07-VII-2024.
On first her sulphur and lye arrived, so she made a solution to patinate the copper. Works right away and excellently and looks really well.
During the regular message exchange among the rasejani, which occurs every summer when pLazić announces his travel plans, it turned out that Lena's future daughter has a stroll scheduled, once it grows big enough for a stroller, with Stinge's son, who was born a couple of weeks ago... Look at that youngster. Later I heard that his maam is Lena's age.
On third and fifth we were at the garden, picked a lot of blackberries, apples, pears, whatever was ripe. There was a good rain before that so we didn't have to water it. Never saw blackberries grow so large, this is some miracle.
On fourth I waited until the sun set behind the neighbor's house, then trimmed the rosemary from the driveway to the garage. It had covered more than half of the path, it was hard to walk around.
The counters for sGradlj.com vanished on first, they were redoing the server, claiming 20-fold speed increase. Okay, this will fuck my statistics a bit... and then they didn't restore the Webalizer but ran AwStats, which provides much better analysis of the same logs. Just when I thought I'd automate ftping the logs and comb them programmatically on my own (my own what?), which would be a lot of busy work, parsing loads of text, yuck. This is better. For a week or two it seemed that the actual visits are few, because this separates them from various crawlers, bots and whatnots much better. Turns out that these have detected new server and leaned on parsing it thoroughly, so for the first two-three days they seemed to make for about 80% of the turnover. Later it settled at around 50% which is actually not so bad at all. And I didn't even have to rework the statcounter.prg much when I decided to tally these separately. Now I have two graphs again, just like when I had a blog ten years ago, or for those two months when I kept separate tabs for Byo.
On fifth we went to Klincaid with the van, so I'd bring the švorceniger, because I needed to mow at the old house too. Having given up on the van's AC long ago, and the temperatures were around 37, we kept the windows open. At about 2km out of time we came to a place where sunflower is on both sides of the road, and a beekeeper parked his hive boxes nearby. I heard some knock, as when a truck in front of you launches a pebble from its tyre, and she started wailing. I pulled over... a bee flew in and stung her. Quick, find some grass to lean on the spot... she picked a few leaves of wild hemp (okay, the old industrial kind, selfsprouting, aka „harmless“), rubbed it in. Her cheek did swell some, it did hurt a bit, and itched for three more days.
Lena told us not to hurry, so some time around noon (on seventh) we first ate one scrambled eggs each (may the eggs be consumed, our hens lay relentlessly, we're running out of space in the freezer, and there's no AC upstairs to make noodles there) so around half two we drove there. Counting on not smoking upstairs, we smoked one before leaving, one along the way, and one on the bench in front of the building. This time I applied headology to parking - counting on the spots in their circular path being taken pedagogically, from closer to farther, then the closer to the exit the higher probability of finding a vacant spot. And it was a good call, found a triple spot, parked with ease. She supplied us with a code for the entrance so we didn't have to yank her to open us.
We thought Milan would be absent, their kum is baptizing their child, but he was already back when we arrived. So, how was it? „I wouldn't do that“. His attempt, by the way, to get to work where she's working has failed, he fell on some test, where in 30 minutes he was supposed to solve something, which he actually did solve once before, found his old solution, copied needed pieces of code from it, and lost an opening brace at that, and the instructor suggested that there may be one too many closing brace, which sufficed to throw him off beyond the 30 minutes, timeout, fail. But no matter, she found him a few other places. Well, if they wanted, they may just sit and do nothing for two years without feeling any ill effects.
I have an order from Neša to send more cat pictures. Go says he was caressing Waffle onscreen when I last sent a picture. And the twins also ask for more. And twins also ask for more. And what can I do, I make more. Just when I thought I had mane too many of cat shots, look there, a demand.
Api was, amazingly, at ease. We stuck to the instructions and didn't ring the bell, instead I called while we were still outside. Because he goes fairy if anyone rings, which is usually delivery, and barks very loud and scores two victories - the intruder was shooed away, and he got some extra treat, there's always a bite for him. We had planned to dine at Valter, but it was about 35C outside (though, it was quite pleasant under the linden, it's dry and breezy). True, we'd have to walk just some 300m to it, but that's in the Ušće mall, where I don't like entering. Been there a couple of times some ten years ago, it's all gray, steile, agent Smith multiplied long ago, and we saw the lady in red dress already (27-IV-2013.)... And we didn't feel like sitting in the hum of the AC... can't they buy some larger and slower fans, why must they have all that noise. Lena ordered everything by just typing into her phone, then tracked the delivery, which was first scheduled at seventeen minutes, then 28, eventually came out at 40, but we didn't mind. The incredible part is that I recognized the taste of the sarajevo ćevapčići, exactly the kind I ate at Ejub Mrkva's in 1969 and/or 1973. The recipe does yield a precise result, just as long as one sticks to it. The somun was, of course, not even close to the then one, fries were limp, but still good this way.
Her belly is, naturally, quite sizable and taut. Says it even chafes in places, from inside.
Later she sent us a link to an hour and a half long interview that some two guys did with her, which turned out as miraculously spontaneous. They had as much script as fits one screen, in font readable from meter and a half's distance, and that was enough to keep the conversation from meandering, not getting lost, to have nothing to edit out. Lena was completely relaxed, quite as if talking with us, and as a spectator I was so relevant to myself for having understood everything they said, even though I'm not working for five years already.
By the surname of one of the two guys it crossed my mind... and looking at his facial features... well, should be. I asked Lena whether that guy may have kin in Zrenjanin. She checked and said yes, he's got two uncles. Aha, the first one was in IV3, later the fire warden in stour. Small world, this. And of that warden on last frendz party I heard that he's got a nasty cancer somewhere on the jaw, of which half is already cut out, doesn't bode well for longevity.
On eighth the last batch of mush was ready to distill. I added about a third of dad's evaporated rakija, and we got 7,7 liters despite having just about 50 kg of fruit. But we had all kinds in there - figs, blackberries, pears, apples. But it wasn't as easy as it sounds. Just when I was ready, the fire wouldn't. The gas isn't coming through. What the... looked into it, the beginning of the burner's pipe is rusty. Opened, cleaned the nozzle, still no go. Behind the nozzle... dark, can't see what's in there, just rust. Well to 15:00, went and bought a new one. Of course the nozzle from the old one doesn't fit the new one, it actually has just a hole there, well that's actually easier, it's just that the hole is of wrong diameter. I remembered what we did with the nozzle two years ago... so I took the drill and widened the hole to 2mm. Fires, goes. Finished the first still in two hours, and the second one almost as fast.
Yet another kitten drowned in the vat, this time Zelena's prettiest, which had the half sad half curious way of looking at you. Realy the cats get killed by curiosity. (nope, wasn't him, saw him later, it's some other)
After a break I went to take my turn to be the dežurni by the still, the time was near to cut, I saw that Sanda left three sound messages, totalling around 20 seconds, on Telegram. Left her to answer and went to perform the cut myself. Usually takes two, one has to hold the cup under the pipe while the collecting vessel is emptied, but can do that on my own. I hold the cup at the pipe while I move the vessel away, take a clean tile, lay it on the ground, lower the cup on it, empty the vessel into the big pot, return it to collect the patoka (aka below-grade rakija, the last part of the process). Meanwhile she was talking with Sanda and Linda - something got screwed on their tablets, and Alisha didn't arrive yet (although she's Nina's friend, charges 20$ per hour)... so baba entertained the granddaughters for about three quarters of an hour, until she appeared. Near that time I was also finished and contributed to the last ten minutes of the conversation. The moment Sanda said „here's Alisha, ciao baba“, we lost power...
The power returned five minutes later, and we reported to Nina that everything's fine.
A while later we took the van to the old house to mow the lawn and yard there. From the rubble left behind the thieves she gathered three crates of stuff - mostly stoneware, old Herendi porcelain plates, which I remember from my childhood and which were stashed away for keeping (which succeeded) and replaced with cheaper ones, probably the smuggled ones from Romania. For Nina we dug out some plates with fishes painted, that's what she remembers.
And the accordeon is also on the list of stolen stuff. Dad would be sorry for that, but not I - if in the last fifty years I never laid my hands on it, I surely wouldn't [do that] now. Also anything with feathers inside is gone - pillows, comforters. This narrows down the circle of suspects to the feather traders, the market is very specialized and narrow and nobody else would know how to sell that. Of drinks on the table only the bottles of rakija remained (the 1990 whiskey and 1977 cognac are ciao) and Rubin's vinjak. From the rear pantry the cask with apple is gone, as is most of the wine.
On tenth we went to the garden again, and she had another bee hit her on the same spot, luckily wasn't stung this time. We picked a lot of fruit, at least eight kilos of blackberry, and a bucket of plums and apples. And our neighbor here seems to have recovered, doesn't mention blacks who take videos and doesn't wield a stick and doesn't try to hit targets in Juliška's yard with stones, but offers us apples like before, now that the ripe ones are also falling, if we need them for rakija... Just pass them here, there'll be [something] for you as well.
We archived the van until september. I unhooked the battery so the radio, the one which waits for the key fob signal, won't drain it. See you at the next inspection.
Then I didn't leave the house for two days, sitting inside and going through the old oldwave messages and inserting stuff in Byo in appropriate places, between 1999 and 2008. I actually wanted to find the sezam logs of 24-III-1999.... which I, eventually, didn't find. And I was keeping them just for this. Well, found these instead.
Only I was quite bothered with how I solved insertion of links with cases. At first I did that in a pedestrian manner, by inserting them into the pseudolink (word preceded with an underscore, inside braces) as a colon and the case's ordinal number. But it got complicated over time, when I started adding, e.g. :ppžm2 (prisvojni pridev ženski - posessive adjective feminine, množina - plural, genitive case). Which still went fine over these two-three years since I started doing so, but I didn't set any firm rules, so it would occur that a nominative case plural would be once :1m and once :m1... which my app neatly added both times, making two records... So a few weeks ago I added the second grid into the catal6.prg (now 7, python version) search form, with cases, but solved the transition from the first grid to the second in a clumsy manner. To avoid requerying and refreshing the cases grid each time I typed a character in the first one, I decided to delay its refresh by 400ms after the last keypress... which was a fuckup, I kept forgetting to wait those 0,4 seconds, I'm typing too fast and it'd bring me some intermediate step instead and inser it into text. Well, on thirteenth I finished that, having two forms - if the first finds that the selected word has cases (which it mostly doesn't, in english version), it opens the second one, else it works like before. And it's fast enough, matches my speed.
On fourteenth we went to the garden, picked another bucket or two of fruit, sweated appropriately, even switched our smoke breaks into the front part of the house, behind thick walls and where we don't have to bring the fan, it's already there. The main bulk of events began unrolling when we got back home - Nina was sending some photos, she took the kids out for a sushi. Violet was the only one who succeeded in wielding chopsticks, others need more practice. Raja liked the taste but not the texture, it's all somehow too slippery. The girls loved the frozen yogurt the best, when they went to the Frog next. And look there, the new PS5 arrived... which means the first paycheck just came in, one has, one can. The evening before I managed to take a screenshot of Sanda's dangling tooth, upper left ace, gone now.
Then she told me to run skype, I have a recension of the rakija... and there Kees finally posted some wedding pictures - I see there's Nick, Jan, Briyesh, Suez and one guy who is a complete unknown. They seem to have had chills, despite it being may-june, Briyesh even got something furry on him, they all have some jackets... The rakija was poured into a strawberry juice bottle, which managed to confuse nobody.
She fixed her AC, along the way... using my suggestion of two months ago, which she then forgot, and now the third electrician told her the same thing, and lo and behold, it works. They had lots of rain these months, and each time the rain lingers for long enough, the AC blows a fuse, and keeps blowing it until it's dry enough. That cable goes with some metal pipes with special joints, and is connected in some box, from which it then goes into the house somewhere below. Total of three meters of cable to the main panel, and somewhere along that stretch it gets moist. The suggestion was to cover that box with a plastic bag or bottle, to eliminate it as a suspect. She did so this time, and the turmoil was over. The Beryl hurricane brought them several days of rain, they'd suffocate in the moisture had the AC been broken.
Then in the evening we talked with Go and Stanley. Saw Anita too, she's still stubbornly playing with that dangling tooth, her upper right ace, for more than a year now, still refusing to take it out. There was a problem with mowing the lawn in front of the Virginia Beach house, which one Kenny was supposed to mow, a pal of Rein's from the disableds' workshop, and it turned out eventually that he did mow it, one whole day ahead of the due date. The house keys are nowhere to be found (is that the same as „everywhere to be lost“?), Rein confused the matter thoroughly by replacing the locks a few times, and then had a pal of his stay in the house for a couple of months... So now it's a problem how to sell the house remotely, without even the keys. And by virginian laws, the bare posession of burgling tools is a felony. So it'd take an authorized person, with owner's permission, so... we said why don't they just go there and see how things are, and to arrange the sale. That'd be easier and the kids would get together again. They're already playing together a lot. And it seems they took it as their own plan.
Mentions: 24-III-1999., It began, 27-IV-2013., Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Api, Briyesh Dupta, Byo (Byo), catal6.prg, ćevapčići, dežurni, Gorana Sredljević (Go), IV3, Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Juliška, Kees de Cock, Klincaid, kum, Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Milan Nastić, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Nicolas O'Keefe (Nick), oldwave, pLazić, rakija, rasejani, Reinaldo Aquila (Rein), Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sezam, sGradlj.com, Stanley Berger, statcounter.prg, Stinge, stour, Suez Lima, švorceniger, vinjak, Violet, in serbian
9-VII-2024 - 25-III-2026