Batteries fully charged

If you want to truly gauge the level of any addiction, then going cold turkey is a good way to do so. Nineteen days without any Red Sox baseball (not even a day-old USA Today boxscore) was more than enough to remind me that, despite feeling burned out only a few weeks ago, summer without the Sox is just not summer.

I have to admit that total isolation was probably a good thing. If you do get the odd box score, all that does is make you want to know more, which in turn means you spend your days trying to find elaborate ways to get detailed game reports, and then suddenly you realise that your two weeks of vacation have gone and all you've done is worry about the lead the Sox have over the Yankees, and you've failed to look around and enjoy the view:

Unfortnately the view has - in the best Cinderella tradition - reverted back to something far more prosaic, but the silver lining is that I can once more sit out on the balcony with the laptop and watch the Sox:

(Well, I could if it weren't pouring with rain and if the Sox weren't playing the Angels in the middle of the bloody night, but you know what I mean).

Rumour has it that I missed a lot during my vacation (Eric Gagne in a Sox uniform! A Jon Lester win!! A Julio Lugo grand-slam!!! A David Ortiz stolen base!!!!), but there's still a helluva lot of ball to played this season, and this is when the fun really starts.

Bring it on...