21-VII-2020.

On 14th we took the girls to Springfield again. Vesna was there this time, all pretty as usual. She loves to see the twins, reminds her of her own childhood, she has a twin brother.

In the evening we had the 15th frendz parti with Dragana and Borko, our place. She made a gulaš, with our own noodles. The eggs being plenty - we're presently at about 19 hens (one died today, so 18 now) and we're getting about 100 eggs a week - we make noodles whenever we catch a few hours in the afternoon. The two barrels we bought for storage are almost full. The twins had pigtails, posed for pictures gladly. She went to detelina during the day and bought some tongs and small porcelain vessels for the salad (had cabbage and some sort of greek salad, sans olives). Dragana was shy of contact, said "no kiss", being rather under the corona stare. That's mostly spread by TV, I reckon. The fear, that is. This city is among the least hit, some smaller places already have more dead than we had cases. The apricot brandy flowed well, however - after draining the one liter of the 2019 vintage from the pretty bottle, I pulled out the half liter of the 2017 and in the end, around 2:30, there was just enough for us to have one before going to sleep. My estimate is that we drank about 1,3l (OK, Nina had a couple).

During the evening Raja was doing his comics, which is a stretch - he never ever read one issue of any comic, the printed medium simply doesn't occur to him, his medium is the touchscreen or PC. He's generally running through the house, imagining he's somewhere in some imaginary game, performing his own sound effects, with a lot of shaaaaaaa! and swoosh!, waving his hands around. As his fingernails are quite long and he's growing and not really aware how his arms and legs are longer than what he remembers, the body image update lagging behind RL, he managed to scratch his right eye. Took a dozen minutes until he stopped screaming, until the next afternoon until he came to grips with the situation, then two more days of living with eyes closed until he came back to normal.

On 15th we took Sanda and Linda downtown, for a little pizza under vodotoranj and a walk down the main street, on bikes of course. Met nobody. In the afternoon Žuca came with my retirement paperwork. Nina printed the papers I supplied (my ID, copies of whatever paperwork I had from Hungary) so I filled in the request to handle my hungarian staž. There's an agreement between retirement funds of the two countries to mutually recognize the times folks from one country worked in the other, so this should be handled invisibly and the two funds will probably do just barter until the end of year, when one would pay to the other - I figure the number of our folks who worked there is far larger than of theirs who worked here. When the paperwork was finished, we just went outside to sit and then spent a couple of hours chatting, under the walnut and apricot.

Now since Go bought the new Nikon with some crazy zoom (yes, made excellent photos of the moon), I am the last holder of a Canon (the eos70) in the family, so I took over her long tube (i.e. teleobjective) and the bag. Made a long series of shots in the evening, with the dozen kids (mostly girls) on the street, as all of ours (except Raja, who stayed inside and I had to guide him now and then, and then check on him through the window) took their bikes and went out.

On 17th I went to the dentist again. It was kind of rainging, but not much, so I just arrived fresh. The guy had doused my upper left jaw with anaesthetics, as he had to dig out the pieces of #6, which was just leftover roots and half disolved, almost covered with gums. Took a tad longer than usual and he's still not sure he got all the pieces out. The trouble was compounded with the lack of good teeth in the neighborhood, so no leverage to lean the prybar on. I'll have to have a scan of the area, just to make sure there's no debris. Actually, anything left inside would eventually be pushed out (she had such a case, it took months but it came out), but the plan is to have a prosthesis leaning on the gums there, and then such a piece making its way through the flesh wouldn't sit too well. Called Dragana during my smoke break on the way back, but she was at a friend somewhere on ruža, so no visit, just chat.

On 19th it was still kind of rainy. Lena had planned to come have lunch with us over the weekend (want to try the "Old quince", new place on the Belgrade road), so we had a plan that I take it the next day. I chose to go the same day, less traffic so I can step on it and not have to pass too many trucks. Made a few nice shots along the way, though shooting with my old nokla (9,5 years now) is a lottery. Had at least one excellent shot, good. Got there quite fast, considering that I heard a new sound from the engine, and felt a loss of power - had to rev it at 2900 instead of 2500 rpm for the same speed, with about 20 dB more than before. I guessed the exhaust burst, so OK, will fix that tomorrow. The 120 eggs have to be delivered.

Api was completely confused with my appearance - Milan just went out, to toss the garbage, before I came in. We probably missed each other narrowly at the elevator, me coming from the basement, where the garages are, he leaving at the upper ground floor, to walk to the garbage bins at the end of the building. So the poor dog was maybe imagining a body swap, or some other nasty business. Had the usual hour of chat, Lena likes the yellow shorts we found for her in Lidl, everything's OK. They have been to another evening of protests meanwhile.

On 20th I took the saxo to have the chimney replaced. The guy said the tube was hanging on the engine, held by just one remaining scrap of metal. Well, this being the third in ten years, and considering that the first one held only a couple of years, all good. I left the car there and waled two block down, to have a smoke with Carp. Not much news, just that the combination that Nena would work with them didn't pan out, and the other one she had with petefi also didn't, so she's now a whole year without a job.

In the afternoon, took the twins to the playground in front of Lesnina, and then to the chinese shop right under Dragana's windows, but didn't call her because she sleeps at the time and we'll see each other in a couple of hours. The girls picked some toys - tea sets and bubble makers (with a whistle in the stopper). Sanda's was cheap porcelain, quite tiny - the cups' diameter was about 6mm inside - and of course as they threw things around and never were seriously challenged about the habit, it lasted less than two days. But it was fun for the afternoon and cost perhaps 100 RSD. Linda's was plastic.

In the evening, the 19th frendz parti was at Dragana's place. We had to visit the chinese shop again, to buy two more bubble makers for Raja and Violet. I brought the 1,5l bottle of apricot. She made some kind of salty cake, basically a loaf of sliced bread made into sandwiches with... dunno, mayonnaise and whatnot, actually quite tasty despite the bread being the spongy industrial bullshit. And some kind of small ćufte with cheese... well, it started with just cold ham and better sausage slices with cheese cubes, into barbecue, gulaš and now this, even some cakes. It's escalating. To differ from the last time, when all the picturetaking was finished by 20:30, this time we all took turns with the camera, and even had another bit of posing, with the eos70 on the window, propped by three coffee saucers so the lens wouldn't be pointing down. These were the funniest, as it focused on the near end of the table, and we were posing on the other end :).

They all switched to something else after dinner - she to beer (first some nikškćko crno, then jelen, the swill, but who cares); Borko and Dragana switched to ružica (rosy wine), so I was left alone with the apricot and poured to myself as I wanted... and it seems at some point I didn't care and just lost count. I remember telling the old soviet joke about the whole of eastern bloc being represented in a troika, with wolves chasing it and it being -40C... but Dragana insisted, backed by others, that I tell it in russian. I think I mixed some hungarian as well. Don't even know I mentioned all the relevant elements, and I guess they knew the joke, it was my delivery that was funny. That's when I realized I drank more than usual, and concentrated on staying in good relationship with gravity. Managed to call a cab, on the tiny keyboard of nokla, even correcting the two typos I made, and the cab came at 3:11 (among the dozen cab unions in the town, the 566 is the only one to send an SMS with "your cab is arriving", so I know the time. The message usually arrives when you're already sitting in the cab.

At home, I even went upstairs without help. I slept until around ten, but she was woken by the noise made by the twins, so she went down before eight. It was a messy night for Nina, as the kids didn't let her sleep. It was promising to be a nasty day with everyone on edge - that's normal when she didn't have enough sleep - and the kids' sleeping schedule was on the way to sheer chaos. Luckily, the weather was nice so after lunch we all went to Peskara in Čurda and had a good swim. The twins are trying to get rid of the floats, and Raja is trying to learn to swim - so Sanda and he had a little water in their noses, the school. They all got tired enough. Everyone wanted pizza for dinner, so I ordered when we got home, and then forgot about it. Fell asleep while playing shisen-sho, and was woken when the guy rang. Luckily, she picked it up and gave instructions to the driver, seems to be some newbie, all the delivery and cab drivers know the special layout of our area and specially our and next street.

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Mentions: Api, Čurda, ćufte, detelina, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Lesnina, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), Milan Nastić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Nevena Žaja (Nena), nokla, petefi, ruža, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), saxo, Springfield, staž, Tasa Radenkov (Carp), Vesna, Violet, vodotoranj, Živana Armatović (Žuca), in serbian