Could be the year before or after, or a few months off too. The story is kind of isolated.
We wanted to visit Tereza. We'd go on foot, it was a nice spring/summer/autumn afternoon. We've already agreed on the time with her. We've been to such visits before to the point when the girls would stop asking "big Smurf, is it still far?" (it's about 2km, practically downtown).
But we were stopped by the decencity police, i.e. mom and grandma, in the yard. You can't go like that. It was about how we were dressed, I'd guess, that was their usual remark, which I remembered from my youth. Dang, how many times I just snuck out to avoid that kind of inspection. Damn presentability.
We didn't have much of a quarrel culture, i.e. we were all so bad at it, it would escalate out of proportion in just a few steps, specially with mom's articulate passion for grand verbiage and dramatic gestures, that we instinctively tried to avoid it. "Then we aren't going at all", I said, we made an u-turn and went back to our quarters.
And it's not the family of Tereza who'd see us in bad shape - they've seen us before, they've even been to a moba of ours, nope, it's the neighborhood who mattered. Sorry, folks, I grew up on "I don't care what the neighbors say" (OK, neighboUrs, it's Zeppelin) and I take that seriosuly.
Made us hurry up with that house. Which we, actually, did - these weeks I have installed the windows and doors, those that we bought back in 1986, which stayed in the garage for so long. The purpen (poliurethane foam) was too expensive at the time, so I used it only in the end, as a seal, when the frame was already set exactly right. Each hinge axle was strictly vertical, every frame strictly horizontal and parallel to the wall. Even today, when one of the largest windows is open, the pane stays put - it doesn't try to close or to open wide.
To fix the frames in place, against accidental movement during further work, I cut a bunch of spikes of 6mm reinforcement wire, and nailed them in front and behind the frame into the siporeks, so it can't move anywhere. Only then I applied the purpen, as caulk, and only the top floor terrace door is where I fucked up - I remembered too late to brace the frame from the inside against the push of the foam, so it bent inwards a millimeter. Just enough to make it never close right, it happened that a storm would blow it open or even off the hinges, the pane even once lost two hinges with some wood. I glued that back together, around 2011, but screwed the hinges to wrong depths, so they weren't coaxial anymore. Eventually we just replaced that door. All of that caused by being a few hours late with the bracing slats.
Anyway, now we could lock the house. Has d
These days frequently, whenever there's some fuss (and there often was), the radio 202 would switch to transmission of official First Programme, so then I'd switch to Studio Be, if I could find it - it would often be overlapped by one of the official programmes.
On sezam:
The eggs thing ("one doesn't have to be a hen to recognize a rotten egg") is a double edged bludgeon. You have a critic on one side, who defends his profession and right to work, and on the opposing end the right of the hall cleaners to take part when hospital decides to buy a CT scanner (they had lots of votes in wCouncil) - this is where one should stay away from acclaimed experts in the field of rotten eggs. I think being a hen isn't required, but is sufficient. or one should be qualified for the dispute - as it is then clear who mows and who brings water. imagine you write a 200k long app, densely packed with good ideas, and then a professor from that collection of jokes comes and says it's no good because it wasn't written in Basic...
the marriages were exclusively mixed so far, except some cases in california or perhaps sweden and holland
if belgium, nederlands and luxembourg made benelux, then lithuania, letonia and estonia make a lestvania (n.b. lestve - a ladder)
On SF:
"A SF writer, then, has to conform only to hard science and himself, which is far more difficult: he has to invent whole worlds daily"
"SF writers mess with hard science and dodge it, or pierce it, if they don't find real holes in it, invent weird technologies and play with them, they let the idea do its work and then chase it on their keyboard... they have to manage."