The cat has draped himself over my shoulder as I’m sitting and writing, and he’s purring like crazy. The roast beef really seems to be agreeing with him. I’m glad. For my own part, I’m too tired after today’s hike to get up and walk around and do anything, but part of me really wants to go out for poetry or something. Tuesday is sort of a dead poetry night, though. Oooh, but is the feature in Pawtucket tonight, and if I leave now-ish, I can get there in time, and maybe stop at Miko’s and get something for …

It’s a ghastly long drive, though. And I’m kinda wiped. B and I took eight kids climbing in the state park today — no rope work, just some minor spotting here and there. I watched turkey vultured over the swamp for a while, and then climbed around on the rocks for a bit. So far, I haven’t found any ticks on me except for the first day. My hands are fairly well banged up, though.

Came home from the woods to discover that my sink was backed up. So I got on the bathroom floor, opened up the pipes, cleared the debris. Mostly dirt attached to a clot of my own loose hair. Sorry for the disgusting image, folks, but that’s what it was. That took almost an hour. I still haven’t eaten dinner.

I worked on the double canzone, but it’s a hard form to write in. You only get 10 possible rhymes in 130 lines; it may not be possible in English without writing drivel. It certainly proving hard for me to work my subject into the rhyme scheme, and I may not do it this way; I may try it as another double-sestina, since that worked so well for Watches. You may be asking, why do this crazy thing at all? Is it really worth it? I think it is. The couple of seconds of silence when I read a carefully crafted piece suggests I’m doing something worth doing.

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