30-VIII-2022.
Phantasy stuff with squash, because the crop is rich, don't want to let them go to waste, and we love them anyway. On twentyfourth it was stuffed squash, nice juicy and a new entry in the list of dishes which are nice while hot, and when cold also nice but differently.
The rear hub on her bike is getting stuck, and the majstor would probably charge another few thousand, so the total repairs for this bike would come to an amount for a new one, so we said it's enough, it served its twelve years, new one will be bought. At least there'll be spare parts for my bike.
I distilled that half a barrel of mush, the yield was miserable two liters. Such is the year.
On twentysixth Marinko came up with some js problem, or with some tool that he's using... Not that I couldn't help him, this is stuff that I don't even understand, couldn't even play auntie Emma.
On twentyseventh the zmajček budged. That is, it lost the 2T SSD when new Mint got installed, partition table gone. Screwup in the process. So then I searched (not googled, from Gugao not even a pencil sharpener, it's duckduckgo now) and found some testdisk app, which coolly found and rebuilt the partitions, keeping the contents intact. All done in five minutes - one minute of despair, two minutes of search and RTFM, two minutes to install, run and check the results.
On twentyeighth I completed the Mobian on the phone, did the keyboard layouts right, for both cyrillic and latinic, with wide variants too (all the same, just the proportion numbers differ). In the afternoon went to Klincaid. Didn't even try the hidrofor - it is the eight day of raining on and off, but I don't expect it to reach lower layers so fast. I pushed the mower to get rid of fresh saplings of accacia, while they're still small. She picked plums and some grapes, peaches and apples, will make another half barrel. Two here, two there...
In the evening sent hundred bucks to Neša, tenth birthday.
She made some kind of omelette from shredded squash, mushrooms and ground meat, we licked our fingers. The nextt day we ate it as jučetina (see house dictionary), buf with the fresh sauce she made out of yesterday's bucket of tomatoes. She added a few hot peppers - one regular feferon*, and some 3-4 smaller bolivians, which are rated thrice more, at around 30K scovilles.
On twentyninth I chopped those plums, squeezed the grapes (bean by bean, with fingers), and eventually added a kilo of figs. We don't manage to eat them, and they're small and the tree is harder to reach now, with all the rain, soil has become softer, borderline mud. Don't want to let them go to waste. I'm wary of adding figs to rakija, they tend to have too strong a taste and cover all else. But that's when they are dried; these were fresh off the tree, the way I like them, so I guess they wouldn't.
Nina and Vera went to the gym at 16:00, and returned by 18, under a sizable downpour, spotty though - two blocks under drizzle, two blocks torrent. We packed a liter and a half of cherry, sticking to what bottles we have - when we run out of the big ones, it will be liters and that's it. We needed the umbrella up to that gym, and sweated the left of the way, it being very muggy. When she came out of the Roda with the wine, there was a neat rainbow in the east, on a huge dark cloud for background. But it rained somewhere else.
We sat again (at 81st frendz parti) so that the AC blew on us, and within an hour we were finally dry. Borče had some theories on math again, which then led to relativity, then to quantum and string theories, stating that the guys at Cern found (and photographed!) more than two hundred particles which the smallest particle, the atom, is made of, to which I concluded that they must be larger than it (with which he agreed at least twice, considering a benevolent voice from the audience to be a sure sign of support and not quite listening to what I said)... and I can't possibly remember where he went with it. At least I remembered my colleague from mašinska who first studied law, saw that it's not for him, and switched to maths and graduated that, a really rare case. Well Boba first passed the master law studies and ended up programming.
Two funny bits - one, when I showed up my new phone, where almost nothing works but at least SMS does, and it dials. Though I'm not sure about the connection and voice, it keeps buzzing (but no sound) when I hang up.
The bigger bit was when it came to health issues and blood pressure, who measures it regularly and who doesn't - turns out only Borče does, as per advice of Paja, who even prescribed him some meds and then kept reducing the dosage as the years went. She said it's pointless, he could stop altogether to the same effect. Dragana said she should measure regularly, she's taking such meds for at least 30 years, but she never remembers to take out the gauge... so okay let's do it now. She refused, she's not interested in knowing her pressure; the two of them both had around 140 by 80 or so, and I had 105 by 68, a tad low, but I got praised as the youngster among us. I actually wanted to know what would it show after three shots of rakija and a glass of wine.
Split at two. My phone regularly called the cab and got no sound, so Borče called one for us. The cabbie told us how the city fecality aka shitduct has some german new machine to clean them tubes, seems to work by very high pressure nozzle, scrubs the metal or concrete clean, not to be used on plastic or ceramic as it would shred them. But it's not in use at all, they don't have anyone who knows how to operate it, so they use the old one. And the new one cost a million euros.
This morning (30th) I got up at noon. Something made from squash again, this time three-layered ćufte, ground meat in the middle, shredded squash around. Some left for dinner.
Called Žuca in the afternoon, on one side to test the phone, on the other to hear the plans. Didn't hear each other, but she got the three SMS I sent (in cyrillic!). She didn't respond as she was on her bike, in a hurry before the next rain. Then I called her over landline, and learned. IV4 will gather on 17th, same place. We, i.e. IV5pp have the 10th, but she can't come, attends a wedding.
Thirtyfirst. I made a small mess on the phone, put the yaml files with keyboards in the wrong place. Once I noticed and fixed it, it started working right away. Called Aleksandar's wife to ask if she knows whether aunt Milica is still alive, I try to call her every couple of months and never get a response. She may have died but also may have canceled the landline and switched to mobile (unlikely at her age, but not unusual either). She didn't know, she's at a spa with her sister, she'll ask around when she returns.
(... 2 words...)
We went in the afternoon, first to Neša the butcher. Didn't buy much, he kept pointing out which of his wares aren't of proper quality, bought just a couple of his sausages and some bacon. Then we walked over to ruža, where some guy took over the old big supermarket, and sells bicycles there. It's dark, he's one of those who put stickers all over the windows. He's got lots of bikes, but it's all sportsy and mountily, no normal bikes. So we went back to the guy next to Jasmina's former pharmacy (still not sold), and found there one that she liked, nice red and decorated. But, ouch, this is the guy who doesn't take plastic... so I drove off to Bagljaš, easily found a parking spot, and hit a serekeš there. Some broad was yelling at it, because it's set to a 15000 limit. Well, too bad, I need 26500... so I took the fifteen, counting on the 6000 in the other pocket and counting on her having some too. She had, so I didn't have to go to the one at the glass cage. Visited the other serekeš, by our community center, just to see whether it's the general limit imposed by the bank, or is it that special one where they prefer to have a couple of people a day who'll yell at it, rather than have dozens if it runs out of cash too early.
I calculated how long would it take her to get home, so when she appeared in our street, I was ready with the eos70.
In the evening I found out that zmajček was freezing too often, to the point when I'd reboot it thrice in the same hour, or even more often. Dug out that command to see the latest logs, searched for the characteristic error entries, and found out that the mst probable cause would be the cable between the motherboard and the video card. Now there's no cable, the card is plugged in... but, just in case, I shut and powered down the machine, unscrewed the card, wiggled it a bit (didn't remove it quite), plugged it back in, screwed again, booted. I'm writing this on 18th, and I still didn't reboot.
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* Columbus is gulty of a serious language crime, namely calling the peppers after pepper, we still haven't recovered from the confusion, and keep actively adding to it. Feferon is the green (or red, if you let it stay on the vine long enough) long and narrow kind, and the name comes from german Pfeffer, ie. pepper. So the feferoni/pepperoni is the peppers that go into some kinds of sausage or salami. Now Americans think that it's the name of the sausage itself. It is not, but they still keep calling it so.
Mentions: Aleksandar Zarin, aunt Milica, Čedomir Spajin (Paja), ćufte, Dobrivoj Gunaroši (Boba), Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, frendz parti, Gugao, house dictionary, IV4, IV5pp, Jasmina Vlajin, Klincaid, majstor, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Marinko Protić, MPSŠC (mašinska), Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), rakija, ruža, serekeš, Vera Vraneš, zmajček, Živana Armatović (Žuca), in serbian
10-III-2023 - 14-V-2026