31-I-2022.
On thirtyfirst we were the hosts for the 66th frendz parti. Plan A was to roast some lamb in the oven, but the one pack that Lidl had was no good at all, so we decided to barbecue instead. Wasn't cold much outside, so why not. I didn't want to bother with the paper kindling, that's got to be as damp (and it sure was, she brought me a rolled-up sheet and it barely burned), so I rather gathered the walnut twigs and fired it up with that small burner, to use up the gas can. It went miserably, weak is the flame. After some fifteen minutes of trying, I took the other burner, for soldering, which we bought five years ago, and got it burning in two minutes. The barbecue's wobbly legs I freshly tightened with cross-wiring... triangles are always stable.
We served the sweet cherry, while it lasts. Linda and then even more Sanda have appropriated Dragana, to brag how they also have nails polished, in two or three colors etc. Then posed for her to take a few shots, then Sanda danced a number... the whole programme.
Borče dug from somewhere a story about the brother of Milosava, whom I remember well, and Paja also mentioned him, he was some legend on šećerana. By just the choice of words he used to announce him, I guessed whom he had in mind. The part I learned now is that the guy played guitar, and even composed, played his songs to the kids in the neighborhood (check the article about šećerana, on that special block of houses), and then was very picky on whom will he let sing his songs, for which he never took a dime.
This time it was Borče and Dragana who got into a hot dispute over AV and whether he had a valid reason to proclaim the results of the constitutional changes referendum, which were nearly irrelevant - it's that the judges don't get a three year trial before becoming perpetually judges, like they had so far. There was never a case when the parliament refused a candidate put up by the high juridicial council, nor one when a judge had failed the three year trial. So difference is nil. The point is whether it was proper for AV to announce the percentage of yays and nays, as if dictating for the electoral commision which numbers to produce, and whether he did that as the president of the state or his party... the latter would be okay in elections, every party announces its own numbers, but this is not an election... All in all we could just have made some popcorn and enjoy the show. Previously it was her vs Borče and Dragana and I in the audience.
Reading Prače's Night guard... the translation (from 2002) says in one place „Koliko dvojici treba vremena da iskopaju rupu?“ - how long does it take two guys to dig a hole. Which is exactly the essence of the old quip „have you ever seen half a hole?“ from 01-VIII-1971.. Wow. And this is not the first time that translators of Prače use jokes which I thought everyone else forgot... specially that „nogekako“ (legs how) instead of „nego kako“ (how else), which Klajn used in his translations of Asteriks.
New games appeared for us slowpokes... wordle in english, and very soon rečko in cyrillic too. Since it's more or less the game of mastermind, which I did a lot in spring 1976, the kind of problem to solve is quite familiar to me, it's just not above the set of all possible variations of 6 colors over 4 slots, it's 5 characters from a set od 26 (or 30), but the combinatory explosion is avoided by the allowable sets being limited by dictionary. So not the same problem but a similar way to solve. There's already a separeate topic on burundi where we exchange experiences, scores etc. Good fun, and it's good that they do one a day.
On fourth the three dee pen arrived, which is a fancy glue gun, with a plastic thread instead of a stick of plastic to melt, and which is adjusted better - it can go faster/slower, colder/hotter, and has a little motor pushing the thread. Made in China, imported from Russia and, by some miracle, everything, but literally everything on the package is in russian - box, manual, booklet. The booklet is rubbish, some picture book with deformed cartoon animals. But three dee cartoons... rendered in two dee, of course, but at least they don't look flat.
She made wings for some of the girls' dolls, to start with.
Now since the walnut is gone, we'll have more sunshine in the back yard, so she started planning a handy garden, and then also some for Klincaid. We'll see about the latter, if we notice any more theft, I'll weld barbed wire on top of the whole chainlink fence, and either way I'll cut all the branches that can be used as handholds along the fence wall. She already did the seed inventory, and found hundred tricks how to grow a plant out of almost nothing - potato, garlic, onion... Here, it's already sprouted in the kitchen, we'll have green onion soon. In the back there's garlic, which already grew some yellowish leaves in the fridge, now it's also growing some roots.
The soil was the problem. The compressed substrate I got from detelina last year was bad, very little sprouted from it, so instead we decided to shave off the molehills from the kid's playground at the beginning of our street. But one day it was rain, other day the wind, so nothing yet. That is, we could do it alone, but if we're going out, we better take the girls. For three days the weather was lousy, full november, and they stayed inside, to drive us all mad. Every now and then they fight over momentary ownership of some thing, shout and screan...
On sixth, she poked (with their help) three rows of onions by the frontside path. We'll see.
On seventh Violet ate four eggs. Twice two, scrambled. I could never eat more than three, even without bread. Dad could, though, I remember him complaining, few months before the end, how his appetite faltered, after three eggs he couldn't go through with the fourth.
In the evening there was the 67th frendz parti at Dragana's. Good fun, the dispute continued. I recorded a few minutes of it, just to preserve a sample of the athmosphere. Didn't try to listen to it, what for. Maybe someday.
After two shots of rakija she served, as usual, the main dish - pohovano wings. We applied ourselves to it, it was good. Then we switched to wine, three bottles we emptied (she bailed out, had two dark Budvars). Just when Dragana took out the fourth bottle, we said it was enough... and really, when I felt the insides of me, I found that it was true - one more glass would have spoiled the balance. When we came down I discovered I didn't know where my phone was, must have left it on the table. I could go a week without a phone, though, and Borče could have called a cab for us, but I don't mind climbing one flight of stairs once more. And it turned out I didn't forget it - it was in my shirt pocket, where I forgot to check.
(the gray cube behind me is the three rental apartments block that Zvezdana builds... I hope she'll paint it to have some look)
On ninth the weather was finally good for the expedition to the other end of the street. I pushed the wheelbarrow and a shovel on it, and for the last third of the trip I put the girls in too. Some guy in that area has a pony, and just then he took it out for a stroll. They were amazed, and weary, stayed well away. It may be a small horse, but it's still more than three times their size. Even the owner had to watch for sudden moves and counter them with a pull of the rope. If he were caught unawares, he'd kiss the ground on the spot. Nice horsey, really.
We collected some 40 liters of soil off the molehills, and the wheelbarrow was hard to push. Actually the load was far back, on the handles. Once I shuffled it, the push got much easier, though quite top-heavy, any little sideways move tended to become big. The girls expected a ride back too, and were suddenly so very tired :).
Tenth in the morning Sanda came to brag - she had six rings (... 11 word...) on her fingers, laid them close to my face and victoriously exclaimed „Dragana“. In the afternoon we went to Springfield and stayed quite long. They licked up a small pizza, barely left any corners for us. The weather being nice and the sun still low, the rays come at a good angle, so during a smoke break I composed yet another autopatch... for my own pleasure. I also shot a much bigger one in the playroom, for suština (where Škrba had a bout of writing which lasted a whole week, almost, and then he stopped; Boća wrote perhaps one since, the rest was mine, and even that isn't much).
On eleventh it was so warm that even Raja sat outside, almost half an hour. The remaining tripod of the walnut, which I plan to use for something, we pushed to the other side of the yard, on top of the heap of branches by the terrace, so the end by the chicken coop is now free and she can launch her garden. We then drove off to foliAprom* to buy some garden stuff - the alcoholometer that she accidentally broke while maneuvering around the kitchen when she was making soap; a sack of perlit; any seeds that she was missing and whatnot. Sanda and Linda, of course, came in with us. There's a decent runway in the shop, they have to unroll the foyil (if it's not folija but rather folia, then apply the process to the translation too) to measure and cut. So they ran there for a while, moved the „mask mandatory“ sign around to dozen positions. Then we went for a walk to the nearby park, the same where two of us had our secret places in 1973 and 1974... and now all the bushes are gone. Poor young people nowdays.
The girls ran around the monument, climbed up and down... and then when we were approaching the playground, I noticed some grandfather sizing me up, as in „we probably know each other“. Well, he knew me, and I didn't him, until he said his full name, then we switched to nicknames right away - he's Š. from DC-99. It's not that we haven't seen each other for almost fifty years, more like twenty-some, he was the IT guy in a small company, customer of Avai, and we spent one endless afternoon in 1998. when we networked his three machines under IP, and it just wouldn't work, or when we got it to work, it wouldn't survive a reboot. That's when I swore to carve a slot in the back of that Z. guy's of CompuWiz if he ever delivers another Realtek 8126 card... the worst trash I ever saw.
He's looking okay, his dandy smile still at hand, but he's somehow weak, everything's getting hard to do. Says he already feels better for nice weather, not wearing the fur coat and boots but a simple jacket and regular shoes. Same reason he didn't carry a camera, it's heavy. Said I'll see in five years, when I get to that age...
The girls were hungry and wanted a pizza. Well there's the Verona nearby, three blocks away, we ate there a few times nine years ago, and Saracena next to it, twelve ago... let's go there. But parking is complicated and charged by the hour there, so we drove on to Mala Amerika, there's the Roma, we often ordered from them. They do have two parking slots reserved for the customers, but first you see the no parking sign, and once you read that permission includes you, you're already 40m down the road. Didn't feel like reversing that much, and didn't like any of the places where I could do an U-turn, so instead we picked Venecija, the next pizzeria, 50m on. And, surprisingly good it was, the team is young and investing some effort. And just like the other day at Springfield, the girls ate it all, save for the topping (we took a kapričoza, as then we too get something to eat... all the ham and cheese on the few bits of burnt edges, quite rich). We took one margarita from Zaponetti**, so Raja and Violet had some surprise treat when we got home, and Linda also had another slice of that. It vanished within immediately.
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* for entirely engrbian reasons, it's not properly Folija... the j is so unwestern. So I'm pronouncing it as it's written, just like I'm not pronouncing Idea (a supermarket here) as ideja - because it doesn't have the j - but rather as eedea, to rhyme with eekea and neevea. And, BTW, it's completely irrelevant that in english it's not folia, it's foil - the whole point of engrbian is not to insert english, it's to expell one's own.
** „za poneti“ - to carry along, i.e. take out
Mentions: 01-VIII-1971., Avai, Božidar Sokolović (Boća), burundi, CompuWiz, DC-99, detelina, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), engrbian, frendz parti, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Klincaid, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milosava Pajdački, Paja Čkaljević, pohovano, rakija, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), Springfield, suština, šećerana, Violet, Zvezdana, in serbian
1-III-2022 - 21-V-2026