Dog Days Of Summer

In baseball, the dog days of summer often refer to the period between mid-June (say) and mid-August (ish) when it's easy to forget that there's really any point to the 162-game season other than to just play ball every day. Teams often take themselves out of contention over that stretch - the Jays didn't really wait that long this year, although technically I suppose you could say they did - while others show that they've got what it takes by stringing together a couple good months of effort heading into the home stretch of the season.

Outside of that venue, there's also a bit of a lull most years in the summer: TV shows are all in reruns, kids are out of school and there's a different pace to both their lives and their parents' comings and goings, and enough people take vacations from work to make it a scheduling challenge just to fill out a meeting quorum.

As for me, I feel the otherness of summer in the fact that the grocery stores aren't nearly empty enough during the weekday for my liking. For most of the other 10 months of the year, I can pretty much eschew line-ups at the cashier when I journey to the local supermarket; but as I was reminded today, that's just not always the case this time of year. That's hardly a big deal, but when you're in the dog days of summer, you even notice little inconveniences like that...