It must be autumn for real now. I can tell because of the chill in the air all day, and because for the first time in months I climbed into the loft this afternoon to read. It's too hot even to set foot upstairs in the summertime, but it was cozy and comfortable today.

It was so comfortable, in fact, that I fell asleep. Three times I fell asleep. Maybe one long nap would have been better than three short naps, but anything was better than the feeling that I was dragging myself through the day. I woke up tired this morning, but I got a lot of work done before I hit the wall. If the phone hadn't rung a couple of times, I might have slept straight through from 2:00 to 6:00. I really think I could have done it.

Then where would I be, though? Staying up all night and going through this again tomorrow. As it is, I didn't sleep enough to keep me from being dead tired even yet. I'm looking forward to going to bed early. I don't know if it'll happen, because I often have the best of intentions in that regard. Something always seems to come up. I'll start getting ready for bed at ten and find myself still fidgeting around the house at two in the morning.

That probably can't happen tonight.

In spite of what you may have heard, I'm not superstitious, not in the least. However, the throw pillows are still in the same place on the stairs where I sat and watched the game last night. They'll be there Saturday, when the next game starts. After that, we'll see.

Baseball players and people around the game are notoriously superstitious. It's not just about not changing your hat (or some other more delicate garment) if you've worn it when you won a game. There are players who go through all kinds of rituals that make no sense, from eating a particular meal before a game to leaping over the baselines on the way to their positions.

If you ever watch a game and see players or fans with their caps on backwards or turned inside out, you know they're trying to change the team's luck. They're wearing their "rally caps." No need to do that for the Giants these days, or the Angels either. Two teams rolling through the opposition, ready to collide. In two weeks, only one will be left standing.

Can October really be half ober— uh, over? I'm no closer to having the quarterly taxes done than I was two weeks ago. There are no more baseball games before Saturday, so a smart person would make use of this free time to try to get ahead on work. A smart person wouldn't sleep through the whole afternoon, though, so that must mean it's some other person we're talking about.