I'm afraid that I'm precisely the kind of person my cats think I am -- a soft touch who doesn't care if certain fur persons stroll across the dining table.

My editorial project is almost finished; the author has the last 60 pages for review, and the client (the colonel in Ottawa who's paying the bills) is bracing his superiors for the inevitable backlash from the targets of the author's (well-deserved) criticism. I spent Friday afternoon and yesterday morning drafting the guts of a briefing note -- me! writing a briefing note five years after quitting the gummint! -- for the colonel's one-on-one with the Army Commander this week. I was gratified to realize that I still have my rhetorical chops, even if I don't write anything these days that's more challenging than a post on the Mudcat.

The house is relatively tidy but not at all clean, so this hiatus from editorial slogging must be dedicated to the mop, the scrubber and the vacuum cleaner. It's truly astounding how much cat hair is embedded in the carpets, and how quickly the chest of drawers becomes blanketed with dust. And it would be so nice to be able to walk across the kitchen floor without feeling tacky spots under the soles of my shoes. There's also laundry. But then, there's always laundry; who do I think I'm kidding?