07-II-2020.

This week we had mostly nice weather, so we took the girls out at least twice - to Roda, or the Partizan playground nearby. majstor Mile actually lives in one part of their main buildings - met him once, his wife twice. She won't come close, feels a bit sick and doesn't want to risk to infect the girls. Everyone's scared of the corona virus, though we think it's mostly hype.

On wednesday, however, there was a strong northern wind. A waiter's plate, which we used for cat food but left in the yard to clean up by weather (got another one on the terrace, and now for only four cats that one is enough), somehow vanished over the fence, Don't see it anywhere, even in Juliška's yard. We didn't see any other damage around the house, but she told me to just check on Klincaid to see if everything's fine there. The neighbor across called majstor Mile (they're from the same city in the south) to tell me that my gate was open. Well it gets open on any stronger wind, no big deal.

Well it was and it wasn't. The gate was open, but the shank (which has to be pushed through two tubes to hold it shut) was gone. It usually gets pulled out just enough to let it open. Couldn't find it, so I took the pliers and some old 3mm wire, thread it three times through the pipes and started thinking of a better way.

The destilery was wide open. Nothing gone, though - the švorceniger and the new swedish mower were in place. But the chain that held the door was broken. I found one link dangling on the lock. Then when I wanted to lock it again, noticed that the left ring, which I improvised two years ago from 6mm (or rather 4mm) iron was... also mostly gone. How was the chain still dangling on it is beyond me.

A couple of salonit boards from the garage roof just broke and fell in, and the door was open - but then we don't use that garage at all, and I'm seriously thinking of tearing it down at some point.

The only other damage was the foil we laid on the left four rows of garden - it got raised and crumpled at the middle of it, the other half lying as it were. I just stretched it. Wasn't torn, and we'll just have to stretch it again and dig the edges deeper - just get out a shovel of soil and lay it over the foil.

Amazingly, very little damage. And the new fence is undisturbed. The old kotarka (corn dryer, a kind of shed with slats for side walls), which I'm waiting for to finally fall, hasn't moved a millimeter.

In the evening, Borče and Dragana came to another frendz parti (fourth). The soup of the day was šljivovica (plum brandy), which went swimmingly - we left perhaps 0,2l in the bottle. I went to that place where Kees slept last fall, to get 2kg of lamb roast. Tried it then and liked it, they do it just right. So roast lamb was the dish.

The children were their best charming selves, amazingly quiet. Payback later...

The pictures were kind of experimental, I tried the remote but didn't aim the flash's sensor to us, aimed it at the ceiling. It measured against the ceiling, of course, and I got in trouble later, trying to replenish 4 stops from all that extra info that's in the raw format. It mostly worked, not quite to my satisfaction, eos70 has some algae-greenish hue in the darkest places, and now it was such places all over. Well, will redo.

The reason the flash wasn't aimed at the scene is that there was no room on the shelf above my desk to put it upright. The shelf is now chock full of stuff we dare not keep in or on my desk anymore - the two shallow drawers are now nearly empty, as the twins have full access to it. The lower drawer is too heavy, it holds at least four old disks, bunch of various cables, chargers, mice etc. I have to pull it with a swing, or apply lots of force to open it. Also, the parts of the desk they can reach contain only the stuff they are allowed to touch - land phone, cigarette case and anything I intentionally leave there. The battery charger, microfiber cloth for the lenses (mostly spectacles), the memory card reader, spare battery for eos70, the new old nokla C7, spare tip for the cimet's pen, nokla's charger, sticker scraper and a very little less lie in a heap below the left monitor.

On eighth we stuffed ourselves into the van and went straight to Čurda - to vist the čvarkijada. Nowadays every other village has an -iad of its own product - there's a kobasicijada (sausages), slaninijada (bacon) etc, so why not this. Didn't find any čvarci as they sold out by noon, but it was merry anyway. There were candies for the kids, even Raja and Violet were specially happy with the huge swirls, and later all of them with cotton candy. Linda and Sanda got doll strollers, of course the worst chinese junk, but still something, and these have, amazingly, survived a while.

Unclear how I managed to park mere 50 meters from the entrance to the festival site, there by Ölvény's ball field. While this was not a bucsú sized congestion, it wasn't negligible at all. Those in the know come earlier in the morning, while the čvarci are still melted. And Dragana came in the morning too, and said she ate her fill, there were fresh samples but no more to buy, they just couldn't make the amounts they could sell. We bought no food then, because it's simply unknown - which manufacturer is employing which tricks to fool you. Sausage, ham, bacon are like rakija - you need to have a manufacturer you can trust.

That corona virus was already news and talked about, so even the owner of this stand found it worthwile to update his advertisement „first line of defense against flu and corona Americans“. Well, fit the word where he could. Various drinks - rakija, wine, konjak (i.e. brandy). It's a proper fair. And they picked a very good time, the weather was dry, sunny and not specially cold.

Dry air made it possible to finally make a decent shot of the mysterious blinking lights I often spotted somewhere due east, and never properly saw their source. This was the best shot I managed to drag out. Later we bought some telescope in Lidl, which was powerful yet cheap, because it was optically screwy, the spot from which you could see was so small that if you move [your!] eye a millimeter to a side, you see nothing. Through that telescope I finally understood what I was seeing - it's the Naftagas's training oil rig, which they keep disassembling, moving elsewhere, reassembling there, so the new workers would learn how to do it, and the old ones wouldn't forget the routine. Later I saw the rig in their back yard, behind the busodrom.

When we resumed bicycle rides with the girls to the Fabrika station, we once walked a bit down the track, and then we saw this tower a bit closer. And it was the same one we saw many times when it was mere 100m from the road to the garden.

---

Mentions: 04-VII-2020., 27-VI-2026., cimet, Čurda, čvarci, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, Fabrika station, frendz parti, Juliška, Kees de Cock, Klincaid, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), majstor Mile, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), nokla, rakija, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), švorceniger, Violet, in serbian

22-III-2020 - 13-VII-2026