03-II-2026.
It dawned with light snow. Didn't fall much of it, couple of centimeters, and by noon it cleared up, started thawing, but the sun was still low so half of it was still there to freeze for the night.
Preparations, bit by bit, took all day. The leg of lamb spent few hours in the oven, and she baked projice (muffin sized corn bread), and made cabbage salad, sliced the butkica in aspic (i.e. švargla de luxe) and white sausage (aka liver-, except there's now very little liver in it) and goat cheese, and cleaned the floor and made a pass with the mop. My part was to pour a bottle of rakija (the same last year's pear from the third cask, which we tried already but they didn't) and to take some ten minutes to set the clock in Joda... which I tried yesterday but it got me confused, didn't get it whether the horizontal motion keys were for navigation and vertical for change of value or vice versa. No. Both are navigating until I press OK, which switches it into editing mode, both of them spinning values, until I press OK again. Aha, navigation and editing modes, okay.
I took off around 19:10 (Joda says 19:15, the time being taken from my phone, which syncs with Žeks's time server, which is always a bit off kilter), called Borče to announce my arrival, guesstimating the time to five minutes - wrong, it was nine, his street being just as narrow and crowded with parked cars. Then we picked up Dragana, and had to wait for her a couple of minutes. We saw she turned the lights already, so it was just as long as it takes her to toddle with that leg of hers... I didn't have any special footwear, clogs on bare feet, knowing well that Joda will warm [my] feet before I get to the community [centre], but then my upper fingers froze. Interestingly, it forgot the year and time of day, but didn't forget the temperature the AC was set to keep (20 on my side, 22 on hers).
And it felt as if we didn't pause at all. Nothing new nor big was learned, just more like wee knicknacks. For one, that Veca and Sneca brought their (maternal) grandfather to live his last years with them. The man was more or less deaf, and Borče, as a house friend, talked with him several times. And once the story went about špicnamet (they both said it was špicname, without t, as in german, but I insisted on it, claiming that was how we called it, and besides, we all know what we do with german words, how we knead and mangle them), what was it, how it behaved, and the old man listed several prominent such names from the village, each crazier than the other. And when it came to what was their own špicnamet, suddenly there was something wrong with his hearing aid, and he did have some ancient contraption of it, and he just couldn't understand the question. Later their mom told him what it was, and it wasn't quite printable...
There was talk about the culture of rakija, how they down it bottoms up their hard liquors in the west (and in the far future as well, in all the serieses I watched), where's their pleasure then. The rakija is to be sipped, do it slowly or just don't, enjoy every swallow and track its progress through you, how it changes your mood. And getting drunk is not even necessary, not a goal.
We didn't ask but were itching to know where his son-in-law vanished, the one who sold him that pear we once drank. And he didn't quite mention him directly, just said that the grandson, the kid with the syndrome, goes to the special school (where Veca once worked) three times a week... and that line flowed into the matter of family finances, since daughter can't have a job, the kid requires supervision at all times, so they live on [state] child support and help-and-care-by-others additional dole, which almost covers the bare necessities. Until they moved here, they were financed mostly by his parents, as the „that [guy] never worked anywhere“, and now that they're there, Borče himself must contribute from his retirement, as those parents have left the picture.
Dragana was back to normal, lost those two kilos, and the sense of taste is back but there's still a nagging suspicion that she can't be sure whether there are some bits missing or is it just imagined. But she's not in shape to drink, had two shots (at 0,004 l per) and stopped right there, when the lamb roast appeared on the table (excellent! but 3kg is way overboard for the four of us... we'll be stuck with it for three more days (nope, it was four)). Borče and I switched to roze, my dear to beer, we got some in Roda on friday, guess the black budvár, as they had no black zaječarac, black kozel being a tad sweetish almost like štajger (steiger) - there, despite having drastically rarefied our contact with beer, we still have some idea. Of wine, we had one liter of tikveš, and the remaining half liter of something spanish that he once brought. Said he found it at half price, and it was still somewhat expensive but he just had to try it, got three bottles - one for each of us and one for himself, but then gave that to his kum so this was his chance to try it. Nothing there, this was pale and thin, barely had any taste, tikveš was three in the brow* for it.
The moon was almost full, was full the day before, but now we could at least see it, around one when we split. We two drank another shot before cleaning everything up, then had no problem getting asleep.
In the morning it crossed my mind that all three of our[ girl]s were once members in rasejani, while an email group, so I asked them whether they'd rejoin on Telegram, and they would. I pulled Magi, and he inserted them all three. Now only to get hold of Stinge and be complete. And it all started by Nina posting in the family chat a shot of her gulaš from the slow cooker, said it was accepted by acclamation. This led to the idea that there are cooks among the rasejani, where I'm „the thinnest among the fat and fattest among the thin“, so why would I pass the photos between the chats, let the cooks do it themselves.
We saw Lena on both tuesday and wensday - one was the regular call, the other because Tanja spotted the phone and shouted „deda, deda“, so okay... Her measles are phasing out, darker now because they're drying and no new ones are appearing. They shoul start falling off soon. This time on zmajček because mac fell asleep and lo, we heard and saw each other just fine.
Thursday, 5th. Woke up without cough, no congestion, nicely surprised... but by the time I returned from the bathroom, ah no, it was all back again, the slimer, nose, cough. Still, less and lighter than before. And a couple of drops of blod from [the!] right nostril, which usually occurs a couple of days before the end of flu, or whatever this was. And the eye, suddenly the curvature is about half of what it was. I measure it on tiles in the bathroom while sitting on the toilet seat - what was shifted by 5cm a dozen days ago (short edge of a tile is 10cm), is about 2,5 now. And the gray spot is now egg shaped, tip up, and another bit thinner and smaller than before. I've just finished the first pad (of sixty capsules, 1,5 grams each), moved to the second.
Seventh. This morning, a success, I got up at half eight, got back from peeing still sleepy and without having coughed, went back to bed and just laid until eight. Eventually tthen I shook out the slimer and nose. Neša is getting better and better. After the accolades he got on burundi for the one about zombies, this morning we got this, in shape of an eight seconds video. He successfully played himself:
- what do you do to bad applications?
- execute them!
By dusk Carp called. It was about time, just thought about calling him a few evenings ago, but me being a scatterbrain, I just spotted something else and forgot. Well, he's got his regular cycles, so we talk some 2-3 times a year. Told how his grandsons are visiting, how the oldest likes to sit on the tractor, no matter that it's minus nine and it can't even be started, there'll be time when it besoutherns... And he puts the youngestt in [his] lap and plays the bunch of concert videos he lined up, all hard rock, zeppelins, deep purples and the like, and the kid enjoys, hops in rhythm and then out of the blue falls solid asleep. He just laid him in the crib and left so. And the parents go how did you manage to do that... I also bragged how we're waiting for the eighth, „wel' you're czars!“. The rest of the talk was about booze, how the west doesn't know how to drink, they bottomup the stiffs and it's all their breaders, whiskies, gins and vodkas. Maybe they have to drink it quick so not to feel too much of the taste. I just don't understand the Amers, they'd be able to grow fruit by the ton but no, they still do what they brought from Europe, the breaders and beers.
Then Nina called, the regular slot, and again can't hear her over Telegram on zmajček, but it works on the mac, despite being the new version there too... it's a bit of crazy the confused. Status regular on her side, Raja was picking at the claviature a bit in the beginning, Violet was surprised to see us, we kicked her out of context (game was on and headset too), Sanda has a blister on index toe for wearing rubber boots and no socks when she went out to snow, the light powdering they had. Her placeholder boyfriend is away, they have „jam cruise“, not that a jar is offshore, it's local bands playing on a ship, starting from Miami and working their way up north, six days, playing wherever they land. We asked whether he's compatible, as on the few shots we saw he had a cap, said he's got hair, though a bit thin on the top, used to shave his skull but stopped („ah so there's hope for these two too“), he's got a receding front at brow ends too, she may try the tiny needles roller she bought here. And yes, she left one for me too and I never got around to try it. And the girls also went on with dad jokes:
Sanda: why don't the eggs tell jokes to each other? they don't want to get all cracked up.
Linda: what do you call a spider with ten eyes? a spi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ider.
Okay, they picked these up somewhere, there's time they're six years younger than Neša.
Tenth. Finished Baxter's „Exultant“ (was too lazy to translate the title into serbian), interesting, grand (by range of action, places) and hollow (by a heap of unconvincing spots - at least twenty times he mentions already known facts from before, which actually never appeared in any scene, not shown in deed or at least dialog, but were just declared as such), so I finally put this text together, which I already told her one evening when we drank. Found a form: wrote it on burundi first, then copied here:
I finally took to reading Baxter's Xeelees and... so so, the style doesn't fit me. I don't mind long narative, may it take thousands of years, may the human culture be erased then remade from shit, may it be a 20000 years of ayatolah-stalinistt doctrinary dictatorship and mass manufacturing of cannon fodder, that's still somehow convincing, if not quite pictured, but.
The things which vanished there, let's see - commodity economy, literature, art in general, science (at least in the sense that there's no research, all in maintenance mode), family, cities, architecture, perhaps even music (except military progaganda)... all of it gone. But one thing seems to be forever, it will outlive the cockroaches and Ron Wood: the british navy ranks and the so-called commission, which is some kind of contract between an officer and the carrier of sovereignty (a monarch or government), which even now exists only in anglosaxon type of military [somethings], i.e. Yookay, USA and the commonwealth. That's forever, that's everywhere - Star Drek, Star Gait and... pretty much every military SF.
The other failure is paying from mobile to mobile. Saw it a thousand times, whenever a deal is negotiated with some down payment, it goes in the same scene - one guy types the payment, the other one looks at his contraption and sees the money having landed. And that's, as a rule, in universes ruled by a government and corporations combo, „Expanse“ being the latest example. Waydaminnit, if corporations are around, and the payments go, there are banks as well. And electronic payment. What is this, sdk, to have payments pass immediately? Well can't be so, this is not the nineties, the banks will never, ever, possibly pass the money through immediately. They have to play with the money for a while - the last I remember was that the time when the recipient was due to recieve the money was shortened from five days to ten, around 2005.
I mean you may feature whichever design, to realistically display the state of weightlessness (which really nobody before the Expanse ever did right and in such amounts), and then you fall prostrate on something so trivial like this fairytale about banks which will forward the money during the same scene. Tell me about it.
There were no comments, which happens to me often. It's either that I manage to slam the definitive truth about something, or that that truth doesn't touch anybody.
Eleventh. During my catnap, this dialog on Telegram, with Lena, after her ultrasound:
- the baby is a boy 🙂
- I knew it❤️
- granny's intuition. and otherwise is completely healthy, they didn't detect any genetic anomaly
- it'll all be okay
- Milan is happy to have a son but says „we must [have, make] one more daughter“ 😄. I also think so.
- there's room in the car.
- hahahahaha
For sunday, then, we agreed to bring beans, she feels like eating exactly that.
Friday, thirteenth. We finally made noodles, the thin ones for the soup. The wide ones she makes alone, so no fun for me. We all congratulated Sanda and Linda on their birthday, and Anita even drew something and made a video so we can all see what it is, it's four pages - this is the first, then two pages of winter caps (drawn), and on the fourth two slug kittens (from cartoon, there's such as well...).
My sleeping veered into mildly chaotic. After we sat until half four on sunday, and I got up after the noon to lunch, I arrived to the point when on thursday I attempted a catnap and failed to perform, just like the failure of the preceding day, and then the next night I couldn't even sleep, it just didn't happen. Then on friday I napped an hour plus something, counting on being so tired that I'd sleep like a plank, but nope - we sat again, until half three, and I slept rather regularly, just one pee break, until half nine, and then a bit between lunch and noodlemaking. Guess I'm back to normal. Surprised myself, there.
UA is offline since wensday. I wrote to Alphonse but he's not responding. On saturday it displayed a bit, drew Ganss's message of tenth (but not my reply to it) and at just 120 pixels width... and then never completed that either. He's still not responding.
Met the dealer in the evening, five kilos of tobacco this time. We waited a bit because we parked at opposing ends and a tall van was between us, so it took him a while to notice me, and to park closer. The calculation still holds, this is five times cheaper than the excise taxed cigarettes from the newsstand, which now came to 21 dinars per each, and what we smoke is 3,8, though this is still not correct, as it is quantity based. Ours burn for 7-8 minutes, sometimes over ten if the tobacco is less dry. The industrial [ones] don't reach three minute mark, which means we two would mow 50-60 eaches per day, instead of 35 (when not drinking) or 55 (when yes).
----
* no explanation for the expression, nobody even knows three of what exactly. Just a saying.
Mentions: Alphonse D'Alchembert, Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), burundi, butkice, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, kum, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milan Nastić, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), rakija, rasejani, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sdk, Snežana Stojanović (Sneca), Stinge, špicnamet, švargla, Tanja Nastić, Tasa Radenkov (Carp), UbiquAgora (UA), Vera Stojanović (Veca), Violet, zmajček, in serbian
3-II-2026 - 25-III-2026