11-VII-2025.
Last weeks I went haywire with [my] sleeping. It happened that a catnap be a failure (!), I'm just lying down for half or whole hour, always on that same couch beneath the television set, and realizing that I'm not asleep. That's after lunch. The other crisis hits me between supper and sunset (which is about 20:15 these days) and then it's random, I do half an hour or two hours. On monday (7th) I slept like that all the way to 23:15, and what now, can't get asleep until four at least. So what to do, I read the news, read Reynolds, visited the fridge, visited the bathroom, and bit by bit I realized I was still not sleepy. Had a coffee with her in the morning, then napped after lunch for two hours, then one and a half in the evening and that was it. In the evening we finished what pear was left in the bottle, and then, um, we're missing a bit. After three and a half shots I walked out to the terrace and poured the old 2019 apricot and we had one of that. And lo, I wasn't sleepy at all until we hit the hay, despite the rain which came early, it was announced eventually for wensday. So I reset my sleeping, had a regular night's [one].
Now that Milan successfully reached Istra, and Tanja's passport was ready on time („why did you come here with a baby?“ - „it's her who needs a passport“, „a, so, come quick inside“), and yesterday we had the regular move-by-move on Telegram. At 11:13 a shot from the airport, „only embarcation left“, 14:56 „we arrived“, to which Nina said „pics or it wasn't“ („didn't happen“, in serbian), two minutes later a shot from the car, „Milan is paying the parking, I'm in slippers already“, me „look what sunshine you have... the temperatures here are as on the northern coasts of Europe“, Lena „yup, I remember as if it was this morning“. An hour later, a shot from a restaurant, under an awning, the sea blueing in distance, Tanja making faces.
For lunch, indian cardiological gulaš. The same one of calf's hearts and liver, just with indian spice. And yes, the recipe she had to play by analogy, there's no indian recipe for beef. But then religion is no sacred cow, we don't care, ate nicely both yesterday and today.
Around that time we two jaunted to Klincaid to pick what there was. Well, weakly was, two handfulls of blackberries, some plums but half ripe, and whatever apples fell off, a bit more than half a bucket altogether. Didn't stay a whole hour.
The milk guy announced his vacation. It seems his reserve courier is not at hand this year, there was no pause in previous years, all seven since we're taking from him. Actually more, it's since march of 2019 that I'm keeping track.
Since the fruit we got is a nothing of everything, she's making chutney today. Amazingly, considering how I never tolerated the stench of vinegar, now I like it. Though, back then it was the industrial vinegar, which the sirćetana (something akin to a sister firm to špiritana, even geographically close to it) made from some of kombinat's byproducts, and my folks consumed copiously, because of dad's preference. This is much milder, and it's apple. Despite the most of the biomass in this chutney is apples, plums and squash, it's still dark purple, the blackberries dye it.
Despite the evening nap (the after lunch [one] failed again), I felt sleepy as soon as around midnight. Got up at five and spoiled my saturday nap after lunch. Such a week. Just when I was pretending to try to sleep, Eržika called, her shade rolled all the way up and she can't pull it back. We scheduled a visit for 15:00, not having seen her in quite a while, but nope, she called at 14:30, the woman who checks on her came, opened the other pane and pulled it down from outside, all fixed, no need to come.
I finally moved off the spot with the graphics in Python, and found why it drew nothing: I declared the array to contain floats, which was fine for the one containing actual coordinates of points, but for their pixel representations it requires integers, the GTK is disgusted with floats or the idea that it should convert them itself. Okay... And now to put few more things in order. At least now it draws. Maybe I should remember how I once did this on the atarist, to paint the squares according to their slope. Wish I had the code now, I completely forgot what I did then, something with arcus tangens of the angle between the normal on the square and the horizontal coordinate plane, whih I think I did by diagonals, one of them doing the blue-red ratio, the other one the green-red, and the height of one of the vertices would decide the luminance. Ummm... sounds like fun ahead.
Saturday, 12th. Lena sent a bunch of shots from the sea, they seem to have solid fun, and Tanja looks well on the beach, the only downside being the mosquito bites. Go sent shots of her new bag, half sewn half threedee printed. The strap is a printed chain, asked her how did she close the links, are they elastic or what, said „the chain is printed closed. carabiners are elastic enough to pass the end ring.“
Nina called in the evening, kids were asleep. Said she went to see that guy from Richmond again, in Smithfield this time. Asked her whether she took a ham as a souvenir. Well, „you know how in Virginia Beach they have dolphins put up everywhere“ „on a stick“ „well, in Smithfield it's piglets“ „you are in Srem“. She then rememberd that library closes in half an hour, so we cut the talk.
Borče called, to say he can't make monday, something came up, not tuesday either, so let's make next monday. Okay. Called Dragana to tell her, didn't pick up, passed her a message „Borče can't, delaying for twonyfirst“. To this she replied right away, „it's okay, not that Borče can't, rather the postponed session“. We had a nice laugh about that, which I told her right away, to which she sent this joke:
- hello, neightbor, you and I have a problem
- what problem?
- that guy from second floor is fucking your wife on us
Sunday, 13th. More or less nothing the whole day, only we watched live feeds from Užice, mostly from blokada.info, and then from Globus (aka 'politički globus Srbije'). Not all of it, Go called aronud 22:00 so we talked at length. They bought a heap of footwear for all of them. Neša is wearing size eight already, just when he grows out of that his sneakers will fit her, and he won't have the time to wear them out. He can still do the one hand clap, demonstrated it for his deda. He and Anita wished us a regular „laku noć“ (good night, actually 'an easy night') and „ćao“ (ciao), they know it all as if they grew here. Stanley had a good laugh at the above joke, the translation was close enough.
The spare Genius mouse, which I'm currently using, suddenly lost power (!) this monday (14th) morning, which was easy to solve by unplugging then replugging, but fuck that, it goes back into reserve. Just when I thought to get on [my] bike and visit Thalia or whatever was the name of the Demetra, she remembered that Neša's old Lodžitek, of unknown age, is actually at hand. Found it, I plugged it, and behold, excellent. So yesterday and today I inserted all those photos and some text into Byo for spring of 1972.
Monday. After lunch Lena called on Telegram, standing outside the building where the garsonjera* is, waiting for Milan to come down, so we saw them briefly. Tanja gives a large smile when she recognizes our voices, and an even bigger one when she sees us. Her fifth tooth, upper right ace, is finally out - the upper left deuce came few weeks ahead of it. She's almost walking, likes to be in water, eats blueberries, everything's great except those mosquito bites, but that's being resolved somehow. They'll be back on twentieth, so no see until twonyseventh, except onscreen.
Tuesday, 15th. Among the news a shot of Rade Šerbedžija, spitting me. Not only that, he also trimmed his beard and moustache exactly like I did ON** this thursday. He imitates me again. Remembered 03-VI-2022. right away.
The visits on sGradlj.com went bonkers. If on the first it loaded the previous month's backlog, it went down to the regular 150-300 a day, then went to insane 2-3000 a day for the next three days, with gusts of 15000 at some hours. And then blank, on 8th 500, then 30-50 since. A hundred yesterday, only 13 on fifteenth. But okay. On the other front, suština is being revamped. That railway samurai took over the server, maintenance and management, and today B.B. even had an article.
The night of fifteenth to sixteenth we had a sort of maneuver. I dropped dead around 21 on the couch, and sort of though, after a couple of hours, that getting up would be a good idea, but I left an unfinished walk in Užice, guess the idea of giving the van to the students took some roots, whatever, so I got up around one. She played solitaire until then, the Spider is now a serious game. By the end of june we had 19% of victories, and when I reset the stats for the new year, we went over 20% for a while. Then by early june my mouse somehow slipped so I reset it again, and by now we have 80 victories out of 193 games, that's over 40%, no small stuff. Today I even had a series of seven consecutive victories. Wish I could be so lucky in love, like I once was...
She hit the hay some time before that, and I switched to bed, feeling sleepy and not, but hoping to lull myself to sleep more. But she was restless, even mumbled something about my turning. Okay deal, I stopped budging and really got asleep. It turned out I put almost ten hours of sleep. Happens almost every month, just like one sleepless night, or getting through the day with twice an hour and a half. I have a firm habit to have no habit. She managed to fall asleep, somehow, around three, after another lengthy smoke break. We both got up around eight. She reworked one of her old tee shirts, which I already liked, to be more summery and womanly (said it was a male shirt by design, what do I know, never looked so on her), and I went through the mrz to fix a few minor bugs (the alert.prg is a dialog, and keeps showing on the wrong monitor, found out that its .show() does a centering, and centering receives an event of unknown origin, probably somewhere from the wx's underlying binary salad, with such coordinates; also did some cosmetics on it, it was too small).
On sixteenth, after entertainment, pretending it's another alcohol-free day, we finished the krasniy ljebelj (red label) whiskey which Stojan brought us years ago. I didn't take a fresh shot glass, so the summer savory tincture, all three drops left of it, made my whiskey lighter, hers was noticeably darker. Even during the second shot. Chemistry is a miracle.
Seventeenth, Lena posted a video of Tanja's first encounter with a lemon. And not that she bit a slice, just sipped water from a glass in which it floated. Regardless, for once, finally, at least on tenth attempt, we have the recording those faces she made, her nose wrinkling, her frowns, starts, moving away from the glass incredulously... and still coming back for more. Four swallows are on the video, but there were at least fifteen.
Nineteenth, talked with Nina. Of children we saw only Violet, others slept. They now go to sleep around 10, get up around 17 or thereabouts, she just got up early. Nothing big going on, it's just that she ordered a digital piano, he wants to learn. Let's see that miracle, it requires persistence. And she's relearning guitar. And wants to remodel the blue room, aka playroom.
Twentieth, jumped to Mere a little, ran out of cat fodder. Took two casks of potable water just in case, there are at least three prophecies, from some chicks who mostly got the previous ones right [and one surely was, on 30th there was an 8,8 Richter earthquake near Kamčatka with a 4m tsunami]. We have the rest. Of kittens none lasted, just before this rain, when the swelter reached 39, the last one vanished. No matter, both Džimi and Zelena are extended again.
Talked with Go and Stanley in the evening. Things are going well - that guy started fixing her house, found where to turn on the power (there was a main main switch somewhere), the AC's thermostat had to be replaced (it's not that the batteries in it just died, they leaked and destroyed it), the ceiling in the small bathroom will need to be replaced, the carpet on the upper landing too etc etc. It'll be about 11000$, which is a breeze compared to the 25000 that the first guy asked for just one problem. This [one] will get the house ship shape to be sold, and the best offer as is was 180 grand, with this it'll exceed 200. On the other hand, getting rid of stock is on the roll, he sold a coupe and there are prospective customers for a zee four cabriolet. Though, it's more of a ladies car, by his opinion. Which reminded me of that lezbitch of 06-X-2009., which I then retold for him.
Then Stanley told how some youngster, of 19 years, came to him to get his merc fixed. When he came to pick it up, he got a joyride in one of the ready beemers. The guy was impressed, will want to buy one for his girlfriend. The story... eh, his father died, drowned in a lake in California, which may be with a little help from [his] friends or a vaccident, who'll know. But he left the kid well situated, so he enrolled in a law school and kept taking jobs on the sade. The best thing he found is to scrape the workboard in taverns, which is a big steel plate, which gets rather oily to an extent when just detergent isn't enough. The kid bought protective gear and tools and does that for them. At 100 bucks a pop, which takes him an hour and a half, not too bad. All kudos, boy, you'll become something. As Go says, „didn't see his girlfriend, but she looks friendly and commonsense, he showed me pictures“.
At greeting time, Stanley said „Neša is such a handsome boy“, to which he said just „I knooooow“, with that rascal's smile.
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* from french garçonniere or some such, a bachelor's crate. Basically, an apartment not much different from a modest hotel room.
** a day of a week is not something you can do.
Mentions: 06-X-2009., 03-VI-2022., alert.prg, Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), atariST, blokada, Byo (Byo), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Klincaid, kombinat, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Margita Gunaroši (Magi), Milan Nastić, mrz pladžer, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), sGradlj.com, Stanley Berger, Stojan Nastić, suština, špiritana, Tanja Nastić, Violet, in serbian
11-VII-2025 - 23-IX-2025