It's funny that on the first Sunday of the NFL football season, fall fell hard all around my house. While I was flipping madly among the fourteen football games and keeping tabs on baseball and tennis (will this madness never end?), the sky was masked by a gray-white haze and the trees were rustling noisily in the wind.

And my head was filling with mush. Fall, spring — it doesn't matter. When the wind blows, breathing becomes a burden. I finally just gave up and took a pill, which you know I didn't want to do.

Other than that (and a pathetic performance by the Giants bullpen), it was a pretty good day. I was like a kid with a new toy all morning, watching ten football games at the same time. That part isn't new, because I've had the satellite package for three seasons now. What's new is that there's now a website that tells me which game I should be watching.

Really. It's "Turn to channel 709, the Bills are in the Red Zone again," and then it's "Switch to channel 707, Favre just threw another interception." Way cool stuff, but it had me hopping up and down, fumbling with the remote even more than I do on a normal Sunday.

Then every so often David would phone and we'd commiserate over (a) how lousy some of the games were, and (2) how lousy some of our picks in this week's pool were. (And by the way, thanks a lot, Dolphins. You screwed us both over with your prodigious ineptitude.)

It was a good workout, walking back and forth all day, wearing out the carpet and the heels of my socks. That beats wearing out the seat of my jeans, which is about all a regular Sunday will get me. I'm not lazy, just focused.

As much as I enjoyed all this activity, I was kind of glad when it was over, and I don't think I'll spend every Sunday glued quite so tightly to the TV, despite all the bells and whistles and sideshows. There was a Sunday night game that I didn't bother to watch. Okay, it was on, part of the time. But I wasn't really watching.

On an autumn day like this, though, it's actually better to be inside out of the wind than outside in it. Summer always seems to leave a lot faster than it arrived, especially once school and football get underway. Personally, even with all this fun and excitement, I'd rather be choking and wheezing in early spring than late summer. After March comes April. After September, it's a fast downhill slide to November and February and similar gloomy destinations.