Had the beans on 8th too, and then on 10th - that's the scheme for beans, sarma and perhaps a couple more of such dishes which she makes in the big pressure cooker (though with just the regular lid, no pressure). We eat that for two days, then something else the third day (Alfredo this time) then the rest of it the fourth day.
The weather got somewhat worse, some rain and wind, still not freezing. Dragana called on sunday to schedule the next frendz parti, but somewhat earlier, so I wasn't ready with the phone, which still doesn't ring when suspended. So she got me on the landline.
Ever since Go sent us a link to Putlocker, I took to watching SF series. After the „Peripheral“ and some Star dreck I switched to Star wars... with variable result. The Obi Wan series was just a rehash, and McGregor's ego trip, on which he's permanently worried, sad, defeated, wise and boring. The Boba Fett series was actually good, but still one feels the influence od Disney - when you run out of ideas, introduce your characters as children. The yodaling may be cute, but actually the only redeeming feature is that he's there only in the last couple of episodes. A big plus is the ten minutes of 7th episode which happen on a true-to-life Niven's ring. The dimensions are a bit off, it's too wide for the diameter, the nightshade is moving a bit fast, but at least this way it fits a screen and looks good. And can serve as a prop to explain the idea to those with less imagination.
For the 90th frendz parti (9th) we didn't dress up, as we mostly don't (she does pick something, to which even Raja once said „baba... looking good!“, but nothing posh), wearing the same thin jackets from Lidl that we wear fourth winter in a row - I wore the real winter jacket only once this season. We carried a bottle of 2019 tutifruti, and briskly walked the distance. It was a bit chilly on the shoulders only, and we had to pull on the hoods, but really this was an easy walk, felt somehow lightfooted.
Borko was some ten minutes behind us, or were we too erly, don't know, didn't feel like looking at the clock. Dragana is a bit steadier on her feet, though she says she screams occasionally, when she somehow missteps. It's somewhere between bearable and limiting - she doesn't dare leave Lesnina, for Maxi or Gomex (at 25. maj or ruža, two blocks away each), she takes a cab or has someone drive her. Something I failed to notice but she did: no nail polish (not last time either, I see now on the photos). I was actually looking at the five or six rings she wore on her fingers, judging the time of year from them, as she wears just two or three in the summer. And she eased up on the fragrance, too, but then laid it thick on the food - there were roast ribs with potatoes, prebranac beans, two kinds of salad (sour cabbage, ajvar), salty pastries with spinach, two kinds of cake (something with ground hazelnuts, and a česnica from christmas), IOW, we overloaded. I weighed 80kg that morning, 81,5 the next, three days later I was still at 81.
Borko outed himself as once poet, he recited a poem he wrote at age 18, which he wrote to win a girl, and which succeeded then. Didn't last, though, he got ditched a few months later, and never wrote another one. His reciting it worked fine until the last few verses, where he couldn't quite remember it until few more sips of wine, but the overall impression is that he perhaps shouldn't have been studying math. He claimed that he hadn't heard from his artful self in decades, that other guy is probably quite dead. Well maybe he should asked the guy's opinion from time to time...
Instead, he came up with the information that the universe is 13,8 billion years old and still expanding, and that the expansion is accelerating, while the calculus shows that it should be slowing down.The trouble was that his way of explaining stuff is, perhaps, suited for an elementary school, and that he shouldn't really reply to each question by reverting to the beginning of the spiel, as if we understood nothing and have to go back to square one. Specially as I chided him severely for using the 13,8 billion and „exact calculation“ in the same sentence - what exactness are you taling about, when you have just three significant digits? And, as usual, I couldn't get to speak the second time, because the two of them went into another loop of not quite listening to each other, but repeating what they already said instead. Then he went to pee I had a minute to explain - they can't measure the distances at all, not across thousands of lightyears, but they can measure the speeds by the spectral shift. So multiply the speed by the time since big bang and you get the diameter of the universe. Except now the speed is variable, so multiplying by current speed makes no more sense. IOW, they can measure a few things, the rest is conjecture.
One strange thing that I can't explain - Dragana called me by name twice in the last five sessions, and she always called me by nickname, for the last fifty-some years. On the other side, my lady said „your hands are cold“ (and „your“ built as „to you“, the serbian posessive dative case) twice, which she never did, it was always „you have cold hands“, the german way, the same fifty years. No explanation from either of them.
Vlaja was our cabbie again. When we started these parties, the cab was 220-240 dinars. It's still below 400. The next day we were both recovering from the overload. Had the last of the beans for lunch. The habanero didn't last, however, I got the leftovers and dripped the portuguese piri-piri sauce, which is probably the best chili sauce so far (sharing the top position with the one from Čoka).
I thought I'd get some good night's sleep, and went to bed around 1, but no, couldn't sleep. Then at 4:30 her phone sounded the alarm and I got up. It did show 5:30, as we scheduled it. When I left the bathroom, Raja and Violet were already there, they woke up around midnight. I told them we're going to Belgrade in an hour, they should wake up Nina... and then realized, looking at the kitchen clock and my screen, that it's two hours... her phone somehow firing an hour ahead. So Raja and Violet panicked for a minute or two until I discovered the snafu and told them that we still have two hours. So I had a coffee and a pressed sandwich (in that quick roast gadget that we use for burritos and Raja's burgers) and a couple of cigarettes. Not knowing exactly how much traffic we'll have to deal with - the last dozen years it was either early in the morning or mid afternoon or late at night, never the rush hour - we aimed to leave at 6:30 so we get to the embassy by 8:45, their scheduled time. So I had the third cigarette in the car, warming the engine, which isn't necessary at all, but I'm really having enough of not being able to pick a place where I can have one - I've introduced the rule to have two at my desk in the morning, and now this got reduced to one, twice a week, or else Nina opens the window... if she sees me. Sneaking a smoke in the house we built with our own hands isn't really the pinnacle of the comfortable life I imagined for retirement, but there it is. So, in the car, with window open three fingers. And it was the Murphy's smoke, the kind one lights when waiting for a bus, which is a win-win: either you had a whole cigarette undisturbed, or the bus came early enough. This time I had both, they came as I had two puffs left. We took off at 6:50...
And, ah, the cause of the snafu was that her phone was still on daylight savings, and I kept forgetting to put it back on automatic.
And got there with 30 minutes to spare. Raja and Violet are now both of chatting age, they understand most of the jokes, crack a few of their own, and generally their attention span now extends for far longer than one, not too long, sentence. Raja complained only of being stuck in a seat, his butt hurting. And he spends hours sitting at the keyboard... but not really sitting, he's jumping around, getting off his chair, kneeling, getting a foot on the table, anything but sitting still.
Found a place to park in nearby supermarket's underground garage. Not big, but half empty. They went off, and I got up, bought two buns (actually called pogačice, but not quite like the classic ones) and half liter of yogurt, had my 2nd breakfast so, had another smoke and dozed off. Joda is rather comfortable, except the headrest is not designed for this, but as long as I could get a hand under my head, it worked. They were done by 10:20, the passports will arrive by mail within two weeks, and before 11 we were in Delta city, the shopping mall where they have a gaming outfit so he can spend his 30 minutes doing 3d stuff. He tried something else this time, but couldn't manage the controls, the metrics were designed for someone with longer limbs, so he switched back to being a bartender, photocopying coffee etc, same thing he played before. She took Violet to the toy store, and when they came back I went down to have a coffee. Having slept the theoretical four hours has left me woozy and I still had to drive back. While Nina ran into two persons who spoke english only, in the vicinity of the embassy, I had the luck to hear russian from the three ladies who were sitting two tables away. They didn't have turkish coffe there, but had ashtrays and a 300 dinar ness... a bit steep, but I needed it. When I was done, so were they - found them at the asian bar, trying to get sushi. There was none, so we just drove home. Not straight home, took patties at that Ranč place. I didn't eat mine right away, had to sleep first. But Sanda had another of her crying and screaming fits (just like she has now as I'm writing this), for whichever reason, which is not the annoying part, it's that she'd stop and then half a minute later remember where she left off, not done yet. Acting, of course, and annoying as much as possible, then being annoyed herself for lack of effect. I went upstairs and slept for about an hour and a half, then came down and ate my pljeskavica. Meat excellent, ajvar quite good, bun... while not quite spongy and not sticking to teeth, still airy and not quite right. Nobody makes sour dough nowadays, it's all chemistry and starch.
In the evening we tried last year's quince. Can't believe it's even better than last year's, but it is. Three shots were enough.
Twelfth - Lena sent pictures of herself in Arizona - with cacti and palms in the background, her in an elevator or on horseback, seems to enjoy herself. We'll hear from her when she returns.
On 13th Kees sent a shot of a tomcat, the supermarket's pet, and how there's a warning in dutch, english and polish not to feed him. Then Jan writes „ik ben klaar op ZBZ“ („I'm clear of“, ZBZ is one of big belgian clinics, which I actually remember and had contact with, oh the confused staff they had), obviously in wrong window, to which I replied with „good for you“. He laughed and then immediately called me. I had my camera on, he didn't have one, not on that box, we talked for half an hour. He showed me all the stuff he did in Feds, really all kudos, it looks good and rich, is fast, and he reworked the GUI so the user can lead the whole workflow from one form, without having to jump through the menus or the toolbar to find the pieces needed, it's all at hand... which is pretty much the philosophy we had back in PolC, just six times richer... and true, it's almost 30 years since then, so it should be. Firriver grew to some 40-50 people, mostly under Das, then Toronto (or T'rono, as the aborigines call it) and the european shop is still small. Though, since Inge left, they limped for a while, but there's now some Ukrainian girl, good, speaks no dutch but does ukrainian, russian and english, which suffices.
On 14th we went to Lidl and Roda with the girls, which they usually avoid these days. They didn't want to walk through Lidl like before, but rather took the kids' seats on the carts, knowing they'd be sharing the space with the groceries, and I had eight big bottles of water and two sixpacks of Knjaz in my big cart. Walked through Roda though, we took no cart, what air we buy (i.e. chips and other salties) fits in a basket.
As we were leaving Lidl, some lady was returning her cart and eating a bun, and saw some younger guy behind her, doing the same, and asked him „you also weren't given anything to eat at home?“.
In the evening followed Lena wading through airports. Seems to be she spent a lot of time at Atlanta, at least had some good sleep. Then the next day, after our lunch, reported landing at Surčin. All is good. Speaking of airports, Nina and the kids will probably leave after Raja's birthday. By that time Fayes and Rein should be back from Phillipines - presently they're stuck somewhere, their trip is taking four days already, as there was a big fuckup (aka meltdown, in today's terms) on wednesday, just the right day to get them stuck.