05-II-2005.
Making progress with zod. The thing has two main tables - articles and hierarchy. The idea is to make articles independent wholes, which can appear in the hierarchy in arbitrary order. That way he'd be able to reshuffle them in multiple ways and make more books out of the same set of articles. Interesting and... well, why not.
In the project we provided for six levels in the articles hierarchy, though I think he never used more than three levels. By seventh I already started adding trinkets, like a button to copy the title of an existing article into a new empty one, or to insert an empty article into a selected position in the hierarchy. Right there I already clocked 52 hours but billed him for just 40, keeping 12 for later (in the yellow notebook, of course, from which I'm pulling this). Gary, like before, doesn't like combos and other dropdown stuff, but he loves the buttons. Same as, by the way, David, so at least I don't have to keep two opposing styles. The difference is that this is in color and that is gray.
On top of other stuff Paige reappeared with something... No word from him for half a year, and then he leans on :). David is accepting my ideas gradually, but is stubbornly adamant about some other things. Well, this is what I promised when we started: you're the boss, but if I think there's something you don't realize, the trade demands of me to expose everything where I think you're wrong, and then to lay things clearly out. Whoever is right, or has better arguments, has the way.
Report from credit union... of the 63000 remains unpaid less than 39000 - including all the interest, insurances and taxes we paid along the way.
The magnolia in front of the house ate whatever it could from the soil beneath itself, and keeps extending roots farther and wider. Can't go much down here, because there's just a thin layer of fertile soil on the sand, this is the three rivers' estuary. To stop the kids from climbing on the tree, and to have at least something growing, we made a rundela (as granma used to call it), bought these concrete pieces and few sacks of soil, and now we'll see.
Go came to visit us (which is wrong, the serbian phrase says „came to us into guests“, i.e. to be a guest). It takes us about ten minutes to the station, and on her end it's about two kilometers' walk, approximately. Considering that her regular drugstore is just four blocks closer than it, it's not far. We're used to walking greater distances than that, anyway. If it's night or bad weather, the cab for the distance is 5-6 dollars, so it's not horrible either.
The bus takes three hours from Richmond to Norfolk, because it makes a few stops (Viljemzburg, Njuport Njuz, Hempton - as written in serbian); by car is about two. The „about two“ means one hour three quarters in winter, two and a half in the summer. It gets slower in the summer because the tourists make it slow, there's always someone strangling cats* through the tunnel.
Homemade bread and pašteta were waiting for her. The next day I took her to Norfolk (i.e. Nawfock, as they pronounce it here) for them to take her fingeprints, and to see what's next. She stays with us until the weekend and then we drive her back.
My plan was to catch someone there to have a chat about our status, though I didn't hold any high hopes of actually catching anyone, they always say you must schedule an appointment over the internet, and there it's permanently „no timeslots available“. They mostly told me to keep trying, sooner or later you get one. Now that I was already on the spot, there was the happy coincidence that Go was scheduled for noon (and they work until one), so the crowd thinned out, and the fingerprinters (who are a separate company to which the job is outsourced) pointed me to their boss (who works for the ministry of Vaterland, in charge of controlling them) and then we chatted wit her... as the boss is a smoker, so she joined us for a smoke break, and we talked outside.
All in all, there's no other way but to push the UniJewel to submit a request [for the green card] for me, with the stipulation that when they get a paper that the request was filed, my status is secured, because now I'd have an „ongoing process“, and if it goes beyond the best-by date of our visa, the visa is automatically extended because we can't be blamed for the administration dragging like guts. The process wasn't started yet, because the director of UniJewel changed, and there was a while until the folks there took notice of me getting things done. Which is why it was delayed, but now with this inventory my visibility in the office increased rapidly and now is the time.
First Lena's term report from the new school came. I yawned the reading away :) [nb. the yawn in serbian is aaaaaa - and a is always pronounced as ah, never as ay or aw or whatever you may have].
She confessed she was a bit wary of this, because she did have a couple of B+, even a B, but now the paper is here, it put her mind at ease and she showed it to us with emphasized pride. As they call it here, „bragging rights“, and why not, earned them honestly.
Since dad expressed interest in the meteorology here, I wasn't lazy and I extracted the cooordinates (but was lazy now and just converted the names from cyrillic, it's one click):
Virdžinija Bič: 36.9° N 76.0° W
Njujork: 40.8° N 74.0° W
Toronto: 43.6° N 79.4° W
Zrenjanin: 45.4° N 20.4° E
I kept writing to dad from my old address, the one at Berix's, but it's already happened a few times that some garbage of a message flied in that just wouldn't download, no way, and then all the messages after it stay in the waiting room. When somehow I apply muscles to get that message (which is usually some advertising), then the others pass as well. So I switched to hereafter and in the future to my permanent address at sGradlj.com (which is still active while I write this, in 2024).
A news from home, Dimče died. I someow considered him a permanent youngster... and even though I kept seeing him later, I hept perceiving him the way he looked while I was in the elementary. I sent condolences to the widow, she taught us physics and held the photo sekcija.
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* mom's expression for 'takes his time, unreasonably much'
Mentions: Cecilia Roxbury (Berix), David Krakovski, Dimitrije Josin (Dimče), Gary Brandywine, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Paige S Stevenson, pašteta, sekcija, sGradlj.com, UniJewel, zod, in serbian
28-IV-2024 - 23-XII-2025