11-IV-2009.
From my email to dad, in order fo my replies to his previous...
There's somewhat less sunshine, the spring is rainy hare anyways. That is there's enough of it so the piglets have fresh [food], and not yet enough to require mowing. And now we mean to do something there, just when this rainy saturday passes. Yesterday the pressure was low, we two went for a walk and kept thinking how we'll have to call Nina to haul us home if the sky bursts - that's how blackfrowned it was. And it did shower, but eventually afer midnight.
(... 20 words...) It's now almost a problem that those tiny jars/boxes can't be bought anymore. They weren't easy to find before, and now that someone tried to smuggle the ingredients for a liquid explosive aboard an airplane, they introduced this limitation that no liquid, gel or cream in amounts larger than about a deci[liter] and a half is allowed. So they started selling these tiny packagings, to pack what you need in amount sufficient for the trip, until you reunite with your luggage. So those packagings vanished from shelves and some others reappearre (and there's others too - spray carafes, tubes etc etc), but they aren't too suitable. And then we found the simplest solution - the baby food jars. The jar is exactly the size, fits about 70g of the creme, and it's plastic, not glass, and costs 40 cents an each :).
The food we discarded... who knows what they put in it. Nina tried some of something made of carrot and something made of peach, and said they tasted the same.
[about the soil for the wee garden, which we buy by sacks of about fifteen kilos]
That is the humus. Maybe it's a problem that we don't mix it sufficiently with the extant sandsoil, just strew it on top, and count on the plants, osmosis or what do I know will put it in order somehow. But sometimes it happens that the rain washes this black soil off the sandsoil first - because it's loose and the sandsoil was tamped by previous rains. The little fence should fix that, so inside the fence it should be horizontal. The planks are painted already, and the stakes (which I thought would be needed as pickets) will serve as columns to hold the vertical (and we'll cut off the excess length), just waiting for weather to clear. On friday there was a strong wind and it was cold, today we're just waiting for yet another rain, but they promised clear for tomorrow.
[about changing the car, we're thinking of something newer]
It doesn't even mater anymore that it's operational, it has one fault (as it's said, „new car has a hundred faults, old just one“). For a car over ten years of age, if it goes, you can always get 1000-1600$. You may even find a [pickup ]truck for that kind of money.
[about jardinieres in the patio]
She planted red betonias* along the parking side, looks nice already. The roses are growing like insane, as those in big pots, so those on the street and those midgety on the table. We expect them to blossom any week now.
[what I paved the patio with, comparing those tiles with them from the old sidewalk; on the photo, the darker ones are the new ones; in the boxes we'll plant tomatoes, in the back left corner is the gayfoorf**, in the near right the oleander]
Well thet thickness is just about the same, maybe these are a bit thicker, and by size like two of those. Except can't be sure of the duration, this is a weaker concrete. When I'm buing them, I have to pay attention to any cracks, because it did occur that it halves in my hand when I'm taking it out of the car.
Dad: considering that Ricardo was not interested in passing the driver's exam, he's put himself into a situation that he has to change 4 buses to go to work and back, and probably there's some walk to the bus stop. I don't understand how he's employed as temporary and yet works overtime. He's probably desirable as such.
Whom will they exploit if not the seasonals? They just keep waving the permanent employment in front of [their] nose[s], and they should keep mum and suffer. Specially that the likes of him will later brag [their] whole life how they worked at m$, or use it to top someone in a conversation („...telling me? I worked there two years ago, I know them like a bad penny“), and that pleasure incurs a cost. The m$ is notorious for keeping the temporaries for years, without half the rights that the regulars enjoy. It already lost a lawsuit from those temporaries, but that doesn't mean the verdict stays for the future. They changed something, just to make it sufficiently different, so it's not the case to which the verdict applied.
[on the yoga course]
Nina sticks to the course she attends, and gained a really good body line, moves with elegance, and can do things we never hoped anyone of us would ever be able to do - but Lena is on a course for instructors, which means that she can do things we thought were possible only in a circus. I didn't take pictures, but... (and don't anyone get cramps by just thinking this last thing she performed)
sits on the floor, stretches the right leg, draws the left foot under the right thigh, bahind [her] back with [her] left hand over the right hip grabs the toes of [her] left foot, then wraps right palm around right foot.
[on the easter vacation]
Here they don't work on that, as they say, „good friday“ (the only good one in the whole year - guaranteed 51 bad days every year!), so my gang isn't working either. I actually worked some little bit, and the rest of the day I either wasted time by the computer, or we went for a walk, or talked with Eleese (Ender's daughter from before) about gunea piglets, flying language (do piglets speak) and stuff in general, or I just dozed.
So Lena is on that holiday this week. We had hundred plans, they even wanted to go to Massachussetts to scout the college, but the trip would go via Noo Joizy (Jersey, but the aborigines say joizy, and our orthography respects them), which is overcrowded anyway (because of the vicinity of Nooyawk aka Newyork), and the crowd doubles on religious holidays. So they'll go there in the summer, at ease. Presently they're considering places to go. Lena can't go just any day, because three weekends a month she has this extended yoga course, until october, and Nina moved to the like new firm these days, handled the paperwork, and spent the last day of the old one actually sitting at home. As it goes, as a new worker in the new firm, she can't just vanish for two days out of the blue, at least not until the matters settle and ducks line up, and then she'll be able to work from the North pole, as long as there's a good internet there. So she could travel and work from anywhere, but not right now until that transition is executed in an orderly manner and the work flows smoothly. So far she agreed with her boss to talk every day whether the next day they'll meet in person or just talk online.
Whatever their plans turn to be, our plan is to be in Undersville next weekend - the only optional thing being early start on thursday, or a day later.
[and I didn't forget that it was their 55th wedding anniversary...]
p.s. Happy anniversary :)
In other news, it's pollen time. The huge pines from the next street, and other trees as well. It's the season now, and all cars look shitty. The actual color of it is actually bright yellow, more or less like cornmeal.
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* the actual name is petunias, but they were always planted along the paths, and everyone called it betonia (beton=concrete). Don't know where this came from, I learned of petunias much later.
** grapefruit, which some illiterate wrote so (as gejfurfi) on a price tag
Mentions: Eleese Aquila (Eleese), Ender Aquila (Ender), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Majkrosoft (m$), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), Undersville, in serbian
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