29-III-2026.
Election day in ten small municipalities. At least 150 ćacis from Zrenjanin, including mayor and utility company directors, are dežurni in Kula for days already, at our expense, because Kula must not fall. The news in these elections is that now there's no more difference between cops and beefed up ćaci crowbaristas (a „cop“ with an anklet transmitter was seen and photographed), they look the same, behae the same and are commanded from the same center. Of course the cuntmouth won 10:0, no other outcome was acceptable, but that was forced. In said Kula they stole so much and yet won with 50,22% - stole a few thousand to win by a few hundred.
But we didn't spend the day reading the news, which were actually fewer than last time when there were elections in just four municipalities, or in two before that. Last night we moved the clocks, and I wasn't sleepy, actually I stayed awake until 2:15, oops, 3:15, of which I wasn't aware at the time, but then remembered it when I lied. Um, how will I manage to sleep enough to safely drive to Belgrade and back? Turned out I did fall asleep easily, slept well, some 6-7 hours, and we even had the time to lunch and drink half a coffee (she had whole, went into and out of bed earlier than I). I even made the new mix for car window washer liquid, with česmovača* now, and replaced the registration sticker [lower shotgun corner of windshield], all on time. We took off at 13:10, with weather bright cloudy but dry... until Danube. There we drove into a cloud. Fog, drizzle, temperature fell from 13 to 10 in a minute.
Two fellow travelers in the elevator, to the fourth floor (am. fifth). Then the shorthaired one spoke, and I understood it's a female. The hairdo and the rest was sheer Brbana, just the voice more feminine.
Tanja was amazed with new sandals, she ran at least twony circles around the kitchen island. Her temperature was down by and large, and her appetite returned - she even slurped the soup, through a straw just like Lena used to do in her time (06-II-1997.). We also brought fresh mufljuzi, and of course she bit just two bites from the first one, and Api apied the rest of it.
Lena switched to a different gynaecolog[ist], feels a lot easier right away. This one is on drug pusher, doesn't try to scare her or get her to pay for this or that extra analyisis, three dee ultrasound and what not, says she's all quite normal, no reason to do anything, we don't really need to meet at least two or three months, nothing there.
Stojan handed us his new frajer. Why, did he try it and didn't like it? Nope... he bought two. He ordered one online and then forgot about it, went to a shop and bought another, then got a message of delivery. It was either too late to cancel, or he was to embarassed to even try, so he paid that one too. I offered the friteza [deep fryer] which we bought in 2018 in anticipation of needs, them kids are growing on fries alone, and then the small pot turned out to be so good we never even unpacked the friteza. Milan refused, „I don't want him to have a friteza“. Well, it' ain't really healthy, true.
Tanja brought the dry-erase board (the one you erase by moving a lever, similar to etch-a-sketch) to make her a drawing. I drew an apple (but they couldn't possibly talk her into pronouncing „sok od jabuka“, apple juice, again, but there's a recording, where she did say it but nor quite, she fumbled it somehow, sounds almost right). She looked at it, erased it, waited for the next drawing. I drew at least twenty things, all of them upside down, to be seen by her, even an earthworm, mouse (with cable), until she finally got bored. And I ran out of inspiration.
And she let me nap my standard fifteen minutes, all by the regular order of thigns. Driving back, we exited the rain somewhere around Pekabe, and it stayed dry [all the way] to home. We dined (last slices of the meatloaf with omelette, and spiced up refried beans from the can, had the green peas as a sidedish first two and a half days), then took to process the photos. At about half, first Dragana called about tomorrow night („since you said you like to hear my voice, see you tomorrow, ciao“), and then Nina, making pancakes. Even Rein appeared briefly in the background, he and Fayes were on a cruise around South America, or at leas the peruvian coast, brought them alpaca plushies, with a keyring attached, but these are so fuzzy there's only the critter's nozzle to see. Now having that as a key pendant... would require a large pocket. They have, by the way, contracted another case of medicine, more wee surgery scheduled, they seem to like those sections. I managed to take a few sieveshots of Linda and Sanda, Raja and Violet were too fast trekking through the frame.
Go called after, and we saw Anita in her new crocheted jacket. Eh, child, you have no ide how privileged you are to have an artist mom, nobody wears what you do. And one thing I didn't notice but didn't pass unnoticed - she wasn't making funny faces, first time, but posed and gave us the pleasure of her good looks, and then just exited stage left to her friend. Neša is up to his neck in puberty already. Can't see it much over the phone, but Go says he's already growing armpit hairs, and the future moustache is sprouting. And his voice is lowering. Stanley was visibly tired, worked a lot this week and slept sparsely.
So we managed to see all of them in one day.
Having found the archive of my once blogue, I started moving the content, not all of it, into Byo, wherever it goes by the dates of publishing. It's quite easy to do, having written it already. Reformatting the text consists of pasting it as is into Byo, then displaying as webpage, copying from there back into my editor, twice that, so all the sanitized html, neutralized for the sake of packaging into xml, gets deneutralized and finally appears as it once did - all the formatting, paragraph boundaries etc, so I'm back at raw text. What remains is to insert links, translate into serbian. At this speed, I do two or three a day, I've finished 2011 and am halfway through 2010.
We didn't walk, because the weather was still shitty, that drizzle arrived here, now falling now not, everything is moist and chilly. We called a cab, a 611 again, and it stopped at the far end of the street. I took my phone, lit the led and waved, but it's already turned and didn't see me in the mirror. Okay, this was a few minutes ahead of announced arrival, so it'll wait, we'll walk to it. I explained the whole confusion with house numbers, and mentioned the driver in female gender along the way, because of the higher pitched voice and similar short hair as the lady yesterday had, won't be fooled twice by the same thing. But I was, this was a guy. I said I understand completely, I was getting misgendered hundred times when I had hair and not yet the beard.
Along the way we noticed that Braca removed his kiosk. Well he held out for quite a while, it must be almost 20 years since he retired. This was mostly to spend time, and a bit to help his children.
Had we not had this confusion with the taxi, we would have arrived before Borče. We saw his back a bit, missed him by 20 seconds to be buzzed in together. Everything was fine just like every other time, spent at least half an hour remembering who was with whom in class, who failed to recognize whom... At least the rakija flowed well, though I didn't get myself done like last time (we split the extra from my second shot, there was too much in it). Later I took a look at the bottle, it was half empty, so 0,75 liters went. We weren't doing bad at all, and the mood was good. Then when we began the supper (fried sausage and large beans), the second shot was still being finished. Then we switched to wine (she had, of course, beer... though she was almost about to join us for wine, but there, beer is specially stocked for her). Close to midnight I already stopped paying much attention to conversation, but rather noticed how Dragana keeps baring a shoulder again, just like she kept doing last summer a couple of evenings. At parting I laid a hand on it and, er, the feeling is interesting, it's so small.
They haven't even seen the photos of the last time - she didn't get the email, he did but forgot to open it. So I resent it the next day, and Dragana replied „the shots finally arrived, including the sports journal“. Ah, yes, the video with šraub.
For lunch I ate too much, despite not goung through the whole plate (too bad, the potato was excellent). Fuckit, I still haven't digested the last night's stuff. Then scrambled eggs for dinner, excellnt but I'm just piling it up... Went to bed at 2:15, after having digested enough of it to be able to sleep.
I didn't know how to pass the word anonymously enough, the burundi would recognize my style, that „it is not true that Informer made a first-of-april fake news that AV threw the spoon, it never happened so they had nothing to delete, someone's trolling them, don't fall for it“. I let it into rasejani only, what with quotation marks and disclaimer, to make it look even less plausible.
The hero of the day was Jelena Riznić, who said to an Informer's reporter, to the camera, „I'll dance a kolo when they take you to prison? Why? Because you're criminals! Proof? You'll get it from The Hague and people's court!“. The reporter shrew goes harshly „what's your name“, and gets „šta tebe boli kurac kako se ja zovem!“ (what's your dick's hurt what's my name). The same evening Magi posted this shot on rasejani.
On second I continued adding old articles from the blogue here, got to about fall of 2009. Lena called in the evening, Tanja was in good mood, everything peachy, but the best thing was that they came up with the name for the boy, but first got into a pretend fight over whose idea it was (Milan: „okay let's say that you invented my idea“), and then slid into a dispute over who will tell us, the act was very well improvised, and we still didn't hear the name :). And we don't need to, let's first get acquainted, after the birth.
In the evening I thought we may just give up, she had some initial symptoms of cold, and I was getting some reminders from that wisdom tooth, but then decided to go ahead while these are still small, we may be good for nothing for three or more days later. And, amazingly, we got dealt a good hand. Then let's have a shot. Around the third the tooth got alerted, and then my nasal cavity swelled, ernafil is prone to cause that. And the tooth, of course, makes the skull hurt, the whole left plate, between ear, scalp, temple, eye and tooth itself. Some needlepoint pain in select spots, somewhere as pressure. What else, wait until it passes. I smeared a little DMSO and like waited for it to catch. Who knows when did I get to sleep, woke up at 14:30. Whatever we planned for today (grocery, visit the old house) is postponed again.
So we went for it on saturday, Lidl first, Roda next (she to the serekeš, me to pharmacy, nothing in Roda itself), then to the old house. Nothing bad happened there, just the roses went a bit more wild, there's rosehip as much as gravel, and we found a heap of this winter's mail, mostly bills, various info leaves, ads and, eh, a notice from the bank. It was all wet from the recent rains, which she then patiently unglued and spread on the floor to dry. We did turn the heating off, but the floor is still warm enough, just enough to dry it in less than two hours. She then read it, I don't have the patience to read the legalese. Ah, another identity check required, maybe we were swapped in the maternity ward meanwhile. Well fuckit, who knows when we may decide to go again. No hurry, we have hefty reserve at home. Spring works first, we must trim this. Buy another pitchfork, there's none there, and to bring cutting tools - the big cutter, and the telescoping one, and a foxtail saw, and the mower, and then slowly go at it. And she found some recipes how to kickstart composting, to flood it with hungry bacteria, to begin rotting right away.
Spoke with Nina in the evening, saw the girls a little, t'was a cooking show again, and they mostly talked about cooking, couldn't keep my attention. On sunday with our Seattleians. Stanley had a happy accident after fixing some huge Ford, a stiff three and a half liter slab of an engine, replaced its water pump, which goes in an hour or two on a regular car, took twelve on this one. Because it's so tucked in behind other parts, that you must take them off just to reach it. And Zsolt mislaid some simple 20$ tool to hold things in place while adjusting the timing chain, and his dickopathy wouldn't move him to find it, so Stanley had to find a friendly colleague from another shop, who borrowed it (deposit 100$), so that was two trips plus beer for the guys. But then when he delivered the vehicle, the guy said he didn't have that much cash. Stanley remembered one detail about the guy and just said „I take silver as well“. Excellent. He showed us the big silver ingots and coins (almost too large to fit the cup on the picture) he got. Zsold will get his share in dollars.
Go keeps writing critiques for Amazon, and somehow manages to get things she needs. Just when she couldn't remember where she left the thin sharpie pen... those were on offer for testing. A big pack of them, 150 pieces, though. The box came just as we were talking, something 30x15 cm, full of them. All of us wouldn't consume the amount in our lifetimes.
Monday, 6th. Didn't get up as late as I expected, went to bed at 2 got up at 8, finally. After two weeks' delay, I made myself fix the bike, just as I imagined doing it. The screw holding the pedal's lever will always unscrew, it's there more as a reserve to survive the trip to a repair if the lever loosens. This time I didn't go for a larger wrench, but rather did it how I theoretically knew it should be done, and as I had a mental picture of and now had the tools for: took the gas burner and heated the end of the lever, and then beat it on with our largest hammer to get on the axle as deep as it can. Let it cool, and tightened the screw. Took the eos70 and went for a ride, to the busodrome to pour some money into my mobile. The safari worked just right, I got this shot of the current mural under the overpass, and the illustration shot for the fucken Bečkerek tavern. I passed the latter shot to the local portal (one of the two that I read, the others being ćacad), and, surprise, it was an article the next day, and they didn't even mangle the text much.
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* česma - tap, faucet; česmovača is tap water, the word being coined to rhyme with the rakija naming convention
Mentions: 06-II-1997., Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Api, Bečkerek, blogue, Braca, burundi, Byo (Byo), dežurni, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), eos70, frajer, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milan Nastić, Nenad Berger (Neša), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), rakija, rasejani, Reinaldo Aquila (Rein), Rosanda Aquilla (Fayes), Ryu (Raja), Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), serekeš, Stanley Berger, Stojan Nastić, Tanja Nastić, Violet, in serbian
30-III-2026 - 13-IV-2026