You had it coming, buddy.

Today's most gratifying piece of frivolous news had to be three year-old who, after being handed a freshly caught fowl ball at a Phillies game by her overzealous father, promptly threw it back into the field.

Not only do I laugh out loud every time I am revisited by this image, but I find it to be such hysterical karmic retribution for what I consider to be two of the most irritating human conditions: 1. The assumption that any instance of good fortune at least momentarily eclipses any need for human logic; and 2. Everyone's dumb preoccupation with their own children. I mean, come on, you're willing to sacrifice owning a tangible piece of sports history* for one solitary gesture that you likely deem as 'cute', even though your concept of cuteness has become so dangerously skewed by the affliction of early parenthood.

*Note: The magnitude of this description varies depending on what kind of baseball fan you are, I suppose, but I do not take the catching of a fowl ball lightly under any circumstances.

I harbor no real resentment toward parents or children or the dangerous combination of the two (two which you are likely responding, "Are you SURE about that?") I just find it truly, insanely hysterical that people who have children allow themselves to, on a REGULAR basis, be reduced to the same level of intellect as their spawn.

And will there come a day when my words prove hypocritical, and the sight of my own child's glowing smile is enough to reduce me to a pile of babbling mush? Maybe. But I'd like to think that I'd have the presence of mind to raise to kind of children who understand the sacred institution of Major League Baseball and who would behave accordingly.

It just comes in where it left you last...

August ended just in time.

Just when wrapping yourself in a blanket of warm air begins to feel more like pushing your way through a vat of sticky pudding that someone left out too long, when your endless string of social engagements turns into one hangover too many, when your electric bill skyrockets to obscene levels because of an A/C unit that doesn't even work that well, and when the neighborhoods unknown by tourists become a little too eerily quiet on the weekends...

Just when you think that of all places to be in the dog days of summer, New York City is most definitely not one of them...

Suddenly, overnight, a cold front comes in and clears away the rotting garbage and the outfit-ruining impromptu rain showers and heat-induced fatigue and the mystery subway B.O., and ushers in a slight chill in the air that restores the spring in your step and bears a promise of, if noting else, a change.

And leave it to classy old New York, New York, to do it so exquisitely, so tastefully, right on cue.

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I love Autumn for the same reason I love Spring...inherently fleeting and transitory, it always leaves you wanting more, aching for the time when it will come again.