Yesterday was hot and humid, and the a/c was blasting all day. This morning is cooler, but the air quality isn't great--Canadian smoke, presumably--so I may be closing the windows again shortly. Still, it's pleasant to find myself at Saturday. The past several weeks have been ridiculous--all of that hard conference work, then losing Ruckus, then the trip to Chicago, now this new guy in town . . . highs and lows and highs.

But the new guy is--dare I say it?--nice. I am not used to such a thing. Ruckus had many magnificent characteristics, but nice was not one of them. He bit and scratched; he was packed with grievance and vanity; and while he was an enthusiastic family member, he was, as my son would say, a lot. I'm flummoxed by this new and unfamiliar beast: a sweet-tempered cat. Yesterday I clipped his nails, and he just sat in my lap purring. Ruckus would have removed both of my hands.

The name is still in flux, but we are experimenting with versions of Charles . . . Chuck, Chip, Charlie. Presently he is bouncing around on the couch playing with the string bookmark attached to my notebook, and his ears are draped with spiderwebs from the basement. He's full of beans, a cheerful little busybody, and it's really hard to type when he's around.

I've got no particular plans for the day, other than puttery home stuff. I would like to take a look at a poem blurt; I should harvest chard and sow some fall-crop greens; maybe I'll mow grass or weed, but in this drought neither chore is essential. We really need rain, but that's not in the offing. Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to reread The Scarlet Pimpernel, a ridiculous book that I have loved since childhood. The politics are terrible, the plot is absurd, the characters are stagy and silly, but I enjoy them all so much. It's the book version of an Errol Flynn movie.