12-IV-2014.
Measured where the corners of the hen coop will go, and hammered the four corner posts into place. Made them of leftover steel rods, L profiled, that I used as step holders for the staircase (still unfinished), screwed the lower frame to that. Hammered them down to height we wanted (made sure each was level), and then (on 14th) poured a blob of hand-mixed concrete around each, so they wouldn't move.
And that's how the building began. The chicken have grown, they're almost completely covered with full set of feathers. Not hens yet.
On 13th dad got his new still. The old still was stolen last fall. Our best guess is that when majstor Mile redid his roof then, some of his temp workers just tipped a friend that there's such a thing at such and such address. The common M.O. of such thieves is that they do 200€ damage to gain 15€ for the copper. But dad just can't sit still (pun intended) so he bought a new one, same as the first one. And started locking the garage.
Another possibility is that anyone not sitting while a city bus passes by can simply spot the sheen of copper when the still is operation. There's a window of opportunity, of less than two seconds, when anyone with a keen eye has a chance.
On 14th, another conversion was finished, for some clinic with an english name - I never knew where it was, probably in UK or Ireland, as I passed it to Geoff when I was done. As far as I know, it could have also been in Canada, US, South Africa, Australia or New Zealand, Firriver had customers in english there too.
Went to dad in the afternoon, guess I delivered that apple gnasher etc (and had to run it myself when it came to it, he doesn't have the force to turn it anymore; it goes easy with ripe apples, but as soon as some greener one comes, it takes an effort). And his new still arrived - the old one got snatched. We guess one of day laborers that majstor Mile hired has staked out the inventory and reported to whomever. But dad just can't stand still without a still, and he's got as much money, so he ordered a new one. Which is no news by itself, it's how he managed to make conversations when ordering it on the phone. When he's talking with us, most of the time he fails to understand :).
This shot confused me completely, because (twelve years later) I spotted it in fes, and noted its path (by then fes was capable of that, to toss the path onto the stevka), just to make clear... Because there's the thermometer on the lid. And when this still reached us, thermometer was nowhere to be (lost, found, imagined, painted, foresworn, rerun... pick any). So, thiking that this was shot on our terrace, I conclded that the thermometer was once here and we lost it. But no, the latticework piece of metal below the gnasher is the lid on the drain in his garage, which doesn't exist on our terrace. And the gnasher we never brought home.
This from Marinko: „I tink tat te same "fater's"* is C# (as one would say: java repacked into m$“. He obviously grew up with the local newspaper, so he puts any word which is not 100% grammarly and used in exact original meaning, and sometimes even when it is, between quotation marks.
There's a few hundred of old roof tiles by the back wall. I've made a deal with Faik to take them away, for free, because he thought he could sell them. Unfortunately, they're mostly an old model, partly from 1963 and partly from 1920... some such year. So he had hard trouble selling them, so he took only half. The other half is still there.
On 16th, cleaned up the garage, and the planer, and smoothed the planks and the slats we'll use for building the coop. Painted the slats with some protective stain and left them to dry.
On 18th, in Klincaid, discovered that the hand pump's head just broke. It's old, from 1974, I'd say poured in Radijator, so we decided to buy a new one.
In other news, Ender's car, later known as „Ender's car“ (even after it changed owners three times) is now complete. Took weeks to take various parts to be painted in that special stinkbug green.
The kid on the left, slightly unnoticeable with trashcans for bacground, is Raja.
In other news, SFPD makes it known to SFBC and their police (yes, university has its own police) that near one of their buildings there was an incident, two black girls tried to snatch a purse from a university's worker, ouch, what am I saying, employee of the university, so the w... employees should pay attention and take measures.
The there replacement for Nick, one Kimberley (for whom Norman had a term of endearment, „Kimbecile“) was very thankful for my removing of certain error messages from Feds's launcher, as they weren't exactly errors... and it's much better now. Today she sent her regular 15 to 20 emails, just like any other day. Among others, something about passwords for Jan and me, because while I don't really have much to do there, it's Nina now who's in charge of the web app, and I'm just „the second line of defense, it's still better that Jan and I get our accounts reinstated, exactly for cases like this, because, as Jerry Pournelle would say, you need this almost never, but when you do, you need it badly“.
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* „Očin“, i.e. father's [dick], has absolutely no other meaning in Banat, and doesn't exist anywhere else - „očev“ would be grammarly correct.
Mentions: 27-IX-2026., Ender Aquila (Ender), Faik Rizvani, Feds, fes, Firriver Fertility (Firriver), Geoff Gearney, Jan Brenkelen, Kimberley Clarke, Klincaid, Majkrosoft (m$), majstor Mile, Marinko Protić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Nick Scage, Norman Shen, Radijator, Ryu (Raja), SFBC, in serbian
7-V-2023 - 13-X-2026