14-III-2005.
Overyester we went to Richmond to bathe again. My contraption does work, but a full set bathroom is still better. Though, it's falling apart - the double ceiling is crumbling, the boards made of... something between cardboard and lesonit, mostly fell out, you can see the bottom of the tub upstairs, and pieces of mortar are also falling. And it's quite dark, and I'm just sufficiently badsighted to be unable to read the label on them seven bottles that the girls have. One holds the shampoo, the rest hold regenerators. The label's letters are large, but the large font is reserved for whatever word helps the sales the most. My worst pass was when I hit the shampoo from the sixth try. The word „shampoo“ is in very small font, and why would it be larger, in the shop it's on the shelf with other shampoos, no mistake. Yeah, right, but this is a different shelf.
Go got her green card approved! Now it's still not clear whether this means she's getting an ARN, green card or whatever, it's just that that her case is now upgraded because she sent an I-485 and Ricardo's citizenship certificate, so she should be able to get work permit in some reasonable time.
David bought a 40G disk for 100€ - well, two months ago I bought a 80G for 85$, so what.
Emails to/from mom and dad: I had lots of work for Gary these days, so I was late with a reply. Nina returned from her vacation back home, we went to Richmond to see her at the airport and drive her to the apartment. I was fixing the barbecue (electric?), some screws were deep in its legs so I bought a new set of drivers for that, took all afternoon. Turns out it was just an internal fuse.
Some snow for this weekend was announced thrice, none fell. Still nothing green, grass is withered, shrubs bare. Just a pair of crocuses blossomed, good combination of sun and wind shielding.
Had to explain to dad how it goes with car registration, as it's not all at once (insurance, inspection, tags) but whenever each expires. I dragged the registration now twice into a month later, not as much for saving (it's perhaps 20$/year) but for convenience of doing it under nicer weather. Dad's trabant is registered until march 2006, a no-show inspection :). Lazar has died, they tell me and I checked in the local newspaper (Joška is the webmaster), the obituary pages, in neat pdf, can be downloaded.
A guy from the old neighborhood, 2nd house behind, died. His younger sister was a chick and a half, a natural blonde of course, and I was considering how to get closer to her, back then in early 1971 when I was riding city bus to school, so we'd walk the two corners together many times. But decided not to act on the idea, she's too close and what if end up parting ugly, and then have to stay neighbors for who knows how many years. He was several years older, so his company were Sava Dulaja, Paja, Šuljiba the yellow (son of the night worker right behind Đuđa, Đuđa's son, Šuljiba Cvetkov, and even the petty krimos Zilja. Among them he stood out as a gentleman person, hair always slick combed, tall and pretty. The fault was probably in his inabillity to hold as much booze as he could take.
Also, Hazim died. He was an army captain, on service in Macedonia, I guess most of the shit didn't touch him, but still. Who knows what got him. The obituary was actually a year old, i.e. he died then and this was the invitation for the annual memorial service.
Mentions: David Krakovski, Đurđa Rođanović (Đuđa), Gary Brandywine, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Hazim Jabučin, Joška Apro, Lazar Josin, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Paja Čkaljević, Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), trabant, in serbian