18-I-2021.
First day of the year (and decade) was sunny and nice, so we went out on the street with the girls. Sanda already knows how to pedal her little bike, though not the whole mechanics of it (the need to overcome the dead points, the rear-action brakes); Linda less than that (and she's now about 1-2kg lighter... though they are both quite normal).
On 3rd began a long discussion with Lajna (yup, was confused myself, I'm expecting a response from one in email, and the other one appears on skype, after having no contact with either of them for a number of years). She's in Pula now, sold the house and apartment in Zagreb, and generally is even more fun than she once was. Except her memory is very random, she was on various drugs until about 2001 or so. Was married once or twice but it didn't work, lived in Australia for a while.
A package with krismissy gift from Fayes has arrived. It cost her 230$, the postage was 83$. That was taken as a basis (postage included) for the state here to calculate the VAT (about 6000 RSD) and customs (3600 or so) and the cost of package review... to the tune of 10080 RSD, i.e. another 100$. The postage is value too. And it's all by the law, because law was specifically written with the "we can skin you if we like" in spirit. Two identical things have different value on arrival if they were mailed at different rates.
Messed a bit with statcounter.prg, added the calculation of speed between two entries, expressed in pageviews per day.
On 7th we took the girls to the little park near community center. First time this year. Another nice day, wasn't even too cold. The thin jackets from Lidl sufficed, and the sunny side felt almost warm. Nobody anywhere in sight, except a neighbor in a car, looking for her kid (well, the kid is over 7, I think).
On 9th we fixed the shelf in our bedroom. It's all metal tubes with plastic joints, and the joints weren't up to task, so the joints holding the middle storey just bent, and the whole thing was dangling about 20 degrees away from the wall. We took the old shock absorbers for the fifth door of the car (replaced a few months ago) as splinters, fastened with duck tape, stands like new.
Now after almost three weeks with nobody dropping by, we now had two visits in a row. On 10th, Žarko with whole family (mom, wife, three kids) arrived. They initially wanted to come after lunch, which would mean quite a short stay, as it was supposed to snow, so she convinced them to come earlier. "But there's so many of us" "us too, so where there's [enough] for seven, there'll be [enough] for thirteen". She said it's much easier to cook enough than to slice the dry meats and cheese and whatnot. So it was a rich lunch, with traditional soup and pohovano drumsticks and thighs, russian salad (which is not called just salad in Russia, it's olyivyeh, i.e. Olivier). For the latter she routinely makes her own homemade majonez (mayonnaise), now that we have a good stick mixer (two plastic eaches of chinese junk didn't last). And then there was a plek with roast shoulder and sausages... imperial, altogether.
Next day I was reshooting the diaries from 1972 - the remainder of the 9th notebook, which left off at some point when I first shot it, because the battery in eos70 just died on me, somewhere around 28th of july in that timeline. For these shots I switch to jpeg medium format - the quality of it doesn't matter much, and I don't need all the processing to be done under my control.
Seems my last message for Melanija didn't go through, so I resent it, this time in latin script (used the converter I now have inside Byo in Python/Dabo) and with links replaced with descriptions of how to find stuff - my photos on suština and the video of our last big maturski, where I am prominent in the first couple of minutes. This time she replied within a few hours, and said something about memories swelling up... how she remembers my girlfriend (supposed wife now), with hungarian name, whom she saw once on a crossing in downtown Novi... and how I wrote that we should meet all three once and then let the cards fall as they may. Wow... she does remember so much, and in detail (and I thought she didn't recognize me then - so I forgot we wrote about that almost encounter, and she remembers it all). And she mentioned how this shouldn't go back to going down to check the mailbox every now and then as it once was. Well, too late, I'm already doing that. And, regardless of my marital liberties (which I didn't exercise for 40+ years), you are the one name from my past that I should not mention at all, exactly because of that non-event in 1976, that we never sat and decided. I decided as I did, and therefore had to stop writing to her... have us both go on with our lives along separate paths. Which is, then, why I open and close the Thunderbird with my ears open. Not that she ever reads what I write, or my emails (which are mostly coming from oldwave and rasejani these years), just that if she saw Melanija's name onscreen, there'd be scenes. The one name that should not be mentioned... whew... and we didn't even hold hands.
And into Byo I now write differently. The reshooting of old diaries is now mostly done, two or three notebooks left, but now I write in serbian first, then translate that into english. [It]'s more fun [so], and I like it more how it turns out in both versions. I still think better in my own language, and where I transfer whole sentences as I once wrote them, they are preserved in serbian, and much closer to the original in english.
Forgot to switch eos70 back, so all the photos of that evening were somewhat below standard. But we were above it... the "frendz parti" (34th), as girls call it (abbreviated from "friends are coming and we'll have a party") finally resumed, after a three week break. The break was due to Borko and Dragana having all kinds of visits to make and receive in the meantime, but it turned out there was really almost none of that. So we were all quite eager for each other's company, and the papazjanija ("unbelievable mix" or "throw it all together, see what gives") turned out to be in demand. She was drinking a bit less - she was on skype with Go for perhaps fifteen minutes - but the overall result was that I had to bring the casket and refill the bottle. We drank 1,5 liters, and that brandy was measured at 49% by volume. I kept poking at Dragana, as is my habit, I just have to have my hands on the nearest female at times (not that I'm quite disinterested otherwise - she was always around and always beyond), so she moved her chair away from mine, the table is big enough for that. At some point I dragged her chair back, but then didn't notice when she pulled away again, and when there was something very funny I just wanted to lean on her chair, and it wasn't there - I fell. Well well, it's been decades since the last time I fell off a chair (and a year since I last fell), but this was just funny and, no, nothing happened, didn't even get a bruise, and managed not only to stand up right away, but to climb upstairs soon after that. We still don't have a banister. She was actually worse off - Borko offered to follow her upstairs, just in case, as she did have a problem with gravity.
On 13th, our cats caught a dove. She saw it fly and hit a branch of our big walnut tree, and then dive to the ground, probably hit its head. Didn't quite reach the ground, Gray got it by the neck. This happens about once in a month or two, the doves are stupid, but they breed.
On 14th, we had a more serious snow, and a rare visit: Boba and Milena. They don't plan to get married, they consider that done ("we're taken" - except in serbian the verb also means paralyzed, so it's the same joke we invented in 1976). She gave up on the job - first she was working, mostly night shift, on gas stations. This last job she did for only two or three months, delivering the small tobacco heaters, which is extracting the fumes from it without actually burning it, to those who bought it online, or just borrowing them to persons who express interest. Getting them back was often a problem, working as if this was a gig was another - no workhours, so you're on the shelf, and the general attitude of the employers was not so good. They offered her a better position now (after she quit) but she just wouldn't work with them - she knows the company now, and would rather go back to the pump. In the meantime three other girls were on her job - they seem to be a training center. I guess her looking so fabulously pretty also makes them want her back. But she'd rather do something else - (... 31 word...). He, on the other hand, is attending an online course to be an app tester and perhaps a bit of a DBA. He's actually quite good at it, so far, doing Python and I guess js.
So this time (35th) we had the pleasure of walking on thin snow or at least white-grouted pavement. Made it on time, not too frozen, just the toes. It's allegedly some christian holiday when you should look into the sky at midnight and then the sky opens (if anyone can explain how was it closed before that, has a drink from me)... so okay, we did that. The battery on eos70 was acting out - I checked in advance and it showed 175 shots done and 45% capacity left (hey, what happened with 850 shots per charge?), so after Dragana tried to do a few shots with live view on, the battery allegedly drained. But left alone for a while it recovered enough to make another twenty shots.
Just had to ask Dragana about all that cuddling and tussling my hair in the spring of 1972 - was any of that at least half serious? Nope, or she doesn't remember.
This two-nice-butts shot was made at 00:00:36 and it was the last, the battery refused to cooperate after that. We didn't refuse, we kept on until past 4:10 or later. She didn't want to wait for a cab and just went off on foot. I barely said bye to Borko and stretched my step to reach her. The walk back was actually easier than walk forth - and this time I was carrying the backpack (now only camera inside) in my hand, not on my back.
Mentions: 28-IV-1970., 21-I-2023., Byo (Byo), Dobrivoj Gunaroši (Boba), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), homemade, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), maturski parastos, Melanija Merćep (Lajna), Melanija Tisarević, Milena Požarić, Novi Sad, oldwave, plek, pohovano, rasejani, Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), statcounter.prg, suština, training center, Žarko Zarin, in serbian