Hooray, it's a holiday!

The roads were abandoned today; not because I live in a godforgotten neighbourhood - no no, far from that. The roads are usually very lively here in Antwerp, either crowded by cars or roadworks. The latter can both prevent and cause the me(n)tal roadmadnesses.

The reason for the eerie quietness lies in the fact that most people had a day off today, and lots of Belgians fled abroad for a city trip (where the grass is greener and the air is cleaner?). There were, of course, unlucky souls that work in an industry that require their places to be permanently occupied (I once belonged into that category), but I guess that's life, and partly their choice.

This holiday is called "dag van de arbeid" in Dutch, or the international Labor Day, as you prefer. I use this day as an excuse for a fulltime day of nothing-happening (it's in fact by far the only day I can really justify my laziness).

This doesn't mean I didn't do anything today; it just means I did nothing productive, I guess. Unless catching up with a dear friend falls into that category :) Because the clouds outside were filled with sadness, and temperatures were below acceptable degrees for this time of the year, the activities were mainly indoors: PlayStation 2 and a movie. In between we went out to visit a family who had a nest of kittens. As a side note, the daughter looked pregnant too. My friend was interested in getting one of the cuties, so we had to take a look. The cat mother is a Holy Birman, the father is (probably) the neighbour's Blue Russian cat. They were a-dorable! I'm an animal lover, so I'm pretty sure a cat will be one of my comrads when I leave this place to live on my own. Our landlord doesn't allow any pets... what a shame.

By the way, the picture on this blog entry is a modified version of a Garfield cartoon, courtesy of Jim Davis. You'll find the original here.