A few thoughts as I watch the calendar turn to the last quarter of the year:

Got to take my final swim in the pool in October. The water temp tonight was 75, tolerable enough for a few final laps around the pool to call it a season. Oh, there will still be plenty of times where I’ll sit and swish my legs in the water, but the nights are too cool now to allow the warm days to replace the heat loss. It was a great year, though – I’ll miss the late night dips under the moon and stars before heading for bed.

While in some ways it is sad to see the Boston baseball season end, the last few months were pretty excruciating all around. I know there will be those who want to keep the young players who performed so well this year, but outside of catcher Christian Vasquez and pitcher Joe Kelly, is there anyone else you could think of saying no to trading if the right offer came along?

Might the Baltimore Orioles be the 214 version of the 2013 Sox?

When you read stuff like the latest scandals with the Secret Service, the IRS, and the VA, and you look at the utter lack of enforcement and concern over who is coming through our southern border, and you combine it with the fact that guy from Liberia with Ebola was allowed into the country and that the Obama administration sees not need to cut off flights from West African nations having widespread Ebola issues, you just have to wonder where the hell simple common sense has gone. If your own government can’t operate with a minimum of common sense what can you do? Course, I’ll probably be called a racist and get audited for writing such heresy.

With October 1st comes the official end of the monsoon season here in Arizona, and what a monsoon it was. I don’t us folks here in Gilbert got as much rain as some other areas around us, but the last few weeks made it a pretty darned wet one for sure.