According to my wife, the dog almost caught a squirrel on the evening walk. If he hadn’t been on leash, he would have given it the business. I imagine that would have been a moment of great triumph for Birch, and he would have loved to tell the other dogs about it. Or wait until the news spread, and they brought it up.

“Word on the street says you got one, dude. You got a squirrel!

Birch shrugs, no big deal

“Was it one of those cheeky bastards that runs back and forth across the top of the fence then flies up into a tree?”

“No, it was coming straight at me."

“What? Since when does a squirrel come at you?”

“This one did.”

(Another dog saunters up)

“I heard he came at you five times.”

Birch: “He was asking for it, what can I say? Dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta-“

“And I heard it was a baby.”

“The young ones have all the energy, which makes them hard to -“

“No, I mean a small little stupid one that hasn’t learned anything, or probably has some parasite in the brain that makes them act in a way contrary to their evolutionary instincts. That’s what you ate? An insane baby squirrel?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

“But that’s what you ate.”

“Look, at the end of the day, I got a squirrel, okay?”

“That’s like getting hit by a mail truck and saying you caught a postal worker because he stopped the van!”

(Growling, followed by violent lunges for the throat)

I mowed the north lawn and the back yard after supper. It seems like every night for the last week someone’s been mowing after dinner. Well, my turn. When I did the back yard Birch was alarmed, and pranced alongside me, worried about this noisy stinky thing. Within five minutes he had calmed down and decided to sit in the path of the mower. I would get close and shout “Move” and he would move, to the next path of the mower. You envy them their ability to reset and wipe the memory and load a new set of instructions.

It is now seven PM in the evening, and all is calm. The neighbor is hitting golf balls into a net. (It took me a long time to figure out that noise. It was the same every time, but at irregular intervals.) A dog is barking up the street. Distant sounds of the freeway. No planes overhead tonight; wonder why. The sun has set. Everything is majority green. The flowers are untroubled by the threat of frost.

Let's see, how did the day tote up? Did two radio segments; wrote a Substack; wrote two below-the-folds for July 2026; ran a bag to the Goodwill store; made a fast dinner for wife before she went to play tennis; mailed a form; put off filling out another form. Walked in the woods by the rushing water.

All good.

Heard the last cicada of the day at 5:47 PM. Faint. Just heard the first cricket, tuning up for the evening chorale. I do believe I will have a bourbon tonight.

LATER I have been attempting to descale the Keurig as per the instructions of the internet, and it will not reset. Everyone else is saying OH THANK YOU in the YouTube comments about the pushing 8 and 10 simultaneously instruction, and I’m just sitting here with a long face missing out on the fun. It simply will not reset.

Gosh, wonder if Amazon has any suitable replacements . . . hold on, didn’t I just spend some time looking for a printer, and end up in deep despair? Didn’t I spend time looking for coffee makers the last time the Keurig was hosed, and that ended in deep despair as well? All those Chinese machines with unpronounceable names, all those reviews (mostly positive with 14% declaring it broke in two weeks, absolute junk), all those ugly deformed devices with the usual livery of black and silver.

Here's a completely convincing and absolutely real photo from one of the "brands." The croissants look like some sort of flaky trilobyte.

I do not know what is going on in this room. "Put the printer on the microwave, the fire will warm up the ink."

"Are you sure that's a printer? I think it's a nightmare visualization of a record player with a built-in radio."

"Never mind. Place the hot radiator thing on the flammable carpet."

"Where should I put the carafe?"

"Right on the edge, precariously."

So. Please I beg you do not tell me to get a French Press. It's too much work. I cannot be arsed, as they say. Then again, I do remember having some good coffee out of one of those at my in-laws' place. Or, I could bring out the espresso machine. It's huge. I got it so I could provide the proper coffee when my French brother-in-law was over for holidays and celebrations. But they got divorced and I haven't used it much.

I think my parents had the same coffee maker for 20 years.