15-IX-2004.
In NYC it was mostly muggy, despite permanent slight wind from various directions at all times. Guess that's the effect of all those high rises. Only in the area around the firm, maybe because it's on a hilltop, almost nothing blows, except when a subway passes beneath and pushes all that warm air through the grilles. The subway stations are rather stuffy, while the cars are airconditioned, cool. Once I misstepped badly, seriously badly, for being on the grille while a train was passing below. It blows out an incredible amount of air with dust, which is of mostly human origin - there's not too much plant life around, nor any soil open, so there's no plant matter or sand in the air. There are people, so most of the dust is the keratin off their skin, cigarette ash, tyre particles. And I didn't close my eyes and I should have, so all these fines stuck to my corneae immediately, took me three long minutes until my eyelids lubricated and vision cleared.
By the time I got home it was way past midnight, so this goes under fifteenth. It was just the right weather for a walk, in just short sleeves. And I had to walk, because as soon as I got off the bus I lit one, and while I smoked it out everyone vanished, the station/laundry got closed, nobody there with a phone to call me a cab. So I walked to the boulevard, not far, perhaps five hundred meters. Crossed the big intersection at quite an ease, it's almost half past midnight, there's just one car a minute. I found a place to hitchhike, which I haven't done in quite a number of years, and absolutely never on this continent. And, rather miraculously, some black guy pulls over, a bit older than I, in some primordial black cruiser ship, something from fifties sixties, a heap of nickel, perhaps even winged. He drove on down the boulevard, asked whether I knew of a gay bar nearby. No idea, pal, I'm not of that persuasion, but if you keep driving about seven more miles, you'll reach the Atlantic avenue, that's where the night life is. If you can't find it there, they don't have it at all.
So he dropped me off at my intersection, and I counted on having to pass three lights and a sidestreet to get to my street, that's not far. By the time I got there, it wasn't as close as it looked, not at all, and it wasn't the walking weather either, I got boiled up. The tall trees all the way to the last corner, no wind, humidity stationary. Looked it up on the map later, well... I walked some five kilometers, dragging the bag at that, good that it had wheels and wasn't too heavy.
The whole ground floor being transparent, as she left the lights on, I spotted the kitchen wall tiles from the street. Now only to grout it, it will look really nice. She first pasted them with that incredible glue which needs to dry for at least half an hour first, and remains sticky for a couple of weeks. The problem is that the glue keeps the tile from drifting away, but not sideways, it can still slide, because the glue is still sufficiently liquid. The tiles slid down a few times and eventually started falling. So she had enough of that, took it all down, made the classic cement glue, same as for floor tiles. It also slides, but only for the first fifteen minutes, then when it cathes it doesn't let go.
We decided to get a small grass mower, the swinging whip kind, one of those. True, our lawn is circa thirty square[ meter]s (because nothing grows under a magnolia tree), but even that grows like crazy with all these downpours. And the grass will be better for Chu if we don't let it grow so strong and sinewy :). I found one the very next day for 19$, just need to invent an extension cord for it.
Eighteenth. Got vekšmajzl in [my] hands, taking down them tiles in the bathroom. Fuckit, what was that holding to, what a spit and paste technology was that. First I had to take down all the plastic sheething glued over the tiles, and then came to see why was it put there in the first place - because the tiles were rocking and the water was passing around them at the tub's edges, which must have been dripping to the ceiling below... and now I saw how that happened. The tiles were glued to the plasterboard, which began to soak water when the grouting around the tub failed to hold it. Which must have happened who knows how many years ago, and wasn't fixed but rather covered with that plastic. Shoddy work if I ever saw one. Take it all down.
I eventually got all the old tiles down, and some 90% of them remained whole... and then we threw them all away, because that's not the white color, it's something neither here nor there.
News from home. Čarga kicked out the second wife as well, the son staying with his first. With this one he already split and they reheated the sarma, but it didn't work. Lives alone now. She still comes by the vineyard from time to time, so dad hears the news there, says she had enough, this reheating happened several times already.
Candidate lists for some elections at home were published, and dad copied a list of candidates from the city. And look at that, lots of known mugs. Bogdan, Dragić (manufacturer of cop sticks, armor and helmets for Sloba's cops, once a customer of Avai, now of Brlja, a murky character) on Karić's list, G. Knežević, remember the guy from gimnazija, next generation, then a few I don't quite know, and then Radoja, look at him.
Then it happened to be a jewish new year, the firm doesn't work, and I was mostly resting - by applying all our forces to the sewers. Eventually we managed to force the Brian behind the corner, and to drill through that vertical bit of pipe, some 60 cm if that much, where it got stuck. Luckily the Brian bent over in one place, so we couldn't turn it by a hand drill anymore, and so we cut it right there, and that piece, less than meter in length, got the thing done, and was far easier to handle. What I was turning by hand last week was... my wrist still complains :).
I see on a shot (of twentieth) that I plugged the earbud set into the phone, must have had long chats with David and at the time we still didn't think up any better way to talk. On the desk there are Pratchett's „Wyrd sisters“ from the library.
As far as my trip to Belgium is concerned, in the firm there's a general consensus is that most of the problems will solve themselves by themselves, just if allowed sufficient time to do so... So the matters drag like thin guts. No news so far.
Mentions: Avai, Bogdan Levacki, Chu, David Krakovski, gimnazija, Goran Staković (Brlja), Radoje Maletin (Radoja), sarma, vekšmajzl, Velemir Prokin (Čarga), in serbian
16-V-2024 - 1-VIII-2025