausage. We found something in a cardboard tube, closed with sheet metal at the ends, says it's a sausage. When we opened it, there was just ground meat. They'd call anything a sausage around here, it seems the casing is optional, the word seems to mean the mix. We sliced it and fried it, and it wasn't bad, it's just that the spice was somehow sideways, not to our habits (and we didn't buy that again).
Thereabouts was one weekend when Larry, Felix and Walter came by to take Go and Nina for a hike in some forest. While we were still sitting (the girls were getting dressed), I mentioned how they'd call anything a sausage around here. Walter liked the idea, and intended to go through the forest and point finger at anything he sees, and say „look, a sausage! there, another sausage!“.