28-IX-2024.
Time for seasonal gatherings. For starters, on thursday (26th), to Novi, the small meeting of mathematicians, while little Živana is here. I initially volunteered my van, but in the end it turned out that there'll be just five of us - Borče, his kum, Staša, Stana and I. Regardless, the van needs to be taken out for a walk once in a while, just drive.
So Staša drove to me, left the car here, and we went to pick up Borče, then to Oplenačka for Stana, and through a village for the kum. And once there it was a whoopsy daisy, where to park, it's the Home of JNA aka vojska (now, but still not allowed to be called Srpska Vojska, it's a vojska of Serbia, something akin to a diagnosis), on the quay. Drove around the block, and, behold the miracle, found two spots. Passed the first one, seeing one guy close by in my mirrors, went for the second one. Guessed right, the guy took the first spot. Somehow I threaded myself into it, parallel parking with this van requires a lot of pedal - lots of rev and easy on the clutch, the power steering is off when idling, and it turned out near perfect. Well, finally once, I drive it for six years and still don't think I mastered maneuvering it.
Cica was already there, at 17:01 when we walked down to the restaurant's terrace. The others arrived within ten minutes, alltogether about twelve of us. Even I.G. appeared, whom I guess I never saw since the last class. The parking for the first two hours was paid by Borko, and then at 19 I had to repark, red zone. V.G. went with me, to show me where I can easily catch a new spot, and if that doesn't work, she knows of a yard nearby, but didn't need that, I parked a block away, this time the remaining two hours were her treat, and beyond that it was free of charge.
How we all got old, and then on sunday when I was processing the shots, we all looked better on them than in real life... It was interesting to talk with colleagues, who was where, doing what, and how did all those maths in our heads become an advantage in various seemingly unrelated occasions, sometimes quite unexpected. Even my trick with moving the heavy TA furnace, with shoving two pieces of carpet under it and sliding it across the hardwood - I was not the only one who invented that.
Among the few news I heard, our professor, who held algebra 2 and numela, has died, and some have found in the obituaries that Paja did too.
Of course I bragged about my status of the grand grandfather. I keep carrying Tanja's fresh pictures in my phone... again, what I'm bragging about with most pride is not directly my merit. Along the way, a few got the instructions how to find Byo on the web... and I did notice a jump in the visits a couple of days later.
Got home a bit before 23, and we drank again, three... and a half. The next day I had a longer nap, some unweather was coming up, but that should be today.
On saturday I packed the eos70, phone, cigarettes and five bolivian[ hot pepper]s, and was lucky that she reminded me to take the jacket too. I meant to take it, but while I stuffed the rest into my pockets, I already forgot. Borče arrived with Dragana just on time, so we went to Žitni trg, their traditional staging spot before the parastos. The IV4 seems to not stick strictly to that anymore, they are not a tourist agency nowadays, this term they alternate between the two hunting homes, so this staging on the square makes not much sense anymore. There only we appeared, plus Jozda and Ildika, everybody else went straight there.
The tradition took a sideways turn this year - for one, the main cook is not here, Gavra had a kidney removed on monday, lies in bed at home and recovers. The two who work there would have prepared a gulaš or paprikaš as always, but this time one guy had a birthady - the other Bajlo (same surname, so I asked mine how closely related were they, and got a cubic meter of family wood, a list of hamlets of their ancestral wolffuck herzegovinian village, and which branch was in which, with a remark that the whole lot there isn't larger than eight kilometers), so he brought a roast piglet. Very well done, the skin was just right crunchy.
The personae dramatis, in order of appearance on the shots: Ildika, Jozda, Milica, Žuca, Đusi (who turned into an old motherfucker, walks with a stick and pokes fun around, went on singing quite loudly and well some total mockery of a decameter epic, faking gusle play on his stick; plays cello otherwise, Dragana said that last time he came solidly drunk and just kept adding, devil themselves may know how he drove from Pančevo and even less how he drove back), R. Ć., R. Bajlo, our Bajlo, Ksenija (looks even younger and crazier and in better spirits than last time in may), Gavra (only on video chat over someone's phone, from bed, everyone talked with him), Čarga with his wife, Vlada, V.M., M.B. and eventually J.B., of whom we finally heard that the nickname is Njoka. Later Staša appeared, quite late, was waiting at the barber's (to trim his hair from 5mm to 2mm) and finally the captain, so there was a proposal to take a two day trip up the river to Timişoara, with a sleepover.
Turns out Čarga's wife is from that village where aunt Milica went, her husband was from there, and whole village knew him, as he and his pal were the first [ones] in the village with academic titles, and that pal was this girl's uncle, so I left my phone [number] with Čarga, if she ever finds out anything about my aunt, to let me know. Well, we'll see. Likewise, from Žuca I heard she stumbled upon Jaca in Vrnjačka Banja a couple of weeks ago, where she got a free trip with the retirees, so they just met and talked and the news is that their younger son is now also married, the older one's wife lost a child around fifth month, but is pregnant again now and they're waiting.
Bajlo had a winning streak with the shots, he caught several scenes with really well caught expressions on their faces, he caught the substance of Žuca, exactly how we all imagine her, and Dragana he caught by surprise, the surprised wide open eyes and almost open mouth, and showed it to her on the little screen of the eos70, and there she didn't like how it looked, told him to erase it... Well, we'll see about that.
Around 13:30 wind came from Klincaid (less than 5km to there). Still not cold, but very annoying - napkins flying, hairs losing style. Dragana got a vest from Borče, but still cold on the sleeves; I tied my hair in a ponytail but it wasn't enough, had to move to her side of the table, to face upwind. Eventually I also had to take my jacket, been heroing it out long enough. Split around 16:30. Lied down, took a nap, less than an hour, and when I got up I saw that my dear is in frown mood. And it burst out of her, how we carved a routine and fell into it, how I spend more time looking at monitors than her, that I don't hear half of what she says because my back is turned (so is hers...). I withstood some twenty minutes of that, because I saw the negative helix taking momentum, and whatever I said while it lasted would be taken as either an attempt to take the blame or to shift it on her. Then I said that shifting blame leads to nothing, we painted us in that corner by our own petard, we better look for what to do.
For starters, we went, on foot, to the supermarket on the corner, and bought six cans of Carlsberg, then took it slowly. Then Lena called, said it's okay for us to come tomorrow, it's become the default, and yes she'd take 50 eggs. Then later Nina called, to keep her company while she made pancakes. Said she's having a big wash at the work, they're changing the company to which printing the bills was outsourced, which actually involved a dozen other firms, and the task is far larger than the management initially anticipated, so they'll have entertainment until at least mid november. The kids are okay, everything sliding smoothly.
She's got a snafu with the health [insurance] - the firm pays a package, which is bound and immutable, the only thing she can change is to reduce the didaktibl (deductible :), i.e. the amount she pays before the insurance starts paying) from 6000 to 3000$ if she meets some requirements they have, which mostly come down to giving a truckload of data about herself, her diet and way of life. Turns out she eats too much meat, needs to eat at least nine vegetables a day („yeah right, go fat just when I trimmed myself down“) and that she's high risk of breast and cervical cancer. Why is that? Because she didn't do mammography and Papp test. And devil only knows how many perish each year from the therapy caused by false positive results on these tests, because who looks will find. They call anything a cancer nowadays... She said, let them have the three thousand, they can shove them.
On sunday I did the shots of thursday and saturday. The thursday folks looked better on shots than live, and those of saturday so and so - there are shots where they all look younger, some where older, about half and half. The surprise shot of Dragana turned actually quite nice, the eyes wide open, the whites on three sides, brows high and mouth just slightly open, the look of surprise or „sorry, what was that?“. I sent her the shot in a separate email - everything else was on Dropbox and link distributed. She didn't notice it right away, didn't expect to get two emails, so she sent a message (which Globaltel duly delivered, four times by midnight), „Now I saw that "contentious" photo, akin to Munk's "Scream", erase that shit“. Of course I will not, but will make sure nobody ever sees it but us three who already did. It's Bajlo's fuckup, that he showed it to her right away, which got it branded for special treatment, otherwise it would be packaged with all others. He could have been a good photo reporter, he's got the eye and the finger to catch the moment, had a dozen good ones in this batch.
Having woken up rather early, I took a nap after lunch, and around 14:15 we drove off to Lena, finally through a rain. Arrived alright, but my parking spot was taken, so we found another one around the corner, but in a zone rife with specially marked spots, there's an embassy around there, so even when I found a spot, we noticed there was some new marking, blue line by the white line, not clear what that meant, something new it seems, so to avoid more shit I drove away to park elsewhere, while she walked to the door. Later the explanation was that I could have stayed at this first spot, it's the blue zone, and the number to send SMS with payment is also written on that blue line. The spot I found was some 100m down the road, and my bladder was pressing me - I had two coffees, which is one liter, and ate a plate of čorba... By forced march I arrived near the building, through that drizzle, well almost there, when the pressure only got worse. And I knew what the matter was, I've screwed it tight and must ease up a little now, not much, it'll take thirty minutes to ease off, but it's the panic... And I'm very short on breath. Noticed there a moment with nobody around, and leaned against a tree, back to the windows, and then took it slowly... And there a severe headache caught me, what I was pretending to be unwell to lean against a tree was for very real now, guess because of this fast walk of 500m. Now I breathed intentionally slower but took longer breaths, and the headache fell to a bearable level. Walked the remaining 50m and found her smoking by the entrance - she just decided to wait for me, so not to ring the bell upstairs, I make a phone call so Api is not in a „delivery guy at the door“ mode. Upon seeing us, it still barked its amount of decibels.
Tanja is growing nicely, grabs a finger with whole palm, started cooing already, recognizes a face when it's close enough, I even got a merry and long gooooo with gargling, a beauty. Lena said they don't mean to stop at one... Milan will start working on seventh, and she's returning to work some time in november. They hired a nurse, just four hours a day at first, to get to know each other before she returns to work. First meeting tomorrow.
On the way back we dropped by big Roda near Mac on the highway, huge parking and a hangar, size of a better Kroger, but somehow comes across as empty - maybe becasuse it was a sunday, rain and almost no customers, or because we came in only to see whether they have the maggi spice. They didn't, bought nothing. Then between Čenta and Perlez I had to take care of water levels again. Dropped by Mere, and there it got to me again. Knowing that their rear wall faces a meadow, just went out and okay one more time, almost nothing again but was urgent. That's when the pressure finally left me. We didn't buy much, almost got more food for cats than for ourselves.
In the evening my headache spoiled our fun, at exactly the wrong moment. Don't know whether my [blood] pressure was higher or lower - it was lower the whole last week, I felt delayed gravity and dizziness at times, but this one hurt quite well. Anyway, we did have good fun apart from that, and even drank, just two, no more was called for. Two days later we held a popravni, which is our preference, and it did turn out even better, didn't even drink, just fell smoothly into sleep.
On wednesday we rode our bikes to downtown, bit of shopping. Along the way Braca spotted us, as we drove off the pavement to take a pedestrian left, and we talked a bit. He still keeps it open, though he probably doesn't do much of a business, so there he is. Says a pal aske him „how long do you mean to keep doing this... running away from home every day?“.
While there's almost nothing left in the main street, most of the shops having moved into that jewish shopping mall on Bagljaš, many a space now being vacant, even Gigatron moved out of Nama, and even Alpha banka closed (aka „ha bank“), there's still the street approaching the Žitni trg with lots of small shops, so that's where we split. She went through them and I diverted into a photo safari. Stopped at Medeja to get her new headphones, the kiddie whites broke long ago, they work but fall off, price a trifle*, 990 dinars. On the Yellow bridge I stopped to make a few shots, when a voice comes from the congestion on the bridge, „Professor! Is that hidrofor working?“ - of course, Zdravko in his white van. „Works when it needs to!“... rambled through the Plankert**, made a fresh panoramix of Dom - they did nothing much with it, just repaved the plateau in front of it, with multicolored gray blocks, somehow there's always money to put those blocks and for the rest, well, whenever.
The only news along the way was that they're finally doing the access driveway into the future parking behind the post [office] and komitet, that's one of the old riverbeds, reeds still growing from it. I knitted quite a bunch, there'll be candidates for the exhibition[ism], which is actually just a folder where I keep links to the better shots, so these be seen more often when I run fes, which I now do some 10-20 minutes at a time when I feel like it, or when I wait to get drowsy after lunch.
I sat across from the Nama, lit one, made a few shots, messaged her my location (of course she didn't notice, but at least I remembered to drop her phone into [her] tote, to get used to it), ogled the chicks. This last thing came to nothing, all the pretty little girls, whom I saw this summer and the years before, vanished somewhere or grew fat, c'mon girls, drop that, my own lady looks better than you, and at your age, tenfold better. Guess I didn't hit the big recess at the school.
This chubby with a huge parrot on her shoulder was far more interesting. When she arrived and sat to have a smoke, I remembered to walk to the Ideah (in once hotel „Central“) to see whether they have the maggi spice. Of course they don't, the assortment is identical to a tee to what everyone else has, may the package be different. The only difference is that these guys had thyme too. The dill was absent for ages, and now that it appeared at Svetofor, it's everywhere. So it turns out that it doesn't matter where you get your groceries, the price may differ but the assortment is identical.
We had a coffee in front of Prleski, then slowly home. Shot a couple from the pedestrian bridge, it may be the same scene each time, but this was just to see how what they dredged two-three years ago didn't serve a dick, the river is still at least four meters narrower than it should be. And then spotted this chick cooling... and knitted her separately. A real photo amateur shot, for a club exhibition. That she puffed out a smoke at just the right moment, extra scoring.
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* of course, from Alan Ford
* Planck kert (hun. garden), the park behind Dom
Mentions: Alan Ford, Api, aunt Milica, Braca, čorba, Dom omladine, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, fes, Gavrilo Taroški (Gavra), Ildika , IV4, Jasmina Sentović (Jaca), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Jovan Zdanić (Jozda), Klincaid, komitet, Ksenija, kum, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), maturski parastos (parastos), Milan Nastić, Milica Zubatović, Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Novi Sad, Paja Ćurčić, popravni, Prleski, Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), TA furnace, Tanja Nastić, Velemir Prokin (Čarga), Vlada Markanić, Zdravko Lakatoš, Žitni, Živana Armatović (Žuca), in serbian
29-IX-2024 - 16-VII-2026