10-IX-2022.
On 4th Aleksandar's wife called. Žarko called a few days ago, just checking how things are going, and to invite us to their place on the hill, beginning of october. I remembered, along the way, to ask about aunt Milica, we didn't even know whether she was still alive, I kept trying to call her every few months and got no response, perhaps she canceled the landline and switched to mobile and I don't have that number. Now I got some news - the aunt sold her apartment (which is a teachers' apartment, same as Teja had, which they later bought off for peanuts) and moved to live with her husband's nephew in Mišićevo, on the small track*. And even so, they had to put her into a nursing home, as they are all busy and there's nobody who'd watch over her all the time. Presently she's in a hospital, but then we don't know in which city - the municipality has none, so it can be Kikinda, here, or who knows where.
So we're incommunicado - I never went to Mišićevo, don't know anyone there, don't know where to ask, and now have no phone numbers either. The nephew did drive her here a few times, while dad was alive, to his place and not here, so it's a complete break in communications. Now if she manages to put us together somehow... Once upon a time there were phonebooks published, now landlines are mostly gone. On top of that, mobile numbers are anonymous (just like the ones we have, buy a card from a kiosk and run it), and even what's registered is bound to the provider, there's no phonebook.
In the afternoon we went to Roda and Lidl with the girls. Since in Roda we buy mostly air (chips and other munchies), I usually leave the car on Lidl's parking and we just walk over to there. Which doesn't occur too often nowadays, they rarely want to come out ever since they have their new tablets and play on them.
Fifth. Talked with Bajlo for almost an hour, about anything and everything, zigzagging the subject at random, as it goes. Mostly about who's coming on saturday and who not. The phone endured fine, ended with 68% power. Warmed up my ear thoroughly.
Lena is in Berlin, some company gathering, this time not in Frankfurt. They returned from Istra the thursday before.
I also remembered Mohan and the slovenian girl of 09-III-2003., and wrote to them. To him an email, and to her I made an entry on her website, as if a prospective customer. He replied right away, and by the fake names he mentioned I saw that he did read some, but statcounter.prg registered none of his visits - he must be using some javascript filter, probably since forever, the old fox. From her nothing, who knows whether she even visits her website.
Seventh. We assembled the fourth shelf, i.e. completed what we started four days ago. She stayed upstairs to line up the yarn on it. Once Sanda and Linda gathered that there's some action upstairs, they wanted in too. Now there's more floor space there, so they had fun, that's where we keep old toys.
On burundi someone reported that Goldi has died, and who he actually was. Half an hour later, Boća reported the same on oldwave and reminded us that the guy was a member of the original oldwave group on sezam. Then on burundi again someone mentions how Goldi carried Iggy Pop from the stage, all done in... well, small is the world. There's only one degree of separation between Iggy and me - along two lines, the other line being Gary, who nicked him the name.
Eighth, Čankovo. Now let's prepare the water for saturday. I managed to fill the hidrofor's pump and wait for it to prime the pressure. And the water ran from the faucets, not that it didn't. But when all the faucets were closed, except the vukašin (v. house dictionary) but then it takes only five liters, it started pumping again, this time not going over 1,6 bar - and the 1,5 bar is the lower limit which triggers the pumping. Let it work for one cigarette (which is ten minutes on our homemade; with Mali Bora it's three, with Bond aka LM it's almost five) and it still didn't pump it up. Called Zdravko and he said to shut off the bathroom. Found the valve, closed it tight, and guess what, it pumped up in a minute. So okay, there's a broken pipe. And then I saw the floor being moist, roughly around the place where the pipe leaves the, ahem, pump room for the bathroom. Ow fuckit, that would mean breaking the tiles to find where it leaks... no way, let him put plastic pipes on the wall. only for the kitchen sink and the vukašin, screw the bathtub, and don't even think about the water heater, I use it for this one day in a year. We'll plan it later, don't want to rush it, maybe these days, maybe come spring.
We cleaned up, mowed, I even brought the vacuum cleaner and sucked the kitchen, half the hall and the terrace where we'll sit. She broomed the leaves that gathered, and then this good old insucker made the dust just vanish. Inventoried the kitchen, made a list of vessels and flatware to replenish.
The Brits' zlobaba (evil grannie) kicked the bucket. In the evening we drank, just three shots, to celebrate. We didn't spill a bit from the first shot, just like we didn't do for Madlenka back then. Waiting for Kissinger, and if we outlive Gates too, that would be nice. As Heinlein count Mizogin said „against them I have only one tactic, to outlive them; only three are still on my list“.
On friday we went to buy stuff for saturday. First to detelina, to buy a big pot for the meat - rustfree steel** always, enamel always cracks somewhere - then some plastic dishes for the salad, oval plates for the entree, a kitchen knife. Then to Lidl - mineral, ćevapčići, barbecue sausage, but they didn't have boneless neck steaks. So nothing, Roda then, had some kulen, pečenica (sliced, of course), smoked hard cheese and then the steaks. They had no ready steaks, so we took a whole side of the neck and told the guy to debone it and slice the meat. He botched the cuts, uneven thickness, and also added a handful of bones that were already on the desk. By play of accidents, both he and the girl at the cheese and kulen were somewhere between club 100 and club 400***, exactly the american type of obese. I took note of the guy and if we ever need meat when he's there, we'll just about face and go somewhere else.
While we were at it, I still didn't have the exact number of people coming, because Gavra didn't report back on time. I counted they'll have their regular four people, but no, he called meanwhile. Too late. Called him back, and he said zero. Including him, he won't be coming either.
Stanley's brother-by-mother died. We got news via skype.
Nina and Lena talked over Signal in the evening, and, ahem, I'll have to mess with Byo to limit the dates available to older than two years. Because one of her colleagues, from Rotterdam if I got my statcounter.prg right, wanted to make a site with programming jokes, and Lena pointed him to sGradlj.com. He found this autobiography, and started wading through it, looking for stuff, or at least dates relevant to him. And found out that she was negotiating a new job. The order of things is that the current employer is the last one to know about it, and this guy is accidentally someone who is involved in hiring... But he decided to not spread this further, only started hinting in conversations with the upper echelons that there's a mood of jumping ship among the top programmers, perhaps some raises may be a good idea now.
On tenth we held our regular maturski. The morning started with some drizzle. I dropped by to a grocery to buy tomatoes (as overyester she managed to find only four good ones; the ones that should be ripe now are the ones that blossomed when the rains began, so there's almost none now), then to the bakery to get salties. No way to find a parking place at the one by the local community; tried the one closer to Lesnina but it was even worse there, it's a saturday, everyone's getting groceries. Parked near Lesnina on the other side and went straight to Dragana. Had just a smoke with her, not even a coffee, and then remembered to ask her for a džezva (coffee pot) to borrow. Went down to the chinese shop below, but they have only the small ones. Bought a cooker instead (the actually dangerous type, where the electricity runs through the water to heat it up), large enough to make six coffees, which will suffice. Went to a small bakery in Lesnina and the clerk there went „oooooh professor...“ and then knitted a long yarn of how he remembered me etc etc, and when I was teaching his class. Well, not any higher class as he was electrician division, and I had those only in 1981 and there were only a dozen guys there, I'd remember; he finished in 1983 or before and said he was tenth grade. Well, possibly only that one semester I did in Perlez and then he later could have seen me in MPSŠC but not in class. After a long while he finally came to measure the salties we came to buy.
We came to Čankovo right on time, around 10. I took the new route, by the new segment of the beltway. She was completely lost, thinking this was the other bridge, which is 2km down the river. We took out the tables, she lined up the kulen and the rest while I took out the chairs, barbecues, set up the nanovo and the speakers. Then we sat and drank that one shot a year that we have alone. The weather went sunny by then, her umbrella was in for nothing. Around 11:30 Staša came, and Borko right behind him. Then soon after Bajlo came with Čombe, then Mima. Jasmina came good half an hour later, because she completely forgot that this is today, and packed to go to Belgrade for a regular visit to her daughter, and just before taking off she called to see if she needed anything. Daughter reminded her and... Well Bajlo interpreted this as if she was already halfway to Belgrade and was driving back.
It was a bit awkward to have only so much of the waterworks, but then it saved me from having to explain why is the water heater not working. We have as much water as we have, so it is. We drank our 2018 tutifruti, and the apricot that Jasmina brought, but three quarters of each remained in the end. Čombe and Borko switched to beer afterwards, and Dragana to mineral after the third shot. The barbecue turned out fine, my ćevapčići were praised a bit, and the steaks weren't bad either. This time almost the whole bag of peanuts went. Though, it didn't pass my test, was a bit undone, so I gave it two minutes in the microwave, that did it. Čombe praised the unneatness of the garden, because his father was a stickler and just couldn't sit, so he'd just go off to pick straws in the yard or dust the beams in the attic, often forcing him to join him. This is the obvious lazy bum's garden, you do nearly nothing, and it gives fruit. That was the plan...
A sizable heap of meat was left uneaten, I planned this for twelve. Borko even volunteered to take some for his dinner, but forgot about it later and we didn't have proper packaging anyway (except old nylon bags). All in all this went well, we didn't stay long, and the gang cleaned up neatly in the end. Dragana took a ride with Borko, to him it's along the way and I felt like going straight home. Knowing the road by heart, every pothole, by the time I reached town he vanished from my rear view mirror.
Only around midnight we sat to have a drink, now we can. Though, I don't even know how to drink during the day, the one shot in the morning at maturski is all of it, on other days I almost feel unwell if I drink before evening. Now since our so-called annual (vacation) is nearing, we started deliberating where to go - south, to the bermuda triangle Pirot-Leskovac-Vranje or along the romanian and hungarian border to Palić-Subotica-Sombor-Bezdan. She cut it short by picking up Divčibare, this time seriously. What we saw on 22-IX-2016. was too fast and too short, this time we can go slowly. And there's a new road from Obrenovac to Lajkovac and we won't go off at noon, nor drop by Belgrade to buy a camera.
Twelfth. I wrote this on burundi, a propos the possibility that the Brits may need new passports, because the current ones mention the queen.
Just looking at the navigation on my new phone, and okay, the geepyess needs quarter of an hour to manage (and I should be outsied), so it puts me on Komenskog square in Novi by ipy number... But, looking at my own street... I notice that it even knows the house numbers, except they're off reality. Because half of the space between my street and the one behind was reserved for something for the customs, so there was no construction there until the customs gave up on that. Now the opposing sides of the streets, facing that area, and both sides of the rest of those two streets were built meanwhile, so in my street the even numbers begin at the far end of the street, and the odd numbers from the half. The neighbor across has a house number higher than our by about thirty. When a cabbie looks for us at the wrong end of the street, I just ask him, when he eventually finds us, „are you new here?“.
Well on this map my side of the street was renumbered, so the difference from the neighbor across is less than twenty now. I just wonder where did they get these numbers, do they know something we don't?
And, right, starting this spring the cabbies keep stopping about 150m earlier, almost by the corner, a few times we had to call again to tell them to come closer.
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* the narrow gauge railroad, laid more than a hundred years ago, with three lines - one going north, then this one going to romanian border, dismantled in the seventies, and the third to Vršac, which was replaced with regular gauge some time after the sixties, and even that was dismantled only this year after being inoperational for a few decades.
** stainless can still acquire stains, the expression is wrong, and I don't give a fuck about „rustfree“ word being already trademarked when some other company invented the same thing but couldn't call it so
*** club 100 - over 100kg; club 400 is three guys with 400kg among themselves
Mentions: Version 1.1, 09-III-2003., 22-IX-2016., Aleksandar Zarin, aunt Milica, Božidar Sokolović (Boća), burundi, Byo (Byo), Čankovo, ćevapčići, detelina, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Gary Brandywine, Gavrilo Taroški (Gavra), house dictionary, Jasmina Vlajin, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joško Čobzanin (Čombe), Lesnina, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), maturski parastos, Merima Tabarski (Mima), Mohan Merchant, MPSŠC, nanovo, Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Novi Sad, oldwave, Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sezam, sGradlj.com, Stanley Berger, Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), statcounter.prg, Vesela Senić (Teja), Zdravko Lakatoš, Žarko Zarin, in serbian