I caught myself eating potato chips over the sink this afternoon and was horrified.

It wasn't because Lay's Salt and Vinegar aren't on my diet. I got over that when I bought them on impulse a week or so ago. It was because it made me think, "How much of a single guy could I possibly be?"

Then I thought, "What the hell," and finished the bag.

Confession: I won't be worth much to anyone until the World Series ends in a couple of weeks. Right or wrong, I'm in full immersion mode here, eating and breathing and, uh, smoking baseball, in the privacy of my home.

Oh, I'll still be updating every day, and I'll try not to let my obsession infect what shows up here. But it can't be helped, can it? I mean, I don't have to write accounts and analyses of the games, but it's going to be a reach for me to raise my sights much beyond them.

I realize I shouldn't care about the results of a game played by a bunch of millionaires who represent cities far from where I live. And the truth is, I don't. I don't care much about the results, now that my team is out of the running, but I do care about the game they play and the place in history these particular games represent.

Sure, it's the toy store of life. But it's more fun than the boardroom of life or the utility closet of life, or even the locker room of life or the vice principal's office of life.

Gee, that's about enough of that, isn't it?

So I think we've established that I'm functioning below capacity and not working up to my usual modest standards. At least for once I have an excuse, even if it's a totally lame one. What house of cards will I construct for myself once this one blows away in the late autumn wind?

Oh, I know. The late autumn wind itself will play that role. And the rain and cold and enveloping darkness. Winter will taunt me like a schoolyard bully, slap my books to the blacktop and give me a wedgie.

And I'll let it happen, because I have no power over it.

But at least I'll be back in the Real World, whatever that means. I'll be in the now, in the moment, here where I am instead of way up there and back there and over yonder.