Cheesesteak (with Cardinals for Bun)

I think summer vacations as a kid were a curse. I mean, now, at this time of year, I find myself filled with a sense of dread, kind of like the Sunday Dread when you can already feel the grogginess of waking up on Monday at 5pm on a Sunday evening, only the August Dread is much stronger. I always liked school as a kid, and summers often seemed too long, but when school was about to start, there was a part of me that remembered how long the academic year was, how dreary the Midwestern winter skies were, and how many months I would have to go without baseball.

Today is a beautiful day, cool not like August, but I feel like we're so close to the Monday of winter. I have to look at the trees in all their verdant fullness to believe summer is still raging in the Northern Hemisphere. The colors are very much alive around me, my skin still bronze like a person with Irish/English/German ancestry should never get, but I have the sensation that summer, that cookouts and shorts and warmth and light into the evenings and baseball are about to end.

Happy Birthday to my sister, Sandy, who is 27 today. She's in Indianapolis and is as big of a Reds fan as my whole family.

With those thoughts, I am off to Philly to see the still-contending Reds take on the challenging Phillies, a series that is no less important than those games against the Deadbirds we just played or those that we will play immediately after. I'm bringing a bag full of offense in case the Reds forget theirs or their luggage is lost in the chaos of color-coded paranoia. I sure hope what I bring is the right size, though. Adam Dunn is a big man.

Oh, one more thing. I'm starting a Google bomb. Leatherpants vampire. I encourage other bloggers to join in the fun. (He doesn't have an online bio, only a short wiki entry and a bunch of articles on his bloodlust.)