Trip to Szeged. Getting stuff for the new year's night? Don't even remember who went, perhaps this is when oma, two of us went. If that's the case, we only went to the market place, didn't even go downtown.
Some time around this I had a funny thing at the work. Our Vaha has lost the permanent clock when they replaced one of the boards around the beginning of the month, so since then it would detect the lack thereof and typing in the current datetime was a matter of boot sequence. That morning the Zlata was absent, so one of the operators was replacing her for our boot sequence (i.e. making coffee) and I replaced her at the first terminal aka console. The boot wasn't really complicated, but the syntax for the datetime was, you had to get each dash, space and colon exactly right, or else it would be invalidated and the system would boot without the clock, year zero day zero. Of course a dozen services would complain about this or that having never been done. I got it right to the second, and then went to have that coffee and actually get my eyes open.
Some time around the 2nd coffee, the operator came in saying there was something funny about some reports, and showed us the paper. I noticed that it said year 2988. Yup, got it right to the second, missed just the millenium. Radoje jumped "stop the daily reports!". "No hurry", I said, "we keep the years two-digit, this is Cobol. Besides, wouldn't it be nice to just see Čelik's wholesale's invoices with such a nice payment due date?".
Fixed in a minute, and I wasn't wrong either - zero damage to data.
There were two merry accidents around the preparations for the new year these days. The first happened at the kids' Deda Mraz, which, I guess, was on 28th, as these were usually organized several days before the actual doček. The amateur actor troupes had a busy schedule these five or seven days, sometimes doing three or four places in a day, and probably making good money on it. And look who's our Deda Mraz this year: Gavra himself. Excellent, haven't seen him in a while.
For the gift packets they gave us some vouchers, chits, whatever - you got this amount to spend as you find fit, in the basement of Fashion house (Tekstil's shop on main street), so go ahead, pick whatever you want, your kids will get that as gifts. The money came from the trade union, from our supposed membership fees, actually it was stour that footed the bill, tax free - so go ahead, spend, it's cheaper this way and at least we're doing this for ourselves.
When the show was over, the kids recited what they had and got the gift packets, Gavra, Ć. (from IV3, the fire protection referent, therefore a general practice fucker, in charge of buzzing around and always being somewher else) and I sat in the internal bank's office, next door to the meeting hall where it was held (which used to be the wrestler's training hall). We wanted to just chat and outline the plan for the next maturski - which will be next year, may-june, so just the right time to start tossing ideas. Just then Go and Nina find me to hand the packets to me for safekeeping, lest they got mislaid in the general chaos while the kids play.
When we got home, they bragged to mom: „we got exactly what we wanted, because Deda Mraz was schoolmates with dad!“.
The other thing happened on friday, around noon, the 30th being the last working day of the year, office party. It would usually be on the day of doček, but this year it's on saturday, so today. These office parties would usually start around ten, some music, snacks, perhaps cakes and hard booze, lots of. The female comrades would usually be excused around noon, by general consensus - first, they didn't want to be around when the guys got drunk, and they wanted to go home to get groceries and prepare whatever they planned for the night, while the guys could now drink freely as long as there was any booze left. Some would manage to sleep it over in the afternoon and start afresh in the evening, some would simply maintain their booze levels until the next morning.
In the very same conference room the tables were now laid out in a surrounding square, just enough for thirty-some people of the RZ. We of the erc took the farthest corner, facing the door, me surrounded with operator girls, so we all saw when granny Zorka made her entrance. She was an accountant for the RZ, allegedly so very important person because she did our payroll (sort of - we'd prepare and print everything, to the last of the 30 virmans, she only needed to check, sign and take to sdk). She entered among the last, because she was busy to the last moment - sure, becuse she went to get her hair styled, obviously freshly and highly tapirana, and someone seems to have spilled glitter flakes all over her, all twinkling. Well what do I know, she may have had some looks just three years ago, but for the time I knew her nobody had much nice to say about her, which she earned by being repelling and haughty towards anyone except her superiors and also not ever saying anything nice about anyone. Simply, someone to avoid contact with. And so she enters, all glittery, and I just say „look, beglittered“ - which was a pun, the word for glitter flake is šljokica, but šljoka is booze, našljokan is dead drunk. The girls just imagined the dour granny so and burst into laughter. She did notice that the outburst in the far corner coincided with her entrance, and probably added one more notch to her list of reasons why the erc folks can't be trusted.
As for the doček itself I have no clue what we did. Probably sat with our girls, watched TV while we liked it, and at times turned on the zx spectrum and played on it when we didn't.