15-IX-2024.
In the evening we again shared a tiny blossom in a cigarette, and fell nicely asleep afterwards. Combined with ernafil it caused my nasal cavity to swell again in the morning, the vasodilatator's aim isn't exactly precise, so fuckit, I woke up at six. Then I sat by the keyboard until before lunchtime, then catnapped for a hefty hour. When she woke me up, I thought it was 13:30 already, but nope, it was 11:30, panic in vain. Didn't lunch, because Lena said they'll order something, took just a few bites of spam just to cheat my stomach, and so we drove off into the rain, finally rain. It's a sunday, no congestion. Stopped in Čenta to fill the Joda, with now steady rhythm of one tank every two months, made it there in time. Now with the rain, people didn't disperse out, and just when I thought parking will be trouble, I saw my spot was vacant. The curb is taller there, people fear not to break off something beneath, Joda doesn't mind.
When we arrived, Stojan was already there, with Tanja in his hands, got ahead of me. She's over 5kg now, and this time I'd dare to take her into my hands, but he came first. She's growing nicely, everything as it should be, pretty child. And as Milan said, „gifted! I don't get it where that comes from, when they say about a baby that it's gifted, how did they see that, the gift for what exactly...“. He's about to begin working on first, for some London outfit.
So then I took her in my hands. A baby like any other, but then... it's been long since I last held one so small, they usually when they're several months older. Truth be told, both Raja and Violet were just as old when we met, around two months, but they were much heavier, both large and taut. At least [my] dear took a shot of me as grampa.7, to have that trophy too.
The takeout joint where they meant to order from was too busy, two hours worth of queue, so they ordered barbecue from Valter, which is right across in Ušće [shopping mall], which arrived relatively fast but with one box short, one pljeska was missing. Stojan orders two packs of ćevap for himself, says it's just 250g and it loses some weitht when roasted, one is not enough for him, he's 120kg. And one can se he's a reporter, the way he shapes his questions and then waits for you to say what you have, and then keeps staring at you for another half a minute to see if you'll add more. He got me there a few times, but then I kept staring at him or just grabbed the shooter or watched what Tanja was doing.
On the way back, of course, we dropped by Mere, ran out of sour [water, aka mineral], and they had flour, the other type, cat food (made of poultry, why never of mice?), peanuts. Got home right on time, around seven.
Did the photos, hung them on Dropbox, and then okay, shared my trophy with rasejani, and, why not, with Boća. Then Dragana called about tomorrow night, and I must have the fresh shots in my phone :).
Few hours later Boća noticed that I wrote, and went all soft-eyed on me there...
he: The best job in the world!
me: SEVENTH :)
he: Yes, I know. May there be a few more.
me: may we be alive and hale to see that... well it's a joy as is already
he: These of mine have completely failed on that question. And that's my only wish left. They seem to think I'll live eternally.
me: when you give such an impression, fuckit
he: Fuck what we come like across, enough years have cropped up. And there we can do nothing.
me: and it's no use to explain to them what they need to do, they already know.
he: It's that they refuse responsibility. Their brains are washed out. Do you think they ever asked themselves what is it that is worth living and working?
me: sure they did, but I'm better off not knowing what answer they may have reached.
he: Well, what you said, I may be disappointed even more then.
On monday Jan finally noticed he was reinstated at UA. So then I helped him log in, because in the meantime the site's url was changed... How many years was it that he was kicked out, dang. And then we had to tell Kees how it even happened that he got kicked out (second time, at that) from the forum, and what kind of nutcase was the cause.
Later in the afternoon I finally moved my butt to write the email archive combing routine, to make digging out the materiel for Byo easier than it is now. I already had that written in fox, but can't count on that anymore. It's not as much that it's so slow in parsing, it's that it can't finish the job, as it's limited to two gig sized files, and I already have a few which are larger. I got ready pieces of code in python, there's an email archive parser, which is amazingly good. It's a whole miracle how it copes with various kinds of shit in there, because the email standard is, ahem, something with a rich history, there's all kinds inside. I did write some initial proof-of-concept for it, just to see that it can open it and extract emails from it, and then let it sit and kept postponing and postploning, until now. Just when it was coming close to the interesting part, to finally let it run and see what I get, the time drew near to go to the frendz parti. I poured a liter and a half of the oldest tutifruti, 20.1, she made more cigarettes, packed the wine into the fancy paper bag and then wrapped it into a plastic bag, not to risk the rain soaking it and bottle dropping out. And just when we gained momentum for a good walk, a neighbor stopped by, offering us a ride. It's that trucker who brought our greenhouse arches twelve years ago. Well okay to the busodrom, so we can at least have these three minutes of chat, we were just asking ourselves where he was, don't see him much, daughters too. In that little time we had our fill of talking - he fixed both eyes, the cataract is gone, drives the truck, girls in high school already...
Disembarked at the bus [station], I tried to add money to my mobile, she bought a Burda, didn't for a long while. For the mobile it won't accept the payment. Well well... maybe that law by which one must register even a prepaid number is finally enacted, no more anonymous, eh? We'll see.
So we arrived to Dragana some good twenty minutes ahead of time, poured and started drinking, and called Borče right away that he may just come right away. He, then, arrived as late as 19:50 because he had some talk with daughter, then on the way met some girl whom she didn't see in years, didn't even know where she was, so took the opportunity to talk with her at length.
What we planned to go to Dom to see the theatre show, they two misremembered as being on the thirtieth, but my dear has a better recall, said twentieth. They checked and there it was, indeed. We gave Borče the money, he'll get the tickets. There's a chance for a smaller gathering of mathematicians, before the main one. I know from my talk with V.G. while waiting for van inspection, she said the little Živana is here until second of october, so it means whomever they manage to grab meanwhile. I offered the van, for both this time and the main gathering, because I think we'd fit into it and it'd be much easier to park one vehicle than four. We'll see, I'm waiting for them to schedule a date and to start sending emails and make calls, the rest is not my concern.
The talk just flew, there was no times when one couldn't get the floor, we even had the chance to talk extensively about the chlorine dioxyde and how it was the first thing that managed to cure the kittens' eyes, they were always rheumy. Now what we're regularly taking ourselves, we didn't notice much of a change, cause fuckit we were healthy before as well.
The dispersal occured at almost two in the morning, the conversation had a momentum, and our cab driver was verbose as well.
On tuesday I managed, in incremental steps, to complete the email combing, so then I'll be able to gather the emails by date or whatever, for Byo, without having to chase them through those alleged folders. Same as any such raking, it found all kinds, dates/times with impossible values - from second century (happened for two weeks on aman's server, emerged now), or with time of 28:55 or without a colon or with A.D. after the year (six of those), and there's not one field which didn't have some binary shit in it, which the parser would classify as header class where a string was expected. And again, in the 180000 record there's about a hundred of such errors, and still the code had to check the validity for each such field on each of them. Lucky me, being my own boss on the project, I didn't even try to fix anything, just wrote there's no value. I don't care if I don't have all the records, I just want to have enough of them, to remember from.
We meant to go to the garden on wensday, but my catnap after lunch took longer than intended, almost two hours, so going then would be no use, few hours remain to the dusk. Then I noticed that Borče called, called him back, said the tickets were sold out long ago, so when should he come to return the money. No prob, we'll get them when the time comes, and have others for the meantime (of course, as in the morning I finally went to pay out the bills and finally had success with the serekeš - once I couldn't park anywhere, next time it didn't work, and this time I saw it was a brand new [one], with the touchy screen), and what inflation would eat until then, it would eat it the same, my pocket or yours.
Seeing how the show is off, we'll have our vacation this weekend. The plan was to night twice on Palić, but then she remembered the city tavern in Sombor, where we of DBA dined so many times, though dead tired after work, and she even never went to Sombor, so okay let's go there first. And we should bring passports, if we get bored we could drop by Szeged. Okay, deal. And what if that meeting with little Živana happens just then? Well it won't, they can't organize so quickly, and won't do that on a weekend, and even if I miss it, big deal, saw her last year, and I'll see the others in a few weeks.
On thursday we went to Klincaid to pick the last of fruit. It looked like it'll be a trip for nothing, until we took a better look and she said to collect all the little peaches, regardless of how they look on the outside, inside they all have what it takes and we'll sort them out anyway when we take out the pits, which we'll do sitting and not crouching under the low laid branches and guessing which ones are good. And then it turned out that there were lots of pears too, so instead of barely filling one small bucket, we filled two, plus one big [one]. As we were out there extraordinarily early, and pitted and sorted it all right after returning, we completed the work in less than five hours, and the amount is two stills. Which we now don't know when it will be ready, the night temperature falls all the way to 11°, who knows what the speed of fermentation will be.
Mentions: aman bre, Božidar Sokolović (Boća), Byo (Byo), ćevapčići, DBA, Dom omladine, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), fox, frendz parti, Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, Kees de Cock, Klincaid, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milan Nastić, pljeska, rasejani, Ryu (Raja), serekeš, Stojan Nastić, Tanja Nastić, tutifruti, UbiquAgora (UA), Violet, in serbian
16-IX-2024 - 5-VII-2026