The garage roof must have been just finished, done by some character who was building right behind Aleksa, a blond thin wiry and nimble guy, mason from Gik, with a frend. They did it well, no complaints, and we eventually sat beneath that roof, drank a couple. I thought there's my good neighbor soon, but nope. By the time we moved, he cunted it up with his wife, and sold the house (even less finished than ours at this time). And the buyer did nothing with it, but eventually resold it, as late as 2012 or so.
Around this time the post office was making a list of those interested in having a phone line. I was lucky to hear about it on time, and went downtown to sign up. I fiiled some forms, wrote her as the owner of the line there, because I didn't want to be found in the phone book, knowing how many customers of DBA would just love to have access to my home number. (... 56 words...) The amount to pay wasn't trivial, but they offered six installments payment. I wanted to take the whole bundle of payment slips (aka virman), but they'd print them and send them each month. But the house is unfinished, can you send it to my current adress instead? Um.. I can write it down, but... But there's no field in the database for the billing address? Yes, that's right. Aah, well, the colleagues who wrote this didn't consider the possibilities. Send my best to them.
Because, in 99% of the cases they had, it was about getting phone lines to existing houses. Who'd need a line to a house where nobody lives? So, all winter I had to visit the house just to catch the virman before wind blows it away, as our postbox was flimsy. I caught almost all of them, except in february I found one for the delay fine instead. I didn't pay for the previous month. Of course, because I missed the day and when I arrived, and a couple of days later it was who knows where, there were almost no houses between there and košava. So I took that slip, went to the post office, on bicycle, at some cruel temperature but at least no snow, to ask for permission to pay (!). Because, as I found out, they put our line among the candidates for dismantling. As if it already existed - they had nothing on the ground at the time.
Luckily, I found Biljana, she was some kind of chief clerk behind the row of clerks in the main hall, so she told me where to go (the other entrance, first floor, look for so and so). The "Biljana told me to find you, as you may know how to fix this situation", along with "I'm not asking for any handouts, I'm asking to pay", eventually worked. About mid may we had our phone line.
In dad's vineyard they're felling trees at large, whoever gets at it. The cheapest fuel. Someone cut down half of a thick double willow by the path, where it goes from the upper levee down to the meadow. It was so thick that the guy realized that just chopping it into pieces he'd be able to load would take him all day, so he left it lying there.
Elsewhere they would cut the tree lines by the roads. Easiest and quickest, there's no need to drive into a neck of a wood and risk getting stuck, just fire up the motorka (aka chainsaw) and gun it. Luckily, they were too lazy to bend, so they cut it at hip height, so enough trunk was left. Just enough for it to sprout new branches in the spring, and yet not enough for anyone to kneel by it and raze it to the ground, so in two springs the treeline was back, even greener and thicker than before.
At home we greatly adjsted to our four diurnal rhythms. We two have working hours such that she leaves first, returns first - I return who knows when, sometimes around three, sometimes much later, depending on how far did my field work take me. The girls, however, were never in the same shift - when Nina was in the morning, Go would be in the afternoon, such was the schedule in Zmaj, lower grades in one shift, higher in the other. She'd comment that we could all eat from one plate, because on workdays we never had more than one person at a time for lunch.
20-I-2020 - 8-III-2026