01-XII-2024.
In the morning we saw the new looks of the room. There's a bunk bed, but there are two beds under it - the old one, and the lower part of the new one. Sanda and Violet have the ground floor, Linda has the upper. Mark, as we learned later, meant to go home this weekend, but the bed assembly took longer so he wouldn't get there on time, postponed it for the next weekend. We hard it all from Lena in the afternoon, when we visited. Tanja didn't even wait for baba to take her in [her] arms, she started squealing in advance. Which lasted all of ten seconds, and ten minutes later they already played on the couch. Of her eyes we're still not certain whether they'll be graygreen or blue. Checked on the shots, it's 29% blue, 23% green and 12% red, so still neither here nor there. We'll see.
We brought her a can of dried lemon balm [leaves] for tea, that's enough stock for until summer, and poppy [seed] štrudle, and apple pie (of filo dough, a miracle) and the grissini, all from recipes she picked in the last ten days. Furthermore, she took a notebook into which she'll write them down. Meaning rewriting from yoochoob... so there, a doctor, recipes, rewriting... all came to roost*. And all of it was ay plus excellent, luckily I've stalled at 82,5, though I've spotted 83 a few times. At least I reduced [my] peanuts a bit.
Milan looked great, jolly and talkative, though he claims to be sick, had food poisoning the day or two before, ejected everything out of himself, even ran a temperature, full monty, and still looks like nothing [wrong] to him. Lena is already looking better, just quit the gym and seems to have stopped peeking into the heartrate on her watch. Their elevator is being replaced, down in the entrance there's a heap of steel profiles and other hardware. The other elevator covers only the odd floors, so we take it up to the fifteenth and walk one down. On return we had to walk down three, because it now can't be called from thirteenth.
Wasn't sleeping when drivnig back, just eye fatigue, and that I managed to get all the way to Mere was on sheer determination and concentration. We bought a load of stuff - dry meats, white meat, even apples, cat food, young cheese, all kinds. For dinner we still had some soup fom lunch, I ate the dumplings and what cakes she didn't take upstairs - that's preserved for the frendz parti tomorrow. Called Dragana, she said well isn't it the monday after, we were at Borče's last week. Hello, bro, that was on eighteenths... Wow, am I in chaos, time passed like that and I didn't notice.
Then Go called. They slept one night at the new location. Gave us a tour of all the rooms. The house looks huge and has all kinds of stuff. The character who lived there for the last five years, is a real estator, and has reserves of wine everywhere, that's his gimmick at work to shove a bottle on both parties to remember him fondly. The kids' room is really colorful, and the house is not gray at all, there are various tones around, as if they asked me what to do. Anita slept on the upper bed, Neša on the lower, and when she came down she slipped and fell, hardwood floor here, and she always wears the legwarmers mom knitted for her, those slide.
On the driveway from the street to the garage he lined up four beemers, may fit another three with some careful maneuvering, and depending on the regulation may fit some on the street, but there's the sidewalk and bike lane, not bordered with any curbs, so not sure whether it'd be permitted. Stanley means to get rid of most of the inventory, in case they move another time. The move isn't quite complete yet, there's the kids computers, sound equipment and few other things, and the rest needs to be bagged for dumping. For the main move they had two stronger lads, who carried heavier stuff.
On the thanksgiving day they were at lunch with their old neighbors, the turkey and the rest. Theid kids were dialed down a bit, they took them to covid vaccination the day before, they're much quieter now. Ouch...
On second I was again sleepy at random intervals, even did two short catnaps, one around four, one at 18:30, less than half an hour altogether, because I was simply unable to look, eyes collapsible**. Of course, when the two arrived, it was all gone, specially when we started drinking. The cherry was received splendidly, we had three shots each (Borče probably four, faster he is), and the salties she baked - the grissini with sesame [seeds] and the pogačice from the frajer. The ribs from the half hog were also nicely received, and some hot ajvar from the shop, and the pickles (the first [one], the paler; the second, red from the beet, I only displayed and „this doesn't go on the table, I'd surely drip it on the tablecloth“).
The main story revolved around children, nephews and grandchildren, so Dragana fors recounted how her father always kept his car lickety split, just like a pharmacy, and then borrowed it to grandson for a joyride, and then there's a handprint on the windshield... „How was he driving it, how strongly he had to brake when the poor girl had to lean with her hands on the window...“... Well, she said, if it wasn't clear to him how it happened, no need to explain anyway. Then I went on trying to tell how we once got stuck with one wheel in a puddle on the shoulder of the elemirski road, and then they started mocking me, and I said nope, we were just talking at the time, one more cigarette before she had to go home, but nope, they wouldn't here, caught me in the machine, well okay, oil it so it finishes sooner.
I barely got around to complete the story of how someone helped us out, and then immediately after I drove into that little forest to pull out, now whether it was the V.D., poet local, or P.L., the glodur of the other gimnazija newspaper then, who was stuck with both rear wheels in mud, and there he with a škodilak, me with same, everything ready, had the rope, knew wher the proper hook was, and the guy said „well, now that we're here on the same job“... After ten minutes of barrage mocking, this punchline fell flat. There I remarked how my dear complains for years now how at least half of our innuendos are of sexual nature, and now she not only stopped complaining, but joined in, very subtly and successfully. At that we returned to grandchildren, nephews and how they grew, then to ourselves and our different timing of growth and how we finished that phase long ago. And there Dragana kept momentum and went on how she grew with quite a normal speed, just stopped somewhat earlier, though she thinks she'd welcome some fifteen centimeters. I didn't even have the time to say anything, barely to cast a significant look at her, but nope, she „well shoo you, and I knew exactly what was in store as soon as I heard what I said“. I still said nothing, but these two contributed - Borče: „what, 15cm... that's below average, insufficient indeed“. Eh, when you see the good old at work, the „if you're thinking what I'm thinking, you have a really dirty mind“.
At some point Borče asked Dragana whether she ever had a mathematician boyfriend, well, umm, lemme see... and started counting, using fingers on both hands. „So, did you find any?“ „wait, I'm still counting the third round“.
The finals was a big discussion of the four great poets of domestic pop and rock, Arsen, Bora, Štulić and Balašević. In that exact order at that, though the middle two share the second position, each in his corner of the ring, surpassing the master by their covers (and translations) of songs by others, where both did a few which were better than the originals by two spear[ length]s. Đole is falling a bit short as a poet, though, his strong sides are elsewhere. And then it's not a ring, these are four pillars holding the building.
Of wine two liters were gone (and two cans of Kozel for my dear), and lots of the spread got eaten too, we won't have to eat jučetina (v. house dictionary) until friday, all excellent. Split around half two, what with a grufag (ditto) on the street.
Sunday passed without any major events - she was knitting, I was fiddling with the mrz (found why it always launched from the zeroeth song, which uncovered a different bug). Milan is hale, now Tanja's nose is runny. They acqured the little pump to suck out the snot, and there, she liked it. That's a first in the family, nobody liked that. Then Lena got sick, coughs, pukes, seems the same round. Even I think I had a bit of a reminder of the symptoms of that, two seconds of light nausea an hour after supper.
The news of the day (friday, 6th): Raja tried to eat fried liver, liked it. I went to detelina to buy the fodder for the whole menagerie (5x10kg granules for the hens, 3x1kg cat food, two little bottles of seeds for the fishes) and cigarette paper, so we're done for the rest of the year. Except we weren't - Najka doesn't keep the cat food in the store, guess it attracts mice or whatever the reason, so she locked the store and went to the backyard to fetch it. I completely forgot about that and just drove home... Had a smoke and came back to take it. The coffee was slow to reach the brain.
Um, a better explanation, from inspector's point of view, is that here's no declaration sticker on the cat food bags, so a note was taken that it shouldn't be sold as such... so this way it doesn't even pass through the store, it's from the backyard into my hands.
On saturday we talked with Nina at length, this time with video, more than two hours. She gave us a tour of the house as it is redecorated now, at the time when Mark was around Richmond. She showed the stuff she bought - dishes, kitchen tools, cloth, decoration... and among all of that every now and then something comes up that we remember, e.g. the portable cooler box (still like new, in use, brings the milk from the farm in it). He should come back, move in actually, in a couple of weeks, just about the time when her trial ends and she starts working from home. Raja finally got a better desk - instead of the crummy cardboard contraption from 2003. he now inherited her student's desk from 1999, which is firm and if it endured so far, may continue indefinitely. In the toilet by her bathroom (soon theirs) there's now a bidet add-on, attached to the crapper, with tankless water heater.
On eighth, as tradition is now established, congratulated Melanija on her birthday. She replied the next day, retired finally. I bragged with seven grandchildren, she said they got none. That's the conversation for this year.
Lena said she was back to okay by last night, Tanja was also better already, breathes easier. Which reminded me to write about weekend flus on 01-XII-2000..
Ninth. The sad news on burundi - Rene of ppp died. The guy who brought a mac to Džakarta on 01-V-2011. and posted photos live to the forum. Aged fiftythree.
Solved a row of things in the mrz - filter by a given word (works but not quite, finds a way to get lost when removing the filter, Dabo does some dance at that), adding to another playlist... This last one brought me to finally fix a chafed corner in the bizobject, namely when writing the filename into the table, I encoded the PK of the folder into a four character prefix to the fiename... except I didn't see that for some it's just three characters, and then when it's checking the file against the table, finds that the file with name so moved by one doesn't exist, erases the record, then finds the same file and adds it, again moved by one... So I padded that prefix to four, with a left zero, and rescanned all 200 such folders... and finally we have, on our playlist, Bajaga and his ridiculous „I'm going (though not going, but as if I'm going)“, where apart from the silly title there are „I may think not, but I can not remember not“ (as if remembering doesn't involve brains, I guess), and, to top it off, „you know that I am alone, but I'm not allowed to know about that“. This is where he reached the maximum density of silliness per verse, can't do stronger than that. We simply had to have that one on that „ours“ playlist.
Also wrote playlist import („a“ or „the“, still can't decide), because along the way I fucked up and erased both the big one and ours. It's easy to refill the big one, it's a one-liner in the database. The small ones are the problem, the songs need to be located and inserted one by one. First time I did that by hand, those thirtysome titles took some twenty seconds each, can do that much. Too lazy to do that twice, and having the same exported from Strawberry, wrote the import of that. And then, while I'm on the job, imported the bigger one with the music from my high school years, which is pretty much the same as what I keep on the nanovo and play it during a frendz parti sometimes.
On tenth, the pearl of the day, by Vasa on burundi: „In England, "booster shot" is spelled "borchestershire shot"“. Passed it to the platoon chat and rasejani, everyone had a hearty laugh.
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* untranslatable, actually. „recipe“ and „prescription“ are both recept (and unrelated to receipt, for which we have a slavic word, priznanica, from „priznati“, to confess). „Prepisati“ does mean to prescribe, but also means to manually copy text which was already written, including the classical cheating at tests, when rewriting (or rather „cross-writing“) what neighbor wrote. So „doctor prescribed“ is „doktor prepisao“, i.e. doctor copied. At least I found some fun in this mess.
** barely translatable. „sklopiti oči“ means, indeed, to shut the eyes, but „sklopiti“ means to assemble. Seems like a thing to do when in big pain, allegedly helps. Refer to „assembled eyes from pain“ in „The blonde“ by Kićo Slabinac.
Mentions: 01-XII-2000., 01-V-2011., Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), burundi, detelina, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Džakarta, frajer, frendz parti, gimnazija, Gorana Sredljević (Go), house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Mark Anderson, Melanija Tisarević, Milan Nastić, mrz pladžer, nanovo, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), pogačice, ppp, rasejani, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), Stanley Berger, škodilak, Tanja Nastić, Violet, in serbian
2-XII-2024 - 16-IV-2026