15-VI-2023.
Rain again. Waiting eagerly for real heat to try out the new AC.
Woke up crazy early, before seven, and then stayed up until after lunch. Kept the catnap below one hour. Then we put a clothesline, new wire - the old is still there but entangled in the fence, where once thieves made an opening - through the garage. And then stepped through all 8m of the garage with a small ladder, and hung the tobacco, what she picked the day before. To dry.
There were a couple of already dry leaves, too brittle, so she left all of it in the trunk overnight, and now these were just right. She chopped them in narrow strips on a cutting board, made eight cigarettes from that. Well, this is even better than the first try. Perhaps it smacks, at first puff, as cheaper, just like when you smoke fifty seven and the next guy lights up a morava. Beyong second puff, a regular cigarette. Just that it burned too fast, being not stuffed much, due to hand cut stripes. Lasted three minutes instead of regular ten.
Called Telekom three times during the day. They're in chaos, systemwise. First call I got the old sound menu, but chopped out to have only the last option, „for ... press starlet*“, and music starting and stopping at random, lots of silences, all kinds of weird. Somehow managed to get in the queue, said wait for next operator is four minutes. Then a minute's silence later, it said „you don't have to wait on the line, we can wait for you“, and then another minute of silence. I understood that they'll call me if I hang up, so I did. Two hours later, they didn't call, so I called again. Got the regular old voice menu this time, and when I got into the queue and, seeing that automatic callback didn't work, decided to stay. After two minutes wait, it offered „if you want us to call you back, press one, to wait on the line, press two“. So I pressed two and after four hours understood that it really doesn't work. In the afternoon called the third time, got the sound recognition like yesterday, and ah, got the operator within a minute. After a brief rant, she upped my priority.
And really, they came the next day, before noon and replaced the modem. They say the optics wasn't launched yet (but I remember Boba had it before they sold the house, and their guy too, when we talked on the street as they were finishing the cabling, bragged how fast it was), still waiting for some equipment. Well, whatever the story, they replaced the modem and it was okay, it's the same one as five years ago. Took us a while to find out how to open the ports 2 and 3, which are by default set for eyepeeteevee. The admin password is the same, but this is 1.3 of the router, now it takes checking stuff on and off in four more places.
The rain stopped in the afternoon. The girls were cold, what with just sleeveless shirts and shorts, so we did test the AC, to warm up the room a couple of degrees. Half an hour sufficed.
On nineteenth the summer began. Lovely day, not too hot nor chilly, just about right. On twentieth it already scorched, didn't feel like doing anything. But just the same we went to Čankovo. Of course, there's always something to mow, but I didn't overdo it, actually did nothing the first hour, just pumped water and made coffee. She picked more tobacco, a bagfull. It grew huge, much taller than the guy by the bridge had for years (stopped about three years ago). His was never above 1,3m, and ours is now 1,5m in the average. Few stalks are taller than her.
On twentieth Fayes sent to Nina a picture of the old house, just to show how that guy Kenny mows the lawn - all neat and perfectly manicured. The magnolia grew even bigger, in blossom now, and there's grass all under it. So what we did with gathering soil, chopping leaves and preventing erosion eventually worked. And they say nothing grows beneath a magnolia.
There's a huge bush by the wall of #2, covering most of the window. At least some shade in the morning, to whoever is there.
On twentyfirst it was even muggier, but now we had to hang it to dry. We left it in the car overnight again, so the dry leaves would equalize with the fresh. This time there weren't enough old wires peeking out from the concrete - what we used back then to hold the bulkheads while pouring the beam over the door opening - to tie to, so I drilled four more holes. Not in the concrete, though, as my drill bits aren't that kind of steel, and not in the siporeks either, as it's actually too soft to hold a taut wire, no matter how good my wall plugs would be - and I had none. Luckily, there was a row of bricks over the concrete, which I laid, I think, to match the row heights with those of the house itself. Lacking wall plugs is no problem, insert a broken toothpick in the hole and that's it. Screwed the hooks in, then went to the other side, but there are no bricks there. But there's one more pair of strong wire ends... okay, we took the roof rod from the old tent (yup, the one from 1975., which we revamped in 2020 and then the next year noticed that nobody's playing in it but the cats, so we ditched it, keeping the rods and the spikes) and tightened it along the concrete beam. Then hooked two wires to the hooks and the rod (will do other two when we need them), hung the tobacco to dry, now just wait. And just like the old yellow roses scene back in 2010, when she said the rose on the left corner has no smell but the right one is fabulous and I said the opposite, this time she feels the smell of tobacco and I don't.
Until that dries, time to replenish the stock. Called my dealer and scheduled it for 21:00 at detelina, nobody there at the time. When I got there and saw the guy coming, while leaving the car, I spotted a familiar silhouette in the mirror - Boba and Milena strolling. I finished the transaction, got them into the car, let's have a surprise visit.
He's already looking for a new job. No matter how excited he was with both the job and the salary two years ago, now he's already getting more from a tezga than from the job... and at the job there's nothing much to do, except now they pushed him to learn Java... And Lena got him down to the ground when he once bragged about his salary and she just said „why so little“. So he took to polishing his seevee, and Milena said it was okay, perhaps change some three words. Just in case, he passed it to Lena too, and she returned a meter long list of things to change. Literally the old dilemma: wash or make new?
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* zvezdica, little star, is the regular name of the „*“ key
Mentions: Čankovo, detelina, Dobrivoj Gunaroši (Boba), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Milena Požarić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), siporeks, tezga, in serbian