04-III-2009.
Finished dismantling the shed. Whatever was in it was either thrown away as junk, or reused to make flower boxes later. What tools we had, that didn't quite fit anywhere in the house, went into two plastic cupboards, which even had some kind of lock and key (flimsy, though). Ender also put his two large pieces which fit two beneath wheels when a vehicle is to be lifted and kept so for a while. We somehow found the same type and shape of pink concrete tiles, with which the central piece of the attic was paved, and over the next couple of months I went on paving the rest the same way. Planting anything straight into the soil is pointless, the neighbor's tree will spread its roots into any soil it finds, so pots it will be.
For a few days now the maximal temperature is around +15 degrees, but for the end of week they forecast us a decrease to below 10. The trouble is that today, and expected to go for next two days, košava dominates with up to 38 m/s in the southeast part of Banat. There's available both electricity and gas, we'll push through the trouble.
Here is a total madhouse of a weather. On second of march we dawned with snow, yesterday it was +17 with wind, today +20 without, beauty, springtime just fully.
What you said that Amers drink strong drinks with ice, I remembered a sequence from a movie where a customer takes three ice cubes from his glass, and you can imagine what was left in the glass.
Even worse. For strong drinks they stay on couple of cubes, but in Houston I drank beer from a glass freshly taken out of the freezer - so cold it didn't condensate moisture on itself, it frosted it. And gassed drinks*... they first fill the glass with ice, then fill the gaps with brown water. They even advertise it like that, not as it's poured into the glass, but how it flows over a heap of ice. Cheap merchants' trick to sell water as dearly as possible. In many restaurant, with lunch, they charge only the first glass, the refills are free, doesn't matter, they make so much on ice that it still pays.
Here they sell kiwi in knit crates of nylon thread, packed around 1kg at 90 to 100 din/kg, and unpacked, larger, about 130 din/kg. Apples are 30 to 50 din/kg.
We saw kiwi now in other shops at regular price, three eaches** for a dolar. This shop is something, it's really good that they opened, right on time to fill the part of assortment which we now wouldn't know where to get, since the Keymart is closing. [didn't really close, though, but it was getting worse]. We went this evening to see if they had anything else... but thin. The discount isn't 10-20% anymore, it's 10-30%, but there's no more fresh greenery, the meat got sparse. We'll have to find something else, farther away. We'll go less often and freeze more. Now the frozen vegetables won't be taking up space, we have dried.
And we bought one thing - a heavy frying pan. No pan holds longer than two years here, and no matter how good it is new, they don't withhold the high temperatures needed for all the chinese stuff - they either warp, or something else gives, mostly the teflon fails in the middle and that's where it starts sticking. This one is at least three kilos... we'll see how long will that one hold, we had enough of buying pans over and over.
And I bought new shoelaces. Found a good pair a couple of months ago, and okay, for the price (25$) they aren't bad, but the laces seem to have negative friction, any knot I try unravels the third time I put them on. These now are of some softer material, we'll see. All my shoes are trained to accept jumping in from the attic, these will get tamed as well.
As for the supplies of meats and products thereof, just in our street there are 5 butchers, of which one is the Matijević supermarket, and from our street to the little market there are six more. The wares in the small butcheries are of best quality, while in a super market that's not it. One example - the boiled bacon is the only product in the industry which has positive calo - a mix (marinade) is injected into it, and it's not smoked nor left to drain, and in a super market there are many products of the boiled bacon type.
They inject into almost anything here. Selling water... Except the peasants' ham, that we bought this winter, everything else is vacuumed with marinade, so when you open it do it over the sink, and if it's left in the fridge it goes slimy and sticky in two days. I got hooked to some sausages, pretty much the debrecin type but less ground pepper and a bit sweetish, however the meat in them is even better than what we were used to - and even that I have to drain first.
[it got worse, I soon had to wash them before use]
And there's no more salfalada***, haven't seen them since last summer. And they were the real ones, tasted just like the wieners did when I was a kid. The wieners we stopped buying years ago, it's all too spongy and tasteless and who knows what's inside.
...
One daffodil bloomed a bit already, now the bulk of them are going. Two days ago we had a crack on what we put on the outer faucet - brass this time, not plastic, but cracked regardless when it froze. And it didn't matter that she packed it in insulating material, the stuff protects for a while, but we had freezing five nights in a row, whole day tuesday and some on wednesday, it just froze and broke. We were just standing outside, enjoying the first sun, and then heard hissing and I knew what it was right on. I took the big long wrench and went to the street to close the main valve at the meter, then went back, unscrewed this splitter valve on the faucet (for two hoses, which we didn't need, but this one had its own valve). Corked the thing and was done, let the water on again and all was in order until next spring. Every thaw time the same story, because they don't have proper winter valves, it just keeps dripping, and I'm not in the mood to dismantle the whole kitchen just to reach that corner and approach the thing from inside.
You once wrote that Ricardo passed the exam for an American, does that mean he's got right to citizenship now or just for work.
He's got citizenship, the exam was the last step.
Now this weekend we're readying to break out the patio. This is the last (night) shot of the fence, tomorrow we'll cut it (at least the bottom third) and begin to create a flowerbox. The shed is already a former, only shelves remained, and them we'll also use for boxes. The dark red is the back of the Juliška's half of the shed, it's the classic american paint for barns and stables, probably some kind of minium or something such, traditional. We'll attach some kind of trellis to it, probably interwoven thin slats (plastic, so it doesn't rot) so the cucumber will have something to crawl upon, and will look nice.
----
* serbian name for carbonated
** when it's sold apiece, we say „na komad“, american supermarkets say the price is „n$ each“. So.
*** actually safalada, no l in the first syllable, which I wrongly heard, memorized and stuck to until about 2016, when someone explained it to me. The american name for it is knockwurst, from german Knackwurst. The woes of the vowels, and a reminder that the Germans actually pronounce the initial kay enn, as in ’pinkness‘.
Mentions: Ender Aquila (Ender), Juliška, košava, Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), in serbian