14-V-2024.
I have finally, at least three years after noticing that something was wrong, fixed the bug in statcounter.prg, where it calculated the forecast for the year from the last counter before actually writing it, so it was multiplying the one before the last (not older than 24h) with the number of seconds in the year and divided that with the number of seconds between start of year and the moment of writing it... so it was always some tiny percent off and was hard to notice. The only strange artefact I noticed was when the monthly forecast falls but the annual one increases, hmmmm.... So there, I finally fixed it.
Yesterday we were thinking of when and where to go these days, and what to eat, when to go to garden etc... so I said „Let's do kaštel“. (... 19 words...) then we set it for today, but not for lunch, for which she put together a soup of her homemade cubes, and baked some swirls of young cheese in filo dough (bought frozen) and opened a jar of also homemade chutney of figs and blackberries, we'll go there for dinner.
In the afternoon we pondered what to do, as the rear right tyre on the Joda flattened out. Well I saw it getting lower even foreyester, but forgot by the time we returned home. Found the yellow foot pump in the van, pumped it up, called Optima to see if they're too busy, she said just come. So I went, and there was just one guy working alone, and for once they really weren't busy. He took off the wheel, found the screw in it, said „this should be it... should I screw it in tight to stop the hole or should I take it out?“. At that moment I pulled out a cigarette and lit it up, he took out the screw, stuffed the glued rubber spaghetto in the hole, pumped it up, wrote the bill, then we went to Vanja to pay but she was away, what now, then he said „if you have exactly 500 dinars, just pay me and don't have to wait...“, so okay, I maneuvered out, drove those 3,5km to home, and there finished the cigarette on the terrace. Some speed it was, or are our cigarettes so long.
we went to Klincaid, she planted what she had (green beans, cucumbers, corn to boil...) and I mowed the street lawn and part of the front yard. I picked some of the cherries from the big one, but that's just a sample, the bulk of it is not properly ripe. Nothing big gets stolen anymore these days, it seems our shouting at the neighbor last fall helped some, but there are still traces of entry - a cherry in the part of the gonk where we surely didn't throw it, and a roll of toilet paper went missing. Just in case, the new hose is the grass color and is hidden in it, one needs to almost step on it to notice it.
I also got started with MMS, just as a mouthwash, because this saturday my wisdom tooth woke me up, the upper left, the one which is still rather whole and gets the job done. Again like the rest of that line of teeth, it's not a toothache but a headache, in a similar pattern, just slightly away from the old locations. I went down, smeared some dijemeso* on my cheek, went up, played some bejewelled2, waited for it to pass, went back to sleep... and then couldn't, because my nose was swollen inside (actually a good thing, this was the first winter in the last six when it didn't happen), and then she had her fits of cough... when I finally got asleep, stayed so until noon. (... 35 words...), so Stanley and I stayed to watch Stari Drek** - Deep Shit 9, third season's finale, had total of two shots of that mystery tutifruti.
And then around 18 we took for kaštel. Neša was complaining, grumbled, didn't feel like going, while Anita was eager to go. My ladies even dressed up, and we just sat in the van and drove off. And we even took a bunch of shots at the parking... but then the gate was locked. The notice said „entrance through the reception [desk]“. I know where it is, it's in the corner, has a window facing the yard. Walked to the other gate, also locked. And I saw the lights on in the kitchen, windows were open... so I said quite aloud, perhaps someone inside heard a bit, „you can't enter normally here now, it takes special instructions... well if I didn't need any for these fifty years, I surely won't start learning now how to enter, let's go to 'Stara dunja'!“.
And we did so. There were perhaps three vehicles parked when we arrived, and these were probably stragglers from lunch; by the time food arrived, wer were alone with the waiter. For Neša we ordered a gulaš (because on monday she licked up baba's one, i.e. he liked it), for Anita a soup, and the rest of us couldn't quite decide, so we asked for something 'de best ov', to pick what's good and serve it on an oval. It arrived on a plank, and was good, they drank Erdinger (mother and son in law) and dark Budvár (Go), there was a bit of dill sauce and cherry sauce, waiter recited the content of the plank... The setting sun shone through the terrace, made the photographing treacherous, lots of counterlight, but at least the kids' shots turned out excellent. And the bread was fresh, straight from the furnace, homemade, the crust crunchy stc. At least that's what the gist of what the waiter said, though I don't remember whether the 'straight from' was actually pronounced, it could have been just half baked and finished now, or was the furnace only being stoked now for the dinner... that is, while leaving we saw the cook work around the fire. It was alread 20:30 when we left, not a living soul on the parking, so it's possible that he was just cleaning up the ashes.
All in all, it was good. I committed a tactical error, (... 45 words...). Second, (... 51 word...), that asking for 'd best ov' was wrong as we got what they had and were charged as if don't know what etc etc. Regardless, Neša cleaned off the rest of his gulaš in the morning, before going to sleep; the mangulica (mangalia pig, all the rage now) was more bone than meat but had a nice smack, and the second steak was just like the first. The bread was just a little less good the next evening, had the same faults as when it was fresh, to differ from other tavern bread which is usually made by special order, so it's immensely attractive when fresh, and then doesn't hold for longer than a few hours before turning into the same shit like any other bread. So let's chalk this as a plus.
At least I pushed through my suggestion to go to Sokobanja when we grab a window between cherries and cherries, i.e. if we be lucky to put it into barrels to ferment, and then be able to be away for four days in a row, as soon as my parastos passes. A propose of which both Bajlo and Dragana called in the recent days, so I can't separate what I heard from whom. They seriously differ in her saying we won't hold a class (because she went to history archive to take the class log book out, and got some nasal shit from all the dust and mold there) and him saying that we'll have one (Mima will go get it), that the academy will be in the solemn hall of the city hall because the theatre told us to fuck off, that Sonja won't come, not feeling well, and that I should have 3600 exactly in cash, she doesn't want to fuck around with small money. Whoa, it seems the inflation is more serious than we thought, or is that amateur band asking for some good cash. We'll see.
(... 32 words...)
The next day's lunch was a pork fish čorba. For the occasion I picked the first bolivian [chili pepper] from my pet plant, which I watered all winter in the window of the upper bathroom, a strong one. Our scalps sweated right on, on both Stanley and me.
Then we two went to Klincaid. I covered her next garden patch with soil (namely moss, molehills and what I scraped off from the concrete), where she had already laid the dry broken weed and tobacco stalks, and which she'll then cover with hay (which I already stacked up in three places on previous two visits), and she plans to do more potato and whatnot there. She was planting sweet corn, green beans, cucumbers. I picked a kilo and a half of cherries, from that tree on the street, first to the driveway, that one's somehow early. I froze my butt off, it was windy and I felt dizzy, the wind was swaying the branches around me.
At sGradlj.com there was a record visit, around 14000 in one day (as per the host's counter, now whether it's the bots having gotten into the swing, I don't find relevant). As per the old counter, it never happened to have more than 11000 in a month. The forecast for this year, corrected now, stands at 1.450.000...
Talked with Lena in the evening, they're taking off to Cyprus on 17th. Milan is ready to leave the Frankfurt firm and move to her Finns, the negotiations are going on, he was supposed to talk with her boss but the guy fell ill. It's his birthday, so as usual he took his dad for dinner, that's their rite.
Then Nina called, and we helped her convince Sanda to finally take a bath, having had the last one while still here. In the meantime she did manage to talk Raja and then Violet into it, so the two remained. The problem is that they all have such good hair, that a month or two without contact with water doesn't hurt the looks a bit. Convincing eventually worked out, and on thursday morning (16th) we saw a shot of them two in a tub, a success. Another success, Sanda learned how to spin a coin. Though, not the way I taught her, with two fingers from above. She props the coin and holds it by the top with one finger, then gives it a čvrga on the rim by the other hand.
On sixteenth drove Go, Stanley and Anita to buy stuff - the hdmi cables first, we'll need them for the projector (meanwhile cleaned of soot), and also for the television set, if we'll hook the playstation into it. Went to Fedra, but nope, it was closed already, but at least we did a joyride, to see all the possible novogradnja which sproited meanwhile, apartments apartments and now even on ruža and 25. maj and all the way to downtown one can't find a place to park. As much as three building now peek into the yard of Zmaj, which spent previous sixty years at ease, surrounded by backyards and little gardens.
Went to Lidl, where my memory started working all of a sudden, I remembered everything she said, and on top of that bought 10kg of sugar, will need it for the rakija. Bought also icecream and chargeable batteries (not 3600 but 2500 milliamperhours, but cost near nothing). Met Bogdan, didn't recognize me, maybe at second sight, maybe not even then but just pretended. Well never mind, may your health serve you, you'll remember, there are days ahead.
And I found the cable in Metalac's shop in Roda's lobby, while they were buying clothes for Anita in the Rerso (it says Pepco there, but it would read 'peptso' if it were not cyrillic, who'd name it thus). In the years when two shops and a kiosk were selling mobile phones and stuff in that lobby, they never had esdee cards nor cables, now these guys, who sell pots and pans, have them. Go figure.
Then it turned that the projector is working, even its remote is working (on batteries seven-eight-ten years old), but the software in the projector is a screwup, cycling in some stupid loop, showing the movie for a couple of seconds, then turning the light off, going through steps in some internal cycle for a couple of minutes, then showing another three seconds, repeat. We'll watch it on the teevee.
On eighteenth we managed to talk Neša into moving his ass out of the room and we all went to Klincaid. We first stopped by Bob the brzožder and got a pljeska for each of us, which took some while while we all said what we wanted on it. Stanley neatly recited his list of ingredients in fluently pronounced serbian, even the emphasis was not wrong), and when we got there, around noon, we first ate that and then went to cherrypicking. We even made a coffee break, though we didn't have enough cups, it didn't cross my mind to provide one for Neša, so we two shared one coffee half and half. All in all this was a good outing, and we got the job done, picked about 55kg, just enough for one batch of rakija. By dusk we two squished that, by hand, into the barrel, ending up with lots of purplish-red spots on our faces, hands... Which we washed out later, of course, (... 51 word...). There I had a weird moment of partly fainting, the already familiar feeling as if when coughing on empty lungs and lacking oxygen, gray cloud in my head despite the dark, this time accompanied with strange deafness, where I couldn't recognize my voice, i.e. I recognized half of the fricatives but still didn't understand my text... so I lied and waited for it to pass. And so it did, a couple of minutes later, when I took enough breaths. And then we switched to apricot when the wisdom tooth's shift started, and my nasad cavity swelled somewhere inside, so it's some headache, mouth breathing, sipping rakija, smoking and feeling nice... At least I slept fine, the tooth was fucking my head less, it hurt less than last sunday.
Meanwhile, Lena and Milan arrived at Cyprus, got their room, waddled in the pool, sent a couple of shots.
On nineteenth they were supposed to dine at Dražen's, the argentinian ćevapčići he promised so many times and never made them, and so in the end they forced him to promise, probably when they met downtown the other week, or in a chat later. So let's see that miracle after all... but nope, all of a sudden his granny is not feeling well, well nothing, some other time. Once you call his bluff and there it goe. Then he sends that he actually made them but screwed it up, forgot to add the vegeta, and yet he can't send a picture because... well he doesn't even know how to lie properly.
In the evening I finally achieved some score on that russian bejewelled2, 8,9 million (it calculates somewhat differently and has also a couple of additional gimmicks), and now I don't know when will I play that again, it requires either quite a concentration or it can be played mindlessly, without much attention. In this case the latter worked, we sat all four upstair, everyone to one's own screen. Go set her laptop on the second shelf from Lena, which they also put together meanwhile, so now there's room for three people on the simpić (the three-seater); Stanley sits with her and reads this and that on his phone; I'm on a chair to the mac, and she's in that fire corner with gugolj. We chat, have fun, sip our drinks, he found nikšićko crno (black, i.e. dark beer), he just loves to walk with Anita to the supermarket on the corner, impossible in America.
Džimi's kittens, all five, progress nicely. She sprays their eyes with that MMS solution, and their eyes opened, even on those where they were quite glued from the puss, which seems to be our endemic ailment. Zelena's four are still in the garage, few weeks younger, looking even better.
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* DMSO, pronounced as dijemeso, is 'di je meso', where's the meat.
** Star trek, aka stari drek - old dreck
Mentions: 25. maj, Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Bejewelled2, Bogdan Levacki, čorba, čvrga, ćevapčići, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Dražen, gonk, Gorana Sredljević (Go), gugolj, homemade, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, kaštel, Klincaid, maturski parastos (parastos), Merima Tabarski (Mima), Milan Nastić, Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), novogradnja, pljeska, rakija, ruža, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sGradlj.com, Sonja Savković, Stanley Berger, statcounter.prg, tutifruti, Violet, Zmaj, in serbian
13-VI-2024 - 5-VII-2026