10-III-2026.
Calm day, no larger events, and she made herself busy. Cooked a paprikaš (excellent, the real thing, just as it should be), made another batch of soap, cooked a batch of chutney. There were leftover apples in that crate we bought for the winter, why let it go to waste, and overyester she made herself a hot sandwich and looked for something to top it with. Some ketchup we bought two years ago had squealed, dumped it right there, and what now, ah there's chutney. It fit superbly on the sandwich and gave her the idea. We'll see, each one so far was a success.
Lena called in the evening so we had our fill of watching Tanja. She's talking more and more, the word of the day is „nema“ („has not“, i.e. „there's no[ne]“). Talked with Lena about her work, and amazingly, we used no expert terminology, no keywords from any programming language, all descriptional and in pictures, and even my dear later said she understood everything. The larger miracle for me is that I understood it all, despite being off work for almost seven years now, and my last contact with the matter at hand was more than twelve years ago. Since then even that javascript progressed so far that there's big chunks of it current syntax of which I'm clueless, what does what in there. At least she shook her problems out. „I'll squeeze [my] shoulder later“ (everyone got the reference to [a song mentioning] „shoulder to cry on“).
Then next night I dreamt of trying to do something in fox, but it was all unwieldy, I kept trying to line up the monitors into a proper layout, and the font in the command window was all wrong and didn't paint the syntax and the one control which I considered for use was needlessly complicated by someone, it had ten tiny objects lined around itself, I could barely aim them with the mouse, and trying to read their names was impossible. Fuckit, it was all designed more than twenty years ago, at a much lower resolution. I managed to solve one thing - to pick which of the four screwy problems can be offloaded to tomorrow, and the rest looked much easier after that.
Tried to check the other search engines about the first pizzeria... DuckDuck said 1978, which falls within the possible interval, but declares its name to have been „Pink“ (there's one, but that's in Torak) and has no clue where it was. The others keep giving the same results - a website with the history of the city, the city's page on the history of Serbia, the brewery, the beer museum... tough shit.
Eleventh. Finally pumped up the bicycle and went for a photo safari. The big almond in the next street has blossomed, as it does every year, few days ahead of everything else, which she always notices and I never picture. This time she went to the supermarket (second time this year), and I asked about the almond, knowing it's visible from the corner, said it did. So I went, took a shot, continued to the local [community centre], shot a lot. The visually busiest place is the corner at the local [...] - there's Springfield (he removed the glass cage, since someone lobbed in a spooner [hand bomb with the spoon-like release lever] into it this fall, his vegetable shop, there's a shop in half of the house behind (painted black, with gypsum lions on the banister), a pharmacy in the other half. Toza should be near the place. At serekeš no cash again, I thought the retirements were through already, I'm getting mine on sixth now, was on ninth until fall. Who knows, maybe it's because the bank got sold and the new owner's slot is earlier.
Just when we were about to supper, Lena called again, that is Tanja remembered us, and as they were waiting for Milan to bring food, we covered the wait. We two brought our plates to my desk and nibbled at them. Tanja composed her first sentence: „pao je zeka“ (the bunny fell), when she threw it herself through the bars dividing their niche from the stairwell. They waited for the folks from the floor below to leave, for Api would love to have another barking conversation with their pooch, and meanwhile some kid from the floor above came and passed them the bunny. Lena remembered a story about a guy who kept buying eggs from always the same granny on the market, never from a grocery, because granny had healthy domestic eggs. And once he remembered to praise the granny to her face, and she went „eh, child, of course my hens are healthy, at least once a year I pick all the expired meds I find in my credenza, and finely grind them into their food“. Said her sleep was qualified as a 99% success. By whom? By the app connected to her diagnostic ring. And the one percent? „Is this a happy face?“ (a clear reference to the 2003 scene of a young girl showing her mom her school report showing A-, american Chineses, fuckit).
Twelfth. She did plant the potatoes, give it one more try. First bud on the apricot. Eight eggs again.
Go sent photos: they had snow, Anita made a snowman. At Nina's it was 31 yesterday, frost this morning. Go and Stanley celebrated the fifteenth anniversary. We visited Mere - um, the blue card is still not working, paid with the retirees' [one]. They still have no hake, only pangasius, can't complete one proper fish lunch.
After the entertainment we finished that irish [thing] and fell soundly asleep.
Friday thirteenth, nothing special. Paprikaš the fourth day and I'm not complaining at all. I did, when I was a kid, we all did, but now I see the monotony itself was not a problem, it was what was on the table. My dear simply cooks better than both mom and granma, and even has her own tricks for reheating. I remember that it was exactly the paprikaš which was a problem, they never managed to reheat it properly, because they'd put it into a smaller pot, with smaller bottom and filled and even overfilled, it couldn't even be stirred properly. And now she apportions the daily share of it, adds half a glass of water and a bit more of sliced sausage, dials the hotplate to six and waits until it boils. And it's like new then. For beans and sarma she need not add anything, these can quite nicely be reheated in a mirko. It completely lacks the feeling of eating jučetina (v. house dictionary), and of course I don't complain, it's all good.
A pack of some thirty emails, the rasejani in a fit of verbosity, Maltez chimed in from the Emirates, tells how it is there these days. The largest change is that it suddenly became normal to get lost. People have long forgotten how to memorize what's where and how to get there, relying on the jeepyess all the time. Now it's being jammed, to confuse the drones, and no meeting can begin on time, people are late half an hour on the average. Says there are some 400000 Brits, who rushed there after the brexit, and now if the business stops, they're screwed.
Saturday, mostly watched the live transfer, the Political globe of Serbia had sneakers on the road, of the long circular march around Belgrade. Made a few shots around the yard, appricot is in blossom... knocking on wood. Before evening Nina called, we also saw Raja, Sanda, Linda, everything fine except her phone began with 23%, and what with walking it in the backyard all the way to Požega (in house slang, the limit of house wifi network range, from Rambo Amadeus's song „Alo, Požega“), it drained quickly. But we said „nek laje dok traje“ (may it bark as long as it lasts), and then didn't try to reconnect afterwards. She's fine, obeys the same diagnostic combo ring+phone app, and she says it mostly gives her sound advice, not „go see doctor“, it's „you aren't sleeping enough“. She takes a day off, sleeps, sets everything straight.
Sunday, lunched those pohovan'd drumsticks (and no, not mashed potatoes, potato čušpajz instead), then beat it to Belgrade. I wasn't really stepping on it, but judging by the timestamp on the photos before and after the ride, we got there in less than 70 minutes, the road was empty, and amazingly all of three parking spots were waiting for me. We took Tanja for a stroll, first proper spring one, got her tired well. I tried the serekeš there and it seems my blue card is really not working. Lena and Milan gave up on buying the adjacent apartment, the whole 'hood is becoming uncomfortable, the density is going overboard and this is not the grand Corbusier's dormitory with humane face, there are too many faces. They're looking into buying something somewhere, found something excellent on Kosmaj, the construction should be done in a couple of years. But then they found that it depends which side of Kosmaj - one side is in municipality of Mladenovac, where the electricity is intermittent, other in Sopot, where there's often no water. So they found something on Dorćol, by the future marina, a terrace with a view of Danube... „um, we'll have to earn that million first“.
As premeditated, Lena passed to mom her old eyePad, missing a charger (but can use the mac's, guess it won't discharge completely while this is charged, and this one has a much better battery), there's a present for the wedding anniversary. I talked her into this a few months ago, so finally now. Then at home I saw I was screwed, it's not the same OS, this is owned by Apple completely, there's no way to install anything except through their app store, where one can't get in without a proper ID. Maybe I'd have to make her an email at sGradlj.com... because the only other alternative is a phone number, thank you very much. I don't have to add Apple to list of those who track us. This ended by returning the gadget two weeks later, she may sell it.
Afterwards did the phoos (eos70 just rolled over 56000 shots), and when the time came I summoned the next frendz parti, with special mention to Dragana to write herself a memo, a reminder, whatever she uses, to lunch lightly that day, not to be indisposed in the evening.
Anita's snowman was still in some existence on sunday evening, didn't quite thaw when we saw it. The čorba is becoming more expensive, it's over 8$/gallon in California, in their end it's already above four. The people are definitively peeing thin, it's felt everywhere that they've started minding the costs. The model of car in most demand is a clunker from the category „starts, goes“.
Monday, slowly, one thing after another. She cleaned up around the house, even mopped the floor (always does) and then turned the heating off (the floor is still tepid, dries fast), we're switching to airconditioner. I scrubbed the barbecue grille, collected the old ashes into two plastic boxes (meat packaging), she'd need that to add potassium to the potatoes. The fire went weird, because I got coals (all of them char, checked...) from the top of the sack, all large chunks, the smaller pieces having settled lower, so it was strong but spotty. After the steaks (neck, well cut by Nada's colleague), the fire was almost gone. We added more coal and some wood, fanned it up, and then roasted the ćevapčići. This is where we both had to operate quickly, the fire went wild, the near end of it was hellish, and in the end everything was right.
At 19:10 (depending on each clock; my mobile is on Žeks's time, five minutes ahead. The one in Joda is set to that, the others vary, but all fall within same seven minutes, don't need any preciser than that), so went to pick Dragana and then Borče.
From her place to his she had the time to tell me how the wider viber group, aka org committee for the parastos is falling apart, because that crembil from the second gimnazija, who held that četnik-nationalist speech on 31-V-2014., now went on pressing this special kind of rubbish and bad taste humor upon the whole group, and half of them already quit the group. They seem unable to find who the hell is the admin to kick the guy out, so they suffer like this, and said that Jozda posted „while there are still some of us here, let's start arranging for october...“.
Then I had a moment when I didn't know where I was, passed half the Principova and suddenly it's all strange around, as if the navigation in my head just switched off. Asked fuckit where are we, she said by the gerontology. Aha, that's it, yup, I always drive this way in daylight and it all looks out of place now. On the way back I almost missed a turn, stepped on the brakes and the bottles from the rear seat fell on the floor (they both brought what they had ready of the 1,5 liter bottles, pedagogy works, they remembered to), luckily nothing broke.
The first couple of hours were mostly uninteresting, we kept remembering the faces from the elementary, cases like when Dragana meets two guys from her VIII3 and greets one at large and doesn't recognize the other guy at all. There Borče remembered Zvojko, so I recounted our last encounter on the airport, and it turned out to be the freshest news about him, beyond that nobody knows where he is. There was yet another, approximately sixth, rehash of how she smashed her ankle, how the cops tried ten times to get her to confess that she wasn't driving but covering for the other guy, because she had about zero in her blood and her shotgunner was just about floored. But he fell out and had just scratches and bruises, while she had a shattered ankle. With currently visible effect, she limped a lot from the car to the chair.
She managed to not overdo it with the lunch, not of her own will... She cooked some nasuvo*, the noodles from „Ravnica“ (flatland), says they disintegrated while boiling, into some short thin fibers, who knows what did they mix up in there, she somehow ate third of it, dumped the rest.
While we were still at rakija (same pear, that's what we have the most), the matter of his son-in-law came up. What we knew was that he didn't have five minutes of work staž in his career, and that we once drank his brandy, which Borče paid. Um, man who sells brandy to his father-in-law, we thought he exited stage left. Nope, he killed himself. He did announce, went to shrinks, was getting meds against depression... And the suicide was ugly and not elegant, protracted somehow. And them pills, the psychoactives, we saw manytimes having a sideeffect equal to what they were supposed to suppress.
At 21:30 Dragana finally noticed those vitrages... Eh, there we unloaded almost the whole story, inasmuch we could hold their attention. And then it was about my beard, „just so you know, I trimmed the sides“, though it didn't turn out like two years ago, when I did it much better for the parastos. There she pulled her phone and found a pic of me, her and Oli Boj, and yeah right that's it. This flowed into spelunking through old photos, internet jokes and random stuff, until about half twelve, when Borče took the stage to explain something about waterpolo and šraub (Schraub?), which should be the name of a maneuver in it. And I'm thinking, I know that banatly schwabisch better than you do, learned it for years, and still have no clue of what you're talking about, what's a screw doing in there. He stood up to demonstrate, and someone noticed that it's no use taking pictures of it, too bad we don't do video. Challenge accepted... I kept recording while the battery in the eos70 lasted, some eight or nine minutes, just twenty seconds beyond the final applause. First he took a slice of salami as a prop to double as a ball, and kept talking in degrees (80, 180 etc), to which Dragana shot back „fuck me off with the mathematics“, and I tried to help with „say half circle, quarter circle“, but he wouldn't veer from the rehearsed script. He even got a proper ball for a prop, ate the salami, and restarted the skit. I still have no clue what this was all about, wasn't really listening, it's sports, content free.
And then at midnight I got up and congratulated my dear the round, which one was it... 47th anniversary of wedding (there was no 47th wedding to be anniversed), and then they congratulated us, and then we looked up the pics from our wedding, both of them recognizing different people there with little overlap. She specially sighed over how we were both young and pretty, and how the bride had a proper hat and hairdress, eh, she got all pilafed out (i.e. dewy-eyed). And then the chat zigzagged around again, and came again to the chick called Vanda (26-VII-2021., 16-I-2023.), and the sitting at Šanta when he and Prle came upon her and S.L., over whom we got more previously unknown details, what was it... ah, yes, when she hosted the first wife of the Pa šta onda drummer when she escaped his claws, for a year and plus some she lodged there, what with S.L.'s five children at the scene. Once he sits a couple of hours there, four times he holds a whole school class on the subject. At least we waded through the evening without politics.
Since nobody was in the mood to open the third bottle of wine (while of the pear we had two or three shots), half an hour more we were tying the loose ends on dry, and so Dragana called a cab eventually at half two. And it quickly came, and then we two cleaned up quickly, had one shot just for ourselves, to celebrate alone, and lied.
Got up at 10:30, took my time on the photos. The video came out exactly as I imagined it, but it was huge. But this is linux, let's see what's out there on the subject. Within fifteen minutes I read what I needed to know, installed (app's name is HandBrake), reduced it from 1,6G to 168M. Right so. Then posted it all, and we'll see. What they made shots of us with their phones when congratulating, Borče should send, we'll see, you can always rely on him to forget what he promised.
The rush on sGradlj.com continues. After the big wave on fifth, there was a tensome days' lull, and then on fourteenth it resumed, with about 1800 views a day. On the https protocol they mostly read Byo, and now looking at http, lo and watch - they're reading jokes, specially the programmers' [ones], and there's some fifteen people reading the SF stories one by one, and these scriptures came eventually fourth, again mostly in english. Well, how do I know it's the majority, who'll scroll the list all the way down, but among the pages read 12 times or more (out of 2900, present count in the folder), almost all are in english. Whether the english version is more often read, or the readers in english are more alike in their tastes and keep hitting the same pages, who'd know, I'm not crazy to count by hand or export into a spreadsheet or whatever. But there, the navigation (links listed on the left) was read some 6500 times in english, 2400 in serbian, guess that's the proportion.
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* 'na suvo' - on dry; shorthand for „pasta on dry“, which is just boiled pasta with, depending - boiled potatoes, young cheese, poppy seeds. The šlingeraji (v. house dictionary) are derived from nasuvo with cheese.
Mentions: 31-V-2014., 26-VII-2021., 16-I-2023., Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Api, Byo (Byo), čorba, ćevapčići, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, fox, frendz parti, gimnazija, Gorana Sredljević (Go), house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Joda, Jovan Zdanić (Jozda), Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borče), maturski parastos (parastos), Milan Nastić, mirko, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Olivera Stojanović (Oli Boj), Pa šta onda, pohovano, Prle Tanin, rakija, rasejani, Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), sarma, serekeš, SF stories, sGradlj.com, Springfield, Stanley Berger, staž, Svetozar Sirilov (Toza), Šanta, Tanja Nastić, Tasa Radenkov (Carp), VIII3, Zvonko Darišić (Zvojko), in serbian
11-III-2026 - 14-VII-2026