State of the irregular

It's August. Athens tends to go quiet in August, probably due to the heat (ninety-degree days are more common than not, and the mercury will sometimes push as high as a hundred degrees, combined with blazing sun and no wind).

Over the weekend, they cleared out the tent city that had sprung up in Syntagma Square, and this morning, workers were doing spadework to prepare various soil patches in the square for replanting of grass.

Except that instead of spades, they were using pneumatic drills.

Yeah, the soil got baked kind of hard there.

Also, last night I got accosted by a couple of itinerant wanderers at my building's front door as I was coming home from dinner. Normally, I would have just blazed straight in and shut the door, because it's really not a good idea to open the front door for anyone you don't know, but they kept circling me, butting against me, meowing...

...oh, did I forget to mention that the itinerant wanderers were kittens? One very friendly black cat, one somewhat more aloof calico. After they turned on the charm for about ten minutes, I went up and came back down with a Tupperware bowl and some evaporated milk, by which time the black cat had left for parts unknown, but the calico stuck around and got a late-night snack.

I think, psychologically, I'm a sucker for cats. But I'm allergic to cat hair, and even if I weren't, a fifth-floor (well, sixth-floor depending on how you count them) apartment with only four rooms isn't the best place for a cat, is it?

Musing

The Greek taxicab hacks' strike is now into its third week.

I'm wondering if it would be out of line for me to decide that for every day they remain on strike, that's one day I won't tip a cab driver once they go back to work.