Weather: Hot and humid. The high today was 100 degrees, tying a record set in 1919. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as hot.

Watching: The rest of the two-hour opener of Touching Evil. Wow! Ian McDiarmid, who plays Senator (later Emperor) Palpatine in the Star Wars saga, gave a chilling performance as a scientist who may also be a serial killer. I'm looking forward to the other episodes.

The Ukrainians

6:15 p.m. Tab is off today. This morning he took the boys out to a parade in Ewing and then to a playground so that I could get some work done. I have a set of revises due at the Press this week along with several other books in various stages of composition that I neglected over the holiday weekend.

The weather remains hot and steamy here in New Jersey with no relief in sight. Everyone is complaining, but it doesn't bother me too much. As long as I can have at least part of the day to recuperate in air conditioning, I'll happily spend hours outdoors in the heat.

I'm sitting outside on the back porch writing this on my Zaurus while the boys play in the wading pool. The water rifles are getting a lot of use, too. At one point all three boys were pointing the guns at each other. It reminded me of one of those stand-off scenes for which director John Woo has become famous.

A couple of our Ukrainian next door neighbors, Jimmy and The Smoking Man, are out on their back porch. They smiled and said hello and are currently watching the boys' antics with amusement.

Tab and I are not sure exactly how many Ukrainians live there. Their numbers and their relationships to each other are a source of speculation for us. We do know Jimmy is the group's translator and the one who made the arrangements for the house rental. He speaks English fluently, unlike the rest of the household. He seems to travel a lot.

We've nicknamed one of the men who lives in the house "The Smoking Man" because he bears an uncanny resemblance to the character William B. Davis plays in The X-Files. Besides, he is always smoking so the nickname is doubly appropriate. The youngest guy there is Bogdan of carwashing fame. Then there are at least four middle-aged women, all of whom are very friendly and always want to hug and kiss my boys when they see them.

We have yet to determine who is related to whom. Tab thinks The Smoking Man is married to one of the ladies. We think that Bogdan is somehow related to one of the women, also--perhaps he is a younger brother. And on weekends and holidays other Ukrainian friends or relatives from out of state come for visits and parties.

They are friendly neighbors despite the language barrier. When we first learned last year that John and Brenda, the house's owners, were planning to move in with John's parents and rent out their house, we were more than a little worried. We've been very fortunate.

The Ukrainian ladies often give my boys treats like ice cream sandwiches, oranges, and cookies. On Christmas Eve several of the ladies brought us a traditional Ukrainian Christmas vigil dinner: mushroom soup, cheese and potato pierogies, and fish. Fortunately, my mother-in-law was here at the time and served as translator. She is fluent in Polish, which is apparently similar enough to Ukrainian that she could converse with them.

The day before yesterday Bogdan brought us a big box of California strawberries and told us that in a few weeks they'd have some tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers to give us. They've planted quite a nice garden in their backyard, which is only slightly larger than ours. I counted about sixty tomato plants. They are going to be inundated with tomatoes! We'll happily accept some of the overflow, since we didn't plant any ourselves this year.

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