13-I-2025.
On twelfth we, of course, went to see Tanja. The traffic was quite thin, but we didn't break the door-to-door record, because I had to drive once more around the block (which is almost 2km altogether) until someone liberated my spot where to park the Joda. Lena is looking great, the happy mom discovering her inner cook, just that her vegetables potaž (potage? pottage? pautage? who cares) feels a bit sour... she's reluctant to ditch it, but then wouldn't risk it either. Perhaps if you leave it for a couple of days, until you know for sure whether the fermentation is the right kind or not.
Milan slept through our stay, a flu hit him right between the eyes. The proper programmers' kind, works weekends. I know those, sleeping cures them. And Api wasn't entirely okay, stretched the front paws tendons, being overweight he jumped down in full force, got more than 40kg already, a diet is due. Tanja is becoming a true spacemaker, specially attracted with the teevee remote, tries to grab anything she can an stuff it into her mouth. We managed to get her tired again, when we left she slept the whole night in one piece, woke up twice for less than a minute. The pictures didn't turn quite right, I had to use flash, it's dusk all day and it was really lousy and not nice at all, just like it was all week.
On the way back we found the time to drop by Mere, though we actually didn't need anything, just wanted to check if they had the njeguška sausage, which she meant to put on podvarak (sour cabbage and rice, covered with meat, baked in a plek in the oven). Didn't have them, but we still found things where stock could use replenishing, just in case, what if a real winter comes and we don't feel like going out. And after the whole day of lousy light, we had a nice full moon on clear winter sky. When I needed it for shooting, screw.
In the evening, by order of appearance: called Borče then Dragana to summon them for monday, then spoke with Nina. She's planning her household - to replace the bathtub, floor and sink in one bathroom, to replace some furniture, and then the car would be next. Her Volvo starts, goes but leaks stuff, even brake oil. The eyeballed cost of repair would be around 800$, which doesn't make sense on a car worth below 1500$, and there's one Ender's friend who wants to take ther Corolla sporster. She means to get 6000$ for it, though she could get, theoretically, between 9 and 20 thousand, but it would require lots of money and hours. Money is somewhat a problem, but hours make it a non-starter. The six thousand was the original cost of Ender's famous RX, which he then swapped for another car, thrice, ending with this. So let this fourth incarnation go at cost [price]. And the Volvo would best be offered to some car dealer, in exchange for something newer, when she finds it. Doesn't have to be a seven-seater, a simple station wagon would be fine, kids are grown up enough.
An hour later, when we were wondering whether Go will eventually call or not, she did. Said they ran out of internet, because the previous contract expired and Stanley didn't find the time to take over. He did everything else - gas, water, power, trash - so meanwhile she went through the mobile network, which will deplete her battery faster. We still caught good two hours of talk, it endured that much. The previous tennant still didn't take everything away, but not much is left, they've already spread across the whole house. Neša and Anita get into small fights often, specially these internetless days, so she had the idea to give them a book to read, aloud, to each other, taking turns. And it worked swimmingly, they read well and sound good at it, and they liked it.
Monday, thirteenth, the so-called serbian new year, by julian calendar*, which meant that frendz parti is a doček again. We never did this second one, not any of us, so the question of which customs should be held, does anyone know received an unanimous „“ for an answer. She baked that podvarak with sausage (bought elsewhere), and roasted a turkey thigh of kilo and a half (luckily the ostrich craze never caught on... they were grown but I never saw meat nor eggs sold), sliced the pressed butkice in jelly and a little heap of čvarci from Mere in the middle. Borče brought my backpack (which I forgot last time at his [place]), with the empty bottle and a pink champagne. As for decoration, I brought the led string from upstairs, hung the red ones in the window(... 49 words...). We intended to park the three wicked candle from Gloc, the kilo and a half of wax, then forgot [about it]. Then we remembered we planned to watch „Radovan the third“ on the big screen, which worked right away (made problems later, when I turned the teevee off, as it misplaced a couple of windows, and then after a reboot fox wouldn't start (still using it for statcounter.prg). Then I played the videos of yesterday, total of minute and ha half(... 18 words...), to see Tanja. Then I ran fes on all three screens simply because I can, which then glued Dragana into viewing, couldn't peel her eyes off, she's used to looking at pictures) so I turned the monitors off.
The 2024 apricot was drunk, as much as we have it, good, somehow milder and smoother than the previous [ones], has exactly the right mild fruit fragrance. Went really nice, I think we had three each (he, of course, four). Or maybe one less than that, because we dined as soon as nine (that podvarak and thigh), and by half ten switched to wine. Don't think we'd manage to blow out that much in less than two hours, can't drink it so fast, we sip, we don't bottomup it. Had more fun with hats again, took pics (everyone seems to look good in my hat), all around good fun. Special mentio was of Burt, who was mentioned for some reason, and his last postard was at still hand... We congratulated and kissed at mindight again, and then called Staša, it's his birthday... so we remembered the champagne eventually around one. This one was much easier to open, and there was no foam, just the tiny wisp of smoke from the bottleneck, not a drop was spilled. The cork hit the tin roof of the terrace, heard it clear but didn't see, who knows where it ended.
And after the champagne we reverted to more wine. Not that we did ourselves much, just enough to be somewhat colorful. The split occurred a bit after two. Despite the pied status, we two managed to clean up in five minutes. The next day was a real lull, I barely lunched - a plate of fish čorba (pangazijus from Persu, they had only hake and petty trout in Mere) and a bit of turkey, eating simply didn't go, very weak appetite. It's not that the booze gets me, it's the food late in the evening, then I'm neither here nor there all day. At least I moved off the spot with mrz pludger, wrote the dialog to edit ID3 tags (band, song, album, year) and then couldn't force myself to begin testing it. That occurred eventually the day after. Likewise, did the photos late in the evening, uploaded them to Dropbox on wensday.
On wensday my appetite somehow returned, by bits, even slurped up the rest of the čorba, part for lunch part for supper. And tested the dialog, partially - the navigation grid on the left, with the list of selected titles, is filled, but the fields for the individual record on the right remain blank. And the buttons are absent. Ummm... left that for later.
Got it working on thursday afternoon. News from Belgrade, Milan is half hale, now Tanja has some fever, nothing terrible, according to what Lena said. We'll see.
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* as far as I'm concerned, it's as serbian as the orthodox church is
Mentions: Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Api, butkice, čorba, čvarci, doček, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Ender Aquila (Ender), fes, fox, frendz parti, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milan Nastić, mrz pladžer, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), plek, Reginald Burton Cape (Burt), Stanley Berger, Stanoje Serdarević (Staša), statcounter.prg, Tanja Nastić, in serbian
15-I-2025 - 25-III-2026