Time passes so quickly...

...it seems I'm writing a weekend update every other day.

It rained all Saturday, and since I was in dire need of sleep anyway, I did what I haven't done in ages: I spent the whole day at home, no sports, no productivity whatsoever. Just sleep and DVDs and reading and laziness. The noise of the rain and the two peacefully snoozing boyz made for the ideal atmosphere.

Yesterday, OTOH, the weather was back to fine, and so I played tennis and went running afterwards -- hadn't run outside for a month, i.e. since my holiday, because it was simply too hot. In the beginning I had a bit of trouble finding my rhythm, but then it went quite well. No sore muscles.

In other news... erm, well, nothing. It was a good weekend, but there's nothing to report, really. Which, come to think of it, isn't a bad thing.

The week promises to be more or less quiet, due to 2 Macedonian holidays on the 8th and 9th (8th = Independence Day, 9th = Bayram), and since everybody who can will be taking Friday off work -- most of our staff will do so as well -- nothing much is going to happen.
I'll be giving today's Ukrainian National Day reception a miss, and maybe I'll be really, really bad and won't go to tomorrow's Independence Day thingy at the parliament either. The bigger celebration is taking place on Wednesday, and I'll have to go anyway, and tomorrow's event will be so crowded (as I remember from last year) that nobody notices who's there and who isn't.

So there's only one major wibble left: I could go to a seminar tomorrow, which has been organized by the US Embassy and the Ministry of Interior -- it's really just for police attachés, but thanks to Stefan I could participate as well. But, and that's a capital BUT, the ambassador isn't here, and I'd be absent the whole day, and somehow I don't think I should, fun/interesting though it would be. It's about street survival, and since one of the topics is "Making Us Harder to Kill", I guess there would be quite a lot of fun to be had. Still, if I'm feeling uneasy all the time because I ought to be at the embassy, the fun coefficient plummets rather sharply.
I still have time to ponder it, but I think I'll leave it, even though I feel bad because of Stefan. Decisions, decisions...

Invasion of the Black Panthers

I'm sitting at my desk, reading my way through 3 newspaper articles on PM Gruevski's latest insane speech. My office is on the ground floor, with access to the towel-sized bit of garden in front of the embassy, door is open due to fine weather, cast iron grille protecting it is closed.
While reading, some movement catches my eye. I look up and for a moment believe that now I've really gone round the bend, because I'm seeing cats at my office.
While I may still have gone round the bend, the cat wasn't a figment of my imagination. It was a completely back, amber-eyed kitten of about 3 months, more or less calmly wandering round my office and inspecting everything, especially the cat food. It even climbed into one of the boxes and let me stroke it. The brother -- both were boys -- was sitting outside and peering in cautiously.
Exit kitten.
I go to tell the girls, they come back with me, only to see... both black kittens sitting in the cat food box and trying to open one of the packages.
The monsters.
I put a small plate with food out into the garden, and unfortunately I'll have to keep the door closed from now on -- imagine what would happen if we inadvertently locked a kitten into the embassy and activated the alarm.
Nice visitors, though. As Blerim correctly remarked, the only ones I receive without an appointment ;-)