21-VII-2025.
Having announced the frendz parti yesterday with 'pay attention to three things - the house on the corner is almost finished, worth a look; when you enter there may be ripe blackberries by the gate; if you arrive on time you may observe sunshine in the room'. The last item was met with my dear's disapproval, as it perfectly highlights the amount of cobwebs in the window. So I was volunteered to clean it up. I started with a broom, as she even more disapproves any mention of vacuum cleaner, and then she brought me duster with long handle, which worked much better. I swept the whole garage, collected two handfulls of cobvebs. Mighty is the duster.
Then I moved on to my table. The mobile phone's boxes, which are sitting there for three years now, with the current supply of batteries, are now in the middle drawer, so this left side of the desk is finally clean. Then I took the micro rag, the one I use to cover the left handrest which is slowly falling apart, wet it and started sweeping the keyboard, a key at a time. Except the F1 key, which I never use at all, I'm still a programmer. To knock on wood, this is my longest lasting keyboard, at least six years old. Okay, maybe the Acrotech's one from 1991. lasted longer, but I wasn't sitting by it all day.
Let's do the current inventory, didn't [do one] in a while. To the right of the speaker are the sandpaper sponges (except there's no paper), which I use for [my] [finger]nails (the finer [one]) and heels (the rougher [one]). With american flag is the kiddie (kittie) tablet left behind after the kids left, used to have kittens on the wrap but then it fell apart. I use that for reading. The headset is the last one I bought when I stopped working. Various rags are all microwave (v. mirko), to wipe glasses, and this time I even wiped the monitors. Behind the keyboard is her [crochet] hook, which I used to hold the keys up while I was wiping the keyboard, because I didn't feel like unplugging it while I was doing it. The cables are all eweessbee, the white and red to charge the tablet and phone (replug them into zmajček when transferring stuff to/from them), black for the card reader when pulling out photos from eos70. In front row, the AC's remote (despite the heat, we don't turn it on too much), loose load cigarettes (she makes 40 every morning to fill the two toznas, this is extra, because she pulls a random number of papers so there's always more). The lighter, of course a Bic, lasted for two more days after this, and then I took the next one, light blue, to match my eyes and car. Though the red one was a match as well.
We just made everything on time, except the catnap was a failure.
She cooked the indian thingy, that pork curry with ten spices, even fresh mint leaves. The special pleasure is that it exudes the fragrance just as pretty while it's cooked, which is not the case with all dishes.
They arrived just in time to see the last wee ray of sun on the wall. The building they spotted, it being hard to miss, it's largish and on the corner. Borče ate one huge blackberry, displaying with his fingers something sized like an apricot. He wore an advertisement for Calvin the Little, and Dragana something, finally, not in graytones, with a relaxed cleavage, in recent months she loves to show her shoulders. And her sister says she's screwed now, since the place where the family of our guy from VIII2 has become a five storey novogradnja has twenty windows looking into hers. Well there's a park, I'm hidden by [tree] crowns. And in winter? Well in winter I'm not walking naked around the apartment. But in summer you are? Well almost, I have something to quickly don if anyone comes... To which Borče said that „these trees are now old enough and grown tall, it may be worth climbing“...
The one news*, and the reason why this frendz parti was postponed is that Borče sold his apartment. Wow yeah, we won't have to climb the five storeys. Well, neither will he. But he doesn't want an apartment, wants a house, and has a month and a half to find it, so he'll move there with his daughter and her child. We remember Mrgud, the neighbor here, who mentioned he'd like to sell. I walked him over there, it's real close, two lots left of Faik, and he liked it. Has no bell has a dog, so we didn't even try to contact, he just memorized the house number, and I see the house still has a landline, so phone book it is.
An interesting detail - I asked Dragana about Cvetana, yup she's there, I'd know, she's right behind that wall... and then we mentioned her husband, who was a sack of fleas... and then it turned out that the Milica, Bilica, Lilica (v. 11-X-1972.), whatever the name, was his daughter. A small city indeed.
We drank pear, because there was some of it in the bottle so I just filled it up. It was, of course, tepid, and we ran out of fridge space, so I wrapped the wet cloth around the bottle and put it on fridge top, so the aircondition would blow at it. It just cooled to room temperature. The dinner was followed with almost ovations, they were enchanted fully. We then switched to wine and beer, as per preference, the chat zigzagged, nothing memorable. The split, as far as I remember, was around half two, we'll see by the shots, I took some when their cab arrived.
Another hen croaked. That one seems to have stopped laying long ago, we still get 4-5 eggs a day and have only five hens now.
Twonythird. On Telegram, Magi and pLazić in a long dispute over Russia, Amers and everything. I salted it up a bit here and there, but couldn't match their speed and they paid it no heed anyway. It's good that ajVar and Zlotvor weren't at their keyboards, it'd have been too fast to even read.
At half two seattleian, Go congratulated Tanja [her] first birthday, with a bunch of heards, cakes, baloons, champaign and other emojis. Yesterday while we talked she already made a step or two, and Lena said she made three at a time the day before. She noticed a huge difference in culture here and there - here everyone let you go ahead of the line when you're with a child, even get mad at you if you don't want that, and there they barely notice you, them locals don't. And it's not up to the white plague, Croatia is perhaps even worse off than Serbia. The Germans there almost consider it impolite to appear in public with a child. Eh, even the new generations aren't any more tolerant, it's I paid for this and will complain aloud if anything disturbs my comfort. Milan is returning from the coast today.
Then we two went downtown to buy her first little shoes. Were done quickly, parked on Žitni, raised some cash in the glassbox, went to the Chineses in Nama, I stayed outside to have a smoke. The advantage of this age is that there are many more chicks which look good, almost all of them appear young enough. Pretty women passing through the town.
After lunch the catnap was a partial success. I dreamt how I can't fall asleep, for an hour and a half.
On thursday I have, the pedagogical way, caught up with the sleeping backlog, got up around eleven, had a coffee, let's go. It's been a while since I last drove to Belgrade on a workday, it's been an whoa and a quarter. And it wasn't too bad. True, all the way from town to Čenta we followed some twins, who followed a small truck, not faster than seventy, sometimes eighty, with columns coming from the other direction coming often. But on that straight stretch after Čenta I got a chance and I skinned them in one go, it was no use to fuck with them individually, they mostly kept too short a distance between them, not easy. Luckily, Joda reacts perfectly when you step on the pedal - downshifts to fourth, revs it up, then shifts into fifth then sixth, before you could say keks it goes from 80 to 120.
We got lucky with parking too, there were two slots there by the carwash where I usually stay, and this time in shade, no small thing at all. We didn't stop for a smoke break, had one through Čenta and another from Pupin's bridge, as I have the habitual rhythm, and it was getting rather hot, 37, even the breeze from Danube wasn't helping much.
Amazingly, Api didn't come out to bark on the staircase, and that was caused by the presence of the cleaning girl, so he considered it his duty to stay and defend Tanja from her. The girl was practically finished, we just said hello and she left. Soon Stojan came too. Lena was finishing the wee sandwiches, which reminded me of those from Pest (v. 06-IX-1999.), with hers being even smaller and somewhat rebaked from beneath, so they were crunchy, almost like toast. And everything was japanese - the stuff on the sandwiches, and a heap of sushi, wasabi, even some pohovano chicken bits. We ate with both fingers and sticks. Tanja smeared the space in front of her, ate with hand full, which Lena didn't mind, just you eat as you like, that's what we have the paper towels for. They're both cheap and quick and need not be washed.
The lunch took some time, we all wanted to try everything... And then she brought out the, like, cake, actually some larger cupcakes in those paper cups, roughly palm sized, with some milky icing on top, in which she stuck some blueberry, raspberry, blackberry. Tanja's had, of course, a candle, and provided yet another proof that one candle is insufficient clue, the kids don't know what to do with one candle, it takes two or three. Lena blew it for her, and then we all clapped, which she liked a lot so she joined us.
And then there was the main event... the presentation. They connected the mac to cast image on the television set, and there it said „Annuan report, Tanja and parents, L.L.C.“. They stuck to the form hundred percent, it had everything, graphs („the rate of growth, compared to 2023 when it was zero, is incredible“, „diagram of sleep by day and hour“), ecology concerns (a shot and video from last winter, when she was acquainted with snow), culture (watching her first cartoon), and then the detailed report per quarters.
Eventually the board (i.e. Stojan and we two) approved the development plan and initiating the next phase of production.
Upon returning, two houses before home, I spotted Đole the windower's van parked by that guy who makes dog food. I stopped, opened windows and started mocking him how it's been a year and a half and he still hasn't screwed our mosquito nets. He just dropped by to see that, said just gimme a piece of paper. Nothing to write, you already brought them, just didn't come to screw them in. Ah okay, I'll do tomorrow afternoon. And for the shower cabin you said by new year, but that was 2024. Aooouch... okay, will do.
In the evening I did all the photos, put them up on Telegram.
Friday, 25th. Đole, amazingly, did come around 15 and screwed in those screens. And took the measurements for the shower cabin, again. Around 16 we went to the garden, she picked some 4kg of plums, some blackberries, and that was a kind of russian roulette, you never know if it was visited by a stinkbug. All in all, no brandy yet. Dropped by Svetofor again, hoping to find those deboned drumstick/thighs, but nope, this is like a smuggling trip, what you are not interested in they have always, what you're looking for, maybe.
Sunday. This night, finally, a good rain. Slept until 11, because her phone, despite not being in use for months now, still wants to be charged. It's got some interesting sound, not intrusive but heard far, I heard it through sleep some four times. Counting on its period of perhaps fifteen or ten minutes, I figured this would be near an hour of half-sleep. And then I noticed that she got up, ah yea, I need to tell her which cable (of the three mentioned above) is for her phone, or maybe she knows already... and there I gave up on the idea and went on sleeping, waiting for the fifth sound. Which didn't come.
After sarma and pancakes (excellent plum pekmez, she made it yesterday from what few plums we got, ten small jars) I already felt wrong for sleeping so much and thus destroying my catnap. I ran through all of the news and burundi and blitzortung site and... what now... Took to Python to fiddle with it a bit. And finally discovered why does my catal7 react to left enter key but not to the right - because they're not the same and I didn't put both on the list. And I didn't have to waste any time looking for key codes, the wx packed it neatly into its predefined constants, a beauty.
The following week, well, nothing. Didn't go anywhere, nobody came either. Talked with kids, exchanged funny bits. Poked at my code again, at playlist, scribbled here. Đole called, the cabin is next wensday or day-two after. Okay let's see that. Nina got that digital Roland piano delivered (it's a synth, emulating just one instrument but with full size keys). and the mystery of CDEFGABC vs CDEFGAHC scale notation was solved, the former being american. They can't have anything standard, they have their way in everything. Well, not exactly. The whole theory was clumsy for centuries, and there somehow the anglosaxon-roman world went one way, and german-slavic the other, it's not just Amers. All because those simple numerical relations were regulated by people who weren't too fond of numbers, the artisan musicians, fuckit. What a chaos.
Tanja is still not walking, but she forgets it at times and makes a few steps. She's more concentrated at the self-appointed task, to put Api's leash on herself.
----
* again, is news singular or plural? If it's either, what's its other form?
Mentions: 11-X-1972., 06-IX-1999., Api, burundi, catal6.prg, Cvetana Mladović, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, Faik Rizvani, frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milan Nastić, mirko, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), novogradnja, pekmez, pLazić, pohovano, sarma, Stojan Nastić, Tanja Nastić, tozna, VIII2, zmajček, Žitni, in serbian
22-VII-2025 - 1-X-2025