New York City, July 31, 2012

★★★ Moderate yet oddly demanding. The humidity persisted, still without real heat. All that moist air felt fresh and pleasant outdoors, but if you were fooled into letting it into a room, things got confoundingly stuffy — an inside-out version of the lurking, context-dependent discomfort when you misjudge and wear bluejeans on a warm day. The sunlight, too, was not quite reliable: now tempered by high clouds, now scattered into a harsh white blur. There were little bright-peach dotted smears of cloud at sunset, like accidental paintbrush marks. In the dark came a distant popping and rumbling sound. Thunder, breaking the dampness? No: At the southernmost edge of the window, where the glass met the frame, refracted golden sprays of fireworks flared over the harbor.