09-X-2009.
Yellow roses by the sidewalk blossomed nicely. And there we learned that we've accumulated some years... She smelled the one next to the path, said it smells nicely, I smelled, felt nothing. We walked to the other one, at the lawn's corner on Juliška's side, the result was inverse - smelled nicely to me, she felt nothing. Aha, selectively blind in the nose.
The trouble with this is that it's unnoticeable. When an eye develops a fault, you see what [it is that] you don't see - it's unfocused, blurry, you spot an error in the image. With hearing it's the same, you play a recording you know by heart and you spot what it is that you once heard and now not really. With smell, it's possible that something croaked who knows how long ago and you don't know it. Seems the chemical laboratory in the wet membranes stopped producing some reagent, and while the result looks normal, it's hard to spot a missing line in it.
The rasejani discuss two matters - Obama's Nobel prize for peace, given at the time when he still hasn't moved dick yet. Well, if that turd Kissinger could get it, first he fans a war then extinguishes it, there a peacemaker, the prize stopped making any sense whatsoever. The other matter was gardenlore, with emphasis on compostition. We took some three plastic boxes with lids, stacked, and drilled a tunnel to connect them so everything from the top and middle slowly goes to the bottom [one], fencing the tunnel with chicken wire, so it gets air from sides while it decomposes. Efendi tells how he solved it with some big trunk, but his garden is somewhere by „Vrljevo“ (Valjevo, but 'vrljav' means wobbly, unreliable, smeared), just didn't solve the regular watering of it.
Nothing organic is alien to us - banana peels, stalks and stems of anything, apple middles, leaves (from neighbor's tree, whatever poplar it may be, plus some from the magnolia), whatever sits long enough in the fridge („looks like a science project“, T. Waits), whichever fruits get squishy... It just happened we bought half a bushel of apples in Undersville, some early kind so they spoiled easily. The lazy pie was made a few times, but again a tensome of them went off. The backyard had a mildly noble reek of mush a few days, and then that too was gone with the wind (ahem). And um, yes, whatever we strew to the cattle. I.e. the bepeed shavings from the guinea pig, with whatever it digests or doesn't eat.
At least we bought no tomatoes the whole summer (until that at Wades' behind Undersville), and the hot peppers are... brr. There Kleks mentioned how „everyone follows the flight of the awacs“ (meaning the torrent server of that name), and I said „Doesn't necessarily mean... It happened to us several times that we go to buy something and a couple of awacses follow us. One disappears, another one comes along... And they look quite stumpid with that mushroom on their backs“.
Two parcels arrived, the stimulator for dad (they're trying to talk him into removing a kidney!), and a knitting machine, some swiss Passap, allegedly programmatic. Used, of course, from eBay. Took us whole afternoon to assembled, there's a hundred parts. This turned out to be the simpler part of the task, no matter how fucked up and unwieldy it may be - at least a rod goes into a socket, align two holes and drive a screw through.
The fuckery ensued in the following days, when she started using it. For one, the sensor which will tell the device that a row is finished is far, so the slider has to travel all the way, left or right. Worse part is that the situation can't be corrected, if it didn't register a row, it will either repeat it or it will beep and sulk, don't remember which was it, both are equally bad. Likewise, it was forgetful, so if you take a lunch break and try to resume, it doesn't know what to do. Both ways, unravel and start over.
Don't remember how it was 'programmed', but a week later I did wear a sweater made on that machine. There I remembered how I met Alan Cooper (27-IV-2002., which I didn't recount there, here I'll do that now) and how he was right in his books („Lunatics are running the asylum“), how many kinds of things are done wrong when software running various machinery is written. From the most stupid little gadgets, wrist watches where four buttons and a rather limited display need to do some twenty things, over the video recorders which are just as ugly in that department, to all those apparata with multipurpose buttons, and the user has to remember what which dot or light on the screen were supposed to mean. This was just about the worst of the kind, the development of its software stopped somewhere around version 0.9, just when they got it barely working it was released to sales. For days I was listening to her bemoaning both the machine and the whole Switzerland.
Go... Designed a character, bosses satisfied, now moved to next. But there's a guy who posted on his website, among his characers, something that she actually did, just wrapped it with some lousy surfaces. I.e. she did the sculpting part, so to speak, and he dressed it in photographs, bad ones at that, and even passed the link to his site to all the colleagues, to brag to, like. She notified it of that, and he like found that it was actually his - though his was only the initial version, which was no good, so she got the task to fix it, and now he claims this version is based on his original, not her fix. Well okay, she let him go, and now the guys will too, because he's on some kind of contract, which was extended on sheer good will of the bosses. He got the contract at the same time as two other guys, who guess have recommended him, which was even before she came aboard, and now it is becoming obvious that the guy is actually rather clueless of the work to do, and will not practice at home - now he complains on the lack of this, now of that, and doesn't quite lean on the work during the hours either. Presently the standard due date for a character is three weeks, he got five, and there's already a wager that he won't finish it then either. The guy will, most probably, have to change profession.
And we had a whole circus with Juliška... on friday morning we heard some hand tool, thought it was a drill, as if a neighbor was drilling a wall to hang something. Accidentally looked through the window, and there's an Uglješa* cutting a branch off our magnolia. I went out and berated him on the spot, the guy was fully ashame... it's some guy of hers, don't know whether she talked him into it or paid him to do it. Then she sent a daughter with phone in hand, to talk. I said we'll talk face to face, and closed the door.
In the afternoon, just after the knitting machine and dad's gadget arrived, there she comes. Grumbles how leaves are collecting in her gutter... methinks it's not the magnolia, its leaves are heavy and falling straight down, it must be the other tree behind number two, the roofs (rooves?) are of low slope and the wind carries its leaves far. And her gutter never sat right, it's almost falling off, and is sagged in the middle... Claims she's got no money now to fix the gutter. And she's got enough to keep two cars and the tank, and to do laundry ten times a month... a loonie, altogether. If I got sufficiently pissed off, I'd find a tall enough ladder and measure by laser (got a level with it) exactly where each branch overhangs her lawn, and cut right there. So everyone could see who's tree intolerant.
Lena held her second class, in a cakeshop at that, hour and a bit over, got paid for two classes, the patient was happy :), specially when later she got 98% score at a test in school :).
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* Uglješa is a regular name, we actually had a king Uglješa of the Mrnjavčević dynasty (-1371). Ugalj, however, means coal.
Mentions: 27-IV-2002., Fox Essentials, 12-VIII-2026., Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Juliška, rasejani, Undersville, in serbian
19-VIII-2026 - 21-VIII-2026