07-X-2024.
Spoke with Nina on saturday afternoon, the girls didn't call all week, which is both a good and a bad sign. It's good that they know how to manage, there's no situation, and on the other side we don't see them much. Alisha has some health, or rather medical, problems, they keep finding various things, so she has to put visits to lab etc into her schedule, and now it does happen that she stays with them not four hours but only two. Good that she just comes later, as the kids are sleeping later now, even the twins now don't get up before nine thirty.
And it's good that they've become self-reliant, because there wasn't much use from Rein and Fayes, as expected, their enthusiasm lasted about a month or two and then they lost the taste for it, didn't come to fetch them. Rein kept coming for another few weeks, just to doze off on the couch and leave when his time runs out. He was around if needed. Now they two went to Phillipines, again hitching free rides on military airplanes, which took them three days this time. But it was free. They built a house there, with the brother (hers or his), a duplex, and now they're off to finish their side, the guy already lives in his half. They seem to be running my previous plan, to spend half a year here and half there, and to bore both sides with stories of how everything was so much better and prettier on the other side, and to be buried by whichever set caves my head in first. They'll stay there until at least springtime.
So, Nina tells us how she plans to, when she begins working from home around end of year, to have an office ready at home, for which she'd adapt that room in the garage, which is storage for now... Impenetrable, she still has to buy things she knows must be in there, but digging them out would take two days. There's also a heap of good machine parts, a collection of what Rein brought from work, there's some good stuff, fine solid make, that's aviation (nominally called navy, to confuse the enemy), he's loathe to part with them and Fayes ordered him to clean up their garage (which was a real krtlog*, last time we had a chance to see it). Nina visited them before they left, to move Ender again to her place, i.e. the box with his ashes. It was interesting how Go mentioned him not under his real name, but rather by what he's called here. There, I have a reader.
After the latest wave shit with the North Carolina floods, where the Ešvil (Asheville) got seriously fucked (and dang it's just 200-300 km from Undersville, a spitting distance for such a hurricane), Nina decided to help the neighbors. Collecting money is no use, it all goes to FEMA, which then uses it to fill its coffers, which got depleted by finansing the immigration from Africa and other places, so she found some citizens' initiative in her area, who gather the stuff needed for the kids. She filled her trunk with leftover diapers, both cotton and unpacked disposables and whatever else she found, and took it to NC. To distribute that they'll probably organize a convoy, so the Fema won't be able to turn them away, as it did with some who took their private helicopters to go save people, and got a „you have to return this lady where you found her or else we'll arrest you“. The people are more and more pissed off at Fema, and I'm just waiting to hear that they beat the crap out of them (heard the next day, their regional manager had to be taken to the hospital). Even the local sherriffs are getting organized to fuck their mother. The official reports mention hundreds of dead, but just looking at the reports and videos from the spot, there must be tens of thousands. Fema allegedly didn't even bring body bags, the plan is to use bulldozers and raze the place flat.
Raja is, so, finally getting a new desk... Nina's old [one] from 1999, the chinese job we bought so the girls would have a place to do their homework, at the same time we got one to keep the first zmajček on. Until now he was using one of the two flimsy desks, from Glotz (!), which had cost 20$ apiece, v. 08-IV-2004., to hold the sewing machines. That's the flimsiest I saw so far, held by eight screws and a cardboard back. Knowing how he used to destroy furniture (here he cleavered the desk we bought ahead of their arrival, and even a metal chair, the backrest couldn't be attached anymore), I was completely shocked seeing what is holding his monitor.
Linda, Sanda and Violet made figurines after the characters from the „Rainworld“ series, the so-called slug-cats, and the younger two aren't far behind their older sister in terms of technique and skill. Though I can't say I've seen much of that, perhaps a few fifteen-second shorts, but even on such sa minuscule sample, I can say that they got everything right - the shape, proportion, stance, all of it. The background on this shot is the same old blue leather couch from 2007.
In the evening, much later than usual, Borče called, a frendz parti is tomorrow, okay. Said he arrived form Macedonia late last night, drove 700km, took his grandson to see the ancestral wolffuck, he'll tell. Soon after we talked with Go and Stanley, saw a lot of Anita (the newly freed tooth is almost flush with its pair; she found the molar which fell out, and it somehow started growing a root (!)) and a bit of Neša („you'll have three bathrooms in the new house, you'll be able to pee wherever you want... that is there'll always be a vacant bathroom nearby“ „aaaah it will take me a whole year to find everything“). They're preparing gradually for the move, their contract there starts in december, Stanley sold one car already, the next one just took some cleanup of stuck old grease in the rear right door mechanism („it opens from inside fine, from the outside it takes some work and persistence“), third one is in the works.
Go finshed her surreal quilt... this is some wonder, must be dreaming some crazy things when sleeping under it. I kept returning to this photo for half an hour and then commented thus
still thinking of what to say to this... perhaps a „firmly sewn yet in swirling“
by composition of lines this resembles, to a degree, what uncle Loba did in 1983-6 (v. september 1985.), but he led them more like magnetic fields, didn't twist them like this
the degree being somewhere far behind, this is stronger
and it doesn't matter that it won't be framed
Then Linda and Sanda jumped into our conversation, i.e. they tried, so I got up from the mac and sat at zmajček to see what was up... To which they sent a sound message, but their microphone is set rather low, and the talk at the mac was quite loud and near, couldn't understand it... so we broke off this conversation and called them. Eh, a tragedy, their online friend, with whom they were playing in Rowbloks, vanished from the connection, they can't even find him in search, gone. Ooowch... go ask Raja, he had the identical shit happen to him some five-six years ago. He probably doesn't remember. Well good then, if he forgot, so can you. Then baba realized that whatever we say about the current subject will not help, that's just messing with an open wound, the tears (on both!) will keep flowing, so she switched to praising them for these figurines they made. We both praised the workmanship, and they immediately scrambled to bring them for us to see (forgetting that we must have seen them already, how else would we praise them), and then immediately the tears ebbed and excitement went away... five minutes later we promised to call them back when we finish the talk with their aunt. We then talked Go into telling Anita to call them and play with them, which she did but came back in a couple of minutes, so we guessed Nina came back. Actually Raja was on the other end... anyway, that ended quickly and when we finished that talk, Stanley and Anita went shopping and we sat and drank... two and a half.
I finally resumed the work on mrz pludger (aka mp3 player, another wordplay with juski cyrillic), starting from some elementary [one], which I downloaded from the web as long as two years ago, because... I guess I wanted to feed my habit of dealing with data, to spot the changes or oddball cases in them, guess a leftover from my job. And it somehow doesn't matter whether I'm looking for special cases in data to convert, or reading Byo, I'm finding lots of stuff, both blunders in data and typos in the text.
And I like to keep track of the music played, not to spend too much of the remaining days listening to what I don't like to hear. For a while I hooked up with last efem scrobbler, then quit it when I noticed how it keeps suggesting titles to hear and how it tries to become yet another socialist network, and then couldn't be sure the data weren't sold somewhere. Later, after switching to linux and to Strawberry (the pludger I use last fisix years), I switched the scrobbler, now this was the libre efem, which had none of the bad sides of the last efem, it was abandonware and yet quite decently fast, and it gave me lists of twenty most listened titles and bands, and on it I saw of what I had too much, so I'm presently whittling down the Strawbs, Bowie and Alvin Lee, after having completely eradicated Horslips, they may be Irish but they are still essentially narodnjaci. Few days someone sweeped the cobwebs off the libre efem and started working on it, the reports were gone. Okay, got the message, if you mean to read something good, start writing. This project will entail lots of work, guaranteed fun for the whole winter. So I unplugged libre too, the last record there, finally visible again some six weeks later, said Sun, 06 Oct 2024 11:54:27 +0000.
In the evening, of course, the frendz parti at Borče's. He called us again when we've already walked half the way, to pick us up. Drop that, bro, we planned a walk, won't spoil it. Along the way I even remembered to peek into špajiz, see whether they got the maggi spice, they didn't. Despite having peed three times in the last hours, I again felt the pressure rising, and by the time we got up there, the suspense built to the level of a minor psychosis and rapid breathing, despite my trying to walk slower, and we did decrease the tempo on the last half a kilometer. But nope, as soon as he opened the door, I rushed by Dragana and went straight to the bathroom. Knowing it won't ease up like that, I sat and... the same moment the headache hit me, same model as eight days ago, just somewhat milder and lacking the element of surprise, I knew what awaited me. It dissipated likewise in a couple of minutes, when my breathing calmed. And I discovered the cause - I tightened my belt to the new hole which I punched this spring, because on the previous notch I have the feeling the trousers would slide down and my shirt will untuck. This tightening is fine while sitting and being around a house, but for two and a half kilometers' worth of walk it does build this desire for a crapper. Yet another thing to keep in mind in the future, of which there's already a heap. Life begins to resemble a trabant - there are a few things left which demand no special instructions and things to remember to do, like its rear windows were.
Only then I got out, greeted them, poured (the 20.1 tutifruti, the oldest), and then it all went as usual, nothing special. The news from V.G. is that we're probably not meeting on seventeenth, because she got something on her skin which needs to be cut out, and the location is also prone to change, so we may meet elsewhere. Maybe we four will go to theater, the „Lady minister“ is on twentieth. Then Dragana told how she had her nephew dig out tickets for some other show, on seventeenth, only two because then she thought we two would be occupied then, and the guy did somehow find out the proper information, that she... missed a year, that show was last year. Borče, on the other hand, delivered a longer report on the visit to the ancestral end, he took his grandson, when he had a window between his last exams (cleaned up the year) and the beginning of semester. They didn't visit any kin, but rather went to Ohrid and some of that born end. Said okay, he expected the houses and people to be different, those he didn't expect to be as they were before, but it's the nature itself which changed - where the woods were is clear now and vice versa, everything is jumbled, he recognized nothing.
Of course we touched on Israel as well. Them two have made quite an about face, because it's impossible to ignore how that state became exactly the thing it was fighting during it inception, a fascistic genocidal madman, destroying everything around it. Now how much are they victims of their own propaganda, that is the question, there's too much unison and the percentage which is supposed to be impervious to propaganda can't be heard.
The grub was really good, he found some better source of mixed meat, even their barbecue sausages were just right, usually they are too greasy or too spiced (and the old wisdom says that inferior material requires stronger spicing to cover it up). For salad he chopped onions and cabbage in a mug, and opened a jar of something that's neither ajvar nor pindžur nor lutenica, but rather some new recipe, with a ridiculously stupid name „zakuska“ (a snack, a buffet). All the better, I prefer the cooks who are inspired when they invent a recipe, and suspect those who are candidates for literary awards. And it was good, just mildly hot, enough to warm up the soul.
The wine we drank came from a bag - the format becoming popular here as well. Just remembered how we made musulin (19-II-2003.)... For refills I remembered to say „kesa, kum“ (bag, short for „kum, your [money] bag's on fire“, to which the guy is supposed to throw away coins and the kids to collect them), which he didn't understand at first to be referring to the wine bag, but then really liked the joke. We dispersed slowly after about one; Dragana called a cab from the stairs, so by the time we got down the cab was already arriving, the guy was fast, so any parting ceremony was cut short. The cabbie was yet another easy rider, with whom we quickly agreed on at least ten points in those three minutes. The leitmotive was the heisenbergian undefinable line dividing the zone where the laws are enforced and systems operational, and the other where suddenly everything is possible and nothing is mandatory... How can you know when you walked from one into the other?
Talked with Lena the next day, had our fill of watching Tanja trying to crawl but still doesn't command her knees, having some control of her hands but fingers not yet, and smiling more often now. She's rounding up nicely, limbs head and all, cheeks aren't as prominent anymore, and the jowl is tightened up and the tongue not so much out, the changes are quite obvious. The nanny came by, a good girl, it's that the contract (unclear with whom, could it be some middleman agency?) is somewhat unclear, she'll have to figure it out. And brother Stinge sent a shot from the afternoon walk, which he announced when Tanja was born: came with wife and his new son, five weeks older than Tanja, and they had a stroll there around the end. Wife is of Lena's age. Our comment was that both caught the last train to multiply - had she not married now, it would be harder each subsequent year, and had he not bedaddied now (second time - his daughter from the first marriage should be at least 23 now, we met them on 16-IX-2010.), he'd run into being too old when the kid grows up. All three look great on the shot. Well, good luck to them all, we root for them.
On tenth went to the garden. I mowed a bit on the street, as much as I had čorba in the švorceniger, not to leave any, the new two cycle engine oil can't stay dissolved more than a month, allegedly perishes. She picked more tobacco. The tobacco is reborn, it's all green, grew new leaves, smaller though but there's a lot of it. The quinces we'll pick next week, they aren't as ripe as they should be, these belated rains did get the job done, the size of the fruit is almost right. On return, Svetofor was crowded, it was a bit after 15 and many were returning from work, though they mostly looked like penzoses [i.e. retirees]. There's even more merchandise, they somehow managed to stuff even more so the passages got narrower, but still no fuss, nobody got nervous, nobody even grumbling, let alone raising a voice. At the register, the lady ahead of us pushes two carts - 48 rolls of toilet paper, 24 liters of sour [aka mineral, water], few cashs of water, and heap of salties and other stuff in the other cart. Must be operating a nursing home.
Eleventh... Zdravko called, because the fan in the boiler croaked again. It seems yet another drop of šivanol wouldn't help this time, he means to take it out and have it refurbished downtown, then put it back, which he did the next morning. Lena sent a „happy anniversary of the fire in the garret to all who celebrate!“. On UA, Alphonse is putting house in order, simplifying the interface, washing the page... The reply editor finally got the buttons for painting the text, the likes of which exist on practically every forum out there. Staying true to himself, he rolled his own. He also removed the autoquote when replying, because on the whole forum only three of us were using it. But then, in the last seven days only eleven of us wrote anything... I'll miss the ease with which I interspersed my replies between the replies to replies... as seen in many places here already.
Then in the following four days he did add the quote, not quite automatic (though the button's caption is „autoquote“) and it actually looks much better, not a simple „>“ before a paragraph, but a real html, as has become a norm on the forums. Alphonse also tried to get me involved in some side project, just to appear with a personal photo during the presentation phase... but thanks no thanks, that's not our virtual tavern anymore, in which we all know each other, this is a public place.
Thirteenth was a lovely day, we drove to Novi Beograd to see Tanja again. She's growing really well, smiles more often now, and it seems that the teeth are coming up, in the dozen minutes she was in my lap she gnawed at both of my thumb knuckles thoroughly... Yeah, it's been the long while, since... yup, fall of 1992 when Lena was in that phase. The other grandchildren weren't here when their teeth sprouted. During the trip back, made a shot of this Grumf on the rear window of some white van.
While we were there, Zdravko called, said the fan is fixed. Agreed to call him when we return, and then did so. He even blew out the boiler, raised quite a cloud of dust, but now we have hot water again. Though, we did have it upstairs, and we showered there on saturday, but there's no cabin around the shower so it resembled the improvized contraption of august 2004. Which came handy next morning, when the power went out just when she wanted to make coffee, so she went upstairs and got some leftover hot water to use. Of course, the power returned just when she was done. The coffee was tepid, she drank it almost bottoms up.
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* v. house dictionary
Mentions: september 1985., 19-II-2003., 08-IV-2004., 16-IX-2010., Alan Ford, Alphonse D'Alchembert, Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Byo (Byo), čorba, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Ender Aquila (Ender), frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), juski, kum, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borče), mrz pladžer, narodnjaci, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Reinaldo Aquila (Rein), Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), Slobodan Šumić (Loba), Stanley Berger, Stinge, šivanol, špajiz, švorceniger, Tanja Nastić, trabant, tutifruti, UbiquAgora (UA), Undersville, Violet, Zdravko Lakatoš, zmajček, in serbian
7-X-2024 - 7-IV-2026