16-VIII-2003.
Too bad I didn't keep a copy of the notice, which we got at least twice, because the event was postponed. The rental office will reconstruct the parking lot for our block, and we all need to park elsewhere on that day, and they will erect „baracades“ (not a typo, the word appeared thrice in the text, each time the same).
Today the alleged reconstruction finally occurred. The guys came and just spray painted the asphalt, with some thinned tar. That's nice looking, very black, absorbs heat quite well and generally raises the temperature around here. It also fills any cracks while they're small, so in winter the water can't get deeper into the blacktop and create larger cracks as it freezes.
Except this is Virginia Beach, you don't get that kind of winter around here. But this is the logic of house rental: it's all spit and polish. Anything that makes it looks good on the outside is welcome, and will be paid and done. Anything inside, nobody gives a damn. I complained early on that the mechanism in the bathtub doesn't work, the drain stopper is kaputt. After a couple of calls the guy finally came and... gave me a stopper. The terrace door can't properly close, not to mention lock, and even the original lock was already replaced with a hole through the frames, so there's a nail to insert through, and that's the lock - but it's now impossible to align holes and push the nail through, the frame is even more skewed than it was when the holes were drilled. The doors to the washing closet were bent, probably someone drunk leaned on them too heavily, there were holes in the walls that were roughly patched, the wallpaper in the bathroom was torn... nobody cares about that.
We also made it to the beach today. It wasn't crowded at all, lots of space both on sand and in the water. One of the half dozen guys with metal detectors was slowly doing his rounds, scanning the sand. Who knows, maybe sometimes they do find something valuable. If my mom found that 30g bracelet of 14-carat gold, with just naked eye, why not. They wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't worth the while.
First two times we bought some protection against sunburn, having learned it two years ago, and then noticed how the Amers are pale despite lying in the sun many hours more than we do. Of course, that's because they consume exactly those ointments which protect against ultraviolet light. So my dear started digging the net... and fount out that Amers suffer the lack of vitamin dee a lot, which shouldn't happen if you grab at least few hours of sunshine a month. So then she started checking the other stories about the allegedly inevitable skin cancer, how each dot will grow into a plum... and said wait a minute, since when are we defending ourselves against a vitamin? And those spots, we all acquired them since childhood, I remember noticing my first one at around age of five, and nothing, none of them grew any larger, nor did they multiply much. So we concluded that this is just selling fear and chemistry, and stopped bying the stuff. We reverted to our old, stay out for just two or three hours on first day, an hour longer the second, and then you're done, do as you like. (and we stick to it even now in 2025 with no ill effects; the ozone holes were not mentioned by then and were completely forgotten later... all of it seems to have been a hoax)
I don't know whether this happened today, but around this time at least two visits to the beach ended with rain. And as the shower was approaching, the cerberus comes, spitten Kurt Russel of Baywatch (aka Duke Nuke, same square cut head, just a tad lower), and says we need to leave the premises* (and the rest of all logic as well), the beach is closed. On both sides? I mean, did you close the african side as well? Yes, you need to leave the beach. Oh, but why? Because the rain is coming. So what can happen to us, we get wet, that's why we came here. You need to leave the beach, such are the rules. Your rules suck. I know, but you need to leave the beach. I realized that the guy won't give up, and saw that the beach was by now mostly empty. Disciplined, these Amers, worse than what we saw in USSR.
Of course, we know what's behind this: the city parks and greenery is in charge of the beaches, and there's some remote possibility that a swimmer's head may stick out enough from the water, to attract a lightning. Same thing as 11-VII-2000.. At least we had fun with this guy.
There's about a kilometer and a half to the apartment. The torrent hit us as soon as we crossed the Atlantic [avenue], and escorted us to the door. Both times like that.
The next day we went to Richmond and celebrated our birthdays, six days ahead of time for some reason. The correspondence with dad, post festum:
How did the domestic press comment the electrosystem on the north of the US falling apart, or was it all wrapped in foils of secrecy ?
I don't read. Even about the blackouts themseles I found a couple of days later, from third hand.
By the looks of all of it, what's taking place is a ruining of the system almost to a tee like Sloba's system, just with a corporate prefix. Their goal is not any orderly and permanent supply, but making money instead. Ever since Regica [Reagan, in kajkavian croatian...] pushed for deregulation twenty years ago (allegedly all that state control costs too much, so better have the money stay in people's hands, i.e. the firms should be able to stop adding the cost to the price), nobody is making them build reserve capacity, to make the grid robust enough to carry bigger loads etc. The main method to squeeze profit is to fire as many workers as possibly, and to cut the expenses, and on the other side nudge the customers to consume with abandon. What workers they keep, are mostly the younger ones (as they are cheaper); they primarily see to getting rid of the older ones, who cost more - both because of the salary, and for acquired rights to take part in some retirement programs, where the firm is supposed to add its dime**.
And then when the push comes to shove, in many places in the system there's nobody left who'd know what to do. This time it was a spite of several hot days in a row, which happened in the middle of rain season, so the people turned on their airconditions to cool off and dry the air in their space. In some places that caused overload, and the automatics started pulling additional power from the neighboring sources, which were likewise highly loaded, so they dropped out as well... and it spread in a chain reaction.
By the last night's news on RTS [state] and TVBK [brothers Karić, related to it underneath], Newyork is finally lit, underground [railway] works etc, everything is turned on, only the phone and internet network is not consolidated, as per reported directly reporting into the daily. Good that it didn't hlit you as well. Anyway, there's a lot of space between Newyork and Washington, and from Washington to you as well. What matters is that your Cueblo didn't feel it.
Virginia has four of its own power plants, out of which two are I guess nuclears. Also, the system here must bear the load of mass airconditioning, it's considered regular load here. Nobody turns them off between april and october - it even happens that in october they cool by day and heat by night.
Cueblo should have no problem, the population density is low there, and the desert in the valley is surrounded by green hills, where the snow stays long, so I think it was relatively easy and cheap to build the power plants.
conclude (and even less count) how many candles were there: by Go's birthday, or yours, or both !!! It would really be a horriblast big cake with 24 + 48 candles. What matters is that they were lit, the count doesn't matter, we know what the numbers should have been. And who blew them, or you blew in a duet.
There were 24, and we counted them thrice - once for her, twice for me. We blew them together and didn't relight them (as Lena likes to do, she blows hers three times) because we were already hungry, and lighting up so many candles takes quite a while. For such cases the Amers produce digit shaped candles, so you poke the two into the cake and you're done. But we like it better this way.
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* A premise means the same as elsewhere, but in plural it means a building with land taken together, as property. Me neither.
** forgot about the shutting down of power plants, to create shortage when the demand grows, so then they can buy power from others in nearby states, at a higher price, the suppliers there being owned by the same owner... just wait for the shortage and windfall, and shortage can be arranged
Mentions: 11-VII-2000., Cueblo, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), in serbian
11-III-2023 - 25-III-2026