16-X-2023.
Woke up like insane at 6:30, me first at that, because she parked her mobile by the pillow to wake her up, which worked to the extent of her grabbing it and turning off the wakeup, and waking me up as well. Then I saw she was back to sleep again, well okay, I'll get up. Yesterday's rain left only the dust bound to soil and temperature lowered, I'm already wearing a jeans jacket all day, but still walking in them slippers from Lidl.
Đole the windower said he'd come around between seven and seven thirty, so let's not be drowsy, we need to negotiate the job of few thousand euros' worth. But nope, ain't coming. Called Jeptel again, some time after lunch, to see when will they come and to boost my case's priority, which the guy at the call centar (yup, engrbian, strictly halfway) said isn't necessary, it's already listed for today, the guys will announce themselves.
Went to the paintshop, bought two more extension cords, another spatula and a new vekšmajzl (v. house dictionary), and we went on scraping the walls, she the landing and I the long wall by which we used to sit.
To Đole I released a brief „then, when?“ SMS, and he replied with just „we arive“ (haircut latin) and actually came an hour earlier, then took us to his workshop. It's not where we found him the other day, as per majstor Mile's instructions, they were on a job there, it's much closer to here, right behind the industrial railroad track, which passes by the end of our street... we could have got there faster on foot, passing these eight houses and then one field diagonally. It's a large shop, a whole hangar, some four-five guys working there and probably as many more in the field. Since he has „plast“ [also means a stack (of hay)] in the shop name, he issued another tirade against aluminium, saying it also ignites at around 190°, after bending first. We picked up the color, the type of mosquito netting (the fixed screwed on all windows, movable on the doors; shades in front an back, on the sides not - one is facing northeast, no need, the other will let sunshine into the bathroom and kitchen, where it's actually needed).
The guys came later in the afternoon, not the same guys as the ones who did so far. Somehow merrier, domestic, more fun to talk with. Took a look at the site, scratched their heads when they saw the damage, then went on to work - one got up the pole to release a meter of slack of cable, they habitually leave some extra, and also cut the branch of the walnut which pressed down on our phone cable. Now the weight of that branch is spread over three cables - ours, Radoslav's and Dragan's, the load now distributed evenly and getting lighter by the day, as the branch dries. They finished mounting the equipment relatively fast - they didn't have to bridge the span with new cable, it being there already, didn't have to drill a hole in the wall, the cable was already driven through - but then got stuck with their company app where they should write down the details of their work and replaced equipment, because they got a wrong kind of workorder created. On top of it, the first team didn't write down the serial numbers of the boxes, and the stickers aren't quite readable, because all of it melted... They found the numbers after a runaround, someone in the central dug them from the original workorder and dictated them over the phone, digit after digit. And then they had to pack it all and go do something else while the central creates a new workorder for them.
Meanwhile we dined, and then it hit me and I laid on the couch and slept a spell. Just as I was getting up, at around 21:00, it's them, calling to announce themselves coming right up. And they came and finished everything before 22:00. I took nanovo upstairs and set the names of networks and the passwords to what they were before, and all the kids' gadgets started working right away. The yellow cable... ahem, Nina's laptop doesn't even have the port for it, so we brought in Violet's, which does, but then the cable doesn't work. The cable for zmajček doesn't work, because, as we sherlocked out, one end is by the A standard, and the other by B. Found some brand new cable to plug nanovo in, and the speed didn't exceed 100... but then fuckit, the machine is eleven years old and maybe it can't do any faster. Well rebind the cable tomorrow and then we'll see.
Before midnight she called Go over Telegram, on the kitty tablet (had a holster with a kitty pattern once), and got connected and the connection was much better than on our obsolete laptops. Saw each other quite well, and we showed her the whole of the burnout, told her a bunch of details. I stopped wearing the slippers and switched to Kompako light shoes. No socks still, the socks are probably sooty, even the unpacked ones.
At least the twins calmed down. They didn't rush into sitting online right away, just a bit, and then went to play with something else. Raja, since he's also on the green cable, got the dongle from gugolj, which now also has a decent connection even without it. It was somewhat slow with the previous one, and took off when it got a dongle. Though, there may be something with the builtin wireless card, that machine is 13 years old.
Seventeenth. The vekšmajzl learned to work on its own, the big wall is almost done. Furure kitchen, aka the hole, will be a problem, because it wasn't smoothed out, it will get the tiles, so the soot permeated the mortar. To wash or scrape, whatever comes first.
Nina and I decided that we're completely confused and it's not clear at all how to connect the green cable at zmajček, so I called the tech guy and we agreed that he'd come the next day and rebind the wires on this or that end.
I went on installing stuff on nanovo, and to add more music to it. Took the old Genius speakers, the one I use for the september parties, so we'll have the music too upstairs. So far it has some 400 titles, but sloe does it, it will be filled. At least this has a larger disk, and it also has some movies that I could easily wipe out, I simply don't believe that I'll ever find a good time to watch all of the Lars fon Trir (von Trier).
Eighteenth. We're still scraping the soot off the walls, she with the new vekšmajzl, me with my old one - the plastic of the handle is already faded but it works like new. The vacuum cleaner was full of fines, but kept sucking, so I cleaned it out thoroughly and changed my approach - now I'll brush the dust slowly into a dustpan, so not to raise much of it into the air, and then do the rest with the vacuum cleaner. Sent a message to Đole the windower, to see what's with the offer, said he forgot but gonna do presto. And then called and said 2003€, round to 2000. Deal, it's a go. Said they'll start making them the next day and the mounting should be done by wednesday. Great. Now we'd need someone to take down the plasterboards. Not that the two of us wouldn't be able to do that, it's that we're a bit old to fuck around with that, we'd be as dead as horses, and would definitely make much more of a krtlog (v. house dictionary) than if it were done by three younger guys. Called majstor Mile, and he gave me some Ahmet's number. Okay, I just dialed, so far whomever he recommended turned out quite right. And the man came, he was already near the oilery, took him just ten minutes. I see he's a straightforward guy, speaks clearly and doesn't play any game at that. We eyeballed the amount at around 500€, which is okay, just find the time to do this. And then at some moment I mentioned something that rang a bell of his, and he asked „were you a professor once?“. „Was, long ago, in MPSŠC... don't tell me you were in my class... surname?“. „Aziri“. „You! You I remember... how you refused to do more than bare minimum to pass, almost wanted to beat you for that, when you could have had a solid four (v. school levels)“. There I remembered how I saw him selling cigarettes at the busodrome, screw the vocation... (v. 26-III-1984.). And in the end, look at that, turned out right, he's doing stiff business, in those apartments that get built for sale, got contracts lined up for two years ahead. And this they'll do when they have the time, finish there an hour earlier, come here and do a couple of hours...
The guy from Jeptel didn't make it today, so no wired connection yet works (which means that zmajček has no connection at all). Before the sleep I played at least a hundred rounds of solitaire, not doing badly, even though I didn't quite concentrate and no imagery about the space around the cards came to my mind, which previously happened a lot, I'm still winning about 53% of the games. The first 45 years my score was perhaps 10% or 20%, but there, the intuition got built up. Slow but reaching. Installed on nanovo whatever I remembered to - waterfox instead of firefox, a solitaire, shisen sho, veeelsee. Finally that machine serves a purpose beyond that one day in a year. I'm suffering the fleške, trying to get more music on it, so far I got only the september repertoir on it, which got the job done for one evening, but became boring really soon.
Nineteenth. Trouble with fleške, both have a bootable linux distribution on it, which leaves the unused partition on them marked with some nasty bits, so it makes the partition either unwritable, or requiring root access but then not readable on nanovo. Eventually managed to erase one of them, moved the 900 songs from the other one to it (also with a bunch of alleged errors), and expanded. And these 900 are only the bands with names from A to C. The guys from Jeptel told me to provide the minutes, because then with that they justify the cost of destroyed equipment so they wouldn't charge me. Called the 193, i.e. firemen, they told me to come to their building, the inspectors are upstairs.
So we dropped by the firemen, en route to Čankovo. I had trouble finding a parking spot, and the one I found was at a bad place. I've never been in that building, it looks huge, and neat inside. It wasn't as simple as I expected, I need to file a request and pay an administrative fee. The chick who explaied to me has also filled it in for me, and gave me a slip with the data about the payment (they have those pre-printed, she just wrote the amount), she'll call when it's done. There, and the inspectors said I'll receive the minutes. From there we went on to the garden, now carrying the coffee with us. She again picked a whole bale of tobacco leaves, both kentucky and virginia, and I sawed the dry branches wherever they were in the way and reachable. I keep building my shoulders, while around the waist... Though, these eight days my weight first went down to 80,0, then went to 84 then 81... depending on the day, and how much water I keep and how much I release. While we were there, Ahmet called, said they're coming this weekend to work, asked about the ceramics. That's next, when this is finished, and there's a bathroom for you to solve, needs a shower cabin, which I don't know how to make in this situation, that's for you to solve. Can't change the layout because the sewer pipes are already set by... do you know Zdravko? Him? Were classmates first two grades of elementary. Small is the city.
When picking tobacco, some tar always stays on fingertips, so she had to take it off for each smoke break. She picked one of the four bottles of brandy, each september another one or two pop up, used as solvent. Nice smell... hey, it's a pear, why did I think that they're all apricots... Let's take this one home, to dismiss the claim that we drink exclusively our own stuff. And it turned out nice. Milder than ours, but not by much, concusses nicely.
Tried to drop by Svetofor on the way back, but tough shit, it was 17:30 and a bunch of them tried to visit the place after work. Not just that there's no parking space, it's that the brick plant across started fencing out its parking space so their workers would have it for themselves. A dozen people were waiting at the door to be let in, even larger crowd than last time.
The milkman was delivering two liters at a time, sometimes one and a half, for the last three months. Since yesterday he's back to the regular schedule of ten liters a week. There will be pancakes.
We plan to haul, when upstairs tiles are in place, some furniture from the garden and the old house. What they make furniture of nowadays, it would be burned money, it falls apart really fast. And we have so many good pieces, in mint condition.
In other news, Radoslav laid bricks and blocked the passage between his yard and Juliška. Truth be told, it's not hard to get into a quarrel with her, she keeps bitching around about everything, cursing, everything's wrong for her, she borrows and doesn't return, goes into debt and then doesn't pay all or not at all, Her late husband adored her, treated her every way he could, and since he died she lacks that appreciation, and the whole world's to blame. Just now Nina said she talked with her and she was ah so surprised that we had a fire, and we all know we talked with her about it on 2nd day, streetside, while the dumpster was still there. It's no problem to her to pass any lie, as long as it may amuse her, any gain is entirely optional, to make talk more interesting.
That passage saw thirty years of use. Even had an iron gate for a few months once.
Mentions: 26-III-1984., Čankovo, engrbian, Gorana Sredljević (Go), gugolj, house dictionary, Juliška, majstor Mile, MPSŠC, nanovo, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Radoslav Pajkov, Ryu (Raja), school levels, solitaire, vekšmajzl, Violet, Zdravko Lakatoš, zmajček, in serbian