The changing of the seasons has found me unusually busy and distracted.

Things with the band have gotten kind of hectic. We’ve got three shows booked for next month, two in Milwaukee and, yes, one in Madison, finally. We’ll be playing the evening of November 14 at the High Noon Saloon. More details on all the shows to be announced in fairly short order. We’re understandably very excited.

One of my other side projects has risen from the dead. Your Signs, a feature film I designed the sound for and helped produce and direct, is screening twice this month. Next weekend, I’m bound for New York to the International, Independent Film and Video Festival. I’m kind of planning the trip to be a last minute, shoe-string budget (of course), blitzkrieg vacation-that-will-be-equal-parts-fun-and-work. Than on Halloween, October 31st at the Market Square Theater, we will be screening it in Madison at 3:00 PM.

On top of all that chaos, I’ve been making time for some emergency pleasure reading. I’m beginning to suspect I have a condition of sorts. It first manifested when I was a sophomore in college, square in the middle of a two-week span of nonstop midterms and due dates. In the midst of that, I found myself inexplicably edgy, irritable and despondent. It took a couple more weeks, but I shortly realized that I had just plumb forgotten to make time for pleasure reading over a span of several months. I just realized the other week this was in the process of happening to me again, so I quickly dived into a Heinlein that had been sitting at the top of my to-read list.

It’s saving my life. I plan to pick up another work of fiction successive to this one, and then maybe another when I’ve finished that. Who knows? Maybe I’ll really go crazy and try writing some for the first time in a long time.

So in the meantime, it’s safe to say October’s going to be a blog-light month. Rest assured, if something is irresistibly pressing, it will be blogged. I’ll have updates on the New York trip and the Common Swift gigs, and I’ll come blazing back strong in November. But in the meantime, I need to recharge those batteries.

I’ve been dreading this day for some time.

I’ve taken all the proper steps to prepare. The brats are defrosting in the fridge. My lucky “Super Bowl XXXI Champions” shirt has been adequately laundered. Following an aggressive, targeted regimen, the new Packers hat I bought a mere two months ago is fully broken in and ready for a Monday night in the trenches.

While those steps would ease any malaise I can imagine suffering prior to any other Packers game, tonight’s showdown with the Vikings at the Metrodome is different. Don’t get me wrong, I expect a good football game, and I have high hopes that the team will hit the stride they seem to have been missing so far this season. As far as I can see, it’s anybody’s game, and I have no reason to doubt I will be heartily entertained.

But the reason I’m so uneasy is that tonight, for the first time, I really and truly have to admit to myself that he’s gone and done it.

Brett. Favre. Good ol’ number four. The Gunslinger. The Iron Man. The Mississippi Touchdown Machine. Old Man Football. The Great Gray Guru of the Gridiron. Call him what you will, but I finally have to admit to myself that I can’t call him a Packer any more.

I started watching Packers football when I was little enough to sit on my old man’s knee. Unlike my little sister, who doesn’t recall the Packers under any other quarterbacks but Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, I vaguely remember watching Don “the Majik Man” Majkowski run the team in the late eighties and early nineties.

Then, when I was seven years old, Majkowski went down in a game against the Bengals, and a legend was born as Favre lead the team in the first of what would become many come-from-behind victories. The Cardiac Pack began its ascent. I came of age as Favre did the same as a leader on the team. I spent countless afternoons rooted in front of the TV, pulling for Favre and the team with all my might. I trekked north to Lambeau Field with my Dad and my Grandfather, three generations of Weis, to enthusiastically freeze our asses off at the 1996 NFC Championship game and the 1997 Showdown in Titletown grudge match, to name a couple.

We lauded Favre when he admitted his addictions and worked to get clean. We celebrated with Favre when he married his high school sweetheart and the mother of his daughter. We wept with Favre when his father and mentor Irv passed away, and Favre went on to play the greatest game of his storied career as a final tribute.

My Grandpa, my Dad and I — indeed, the entire Packer Nation — admired the hell out of the man. He wore his heart and his passion where it was plain to everyone, and it made him fun to watch on the field. But more than that, it was inspirational to see someone happily use his natural talents to their fullest extent, while always (it seemed) keeping his feet on the ground.

We were watching the rise of a legend in real time. And he was our legend — we thought.

The day Favre retired (the first time) it was tough not to tear up a little in the midst of the speech he gave. Those of us who had weathered the ups and downs of that storied career were just as torn as Favre himself. On one hand, we knew we would miss his talent and his passion for the game, but on the other, we could breathe a sigh of relief knowing the story had a relatively happy ending.

We thought.

But before Dad could reserve our hotel room in Canton five years out for Favre’s hall-of-fame induction, the drama began. Like so many Packers fans, I suffered through it, feeling ill at any mention of the situation. Certainly, I remained a Favre fan, but I was a Packers fan first. And when Favre signed with the Jets, my stomach settled a little, and I told myself he would tool around in the AFC for a while, never directly confronting the team I loved, and then we could forget the whole thing ever happened and get back to the countdown to Canton.

I could have contentedly lived out the rest of my days pretending 2008 never happened, until 2009 happened.

Call me a nutjob or a sentimentalist. Tell me I’m overreacting. Show me it’s a different game than it was, and that loyalty to a team is a thing of the past. Try and explain that divisional rivalries are an invention of bored fans.

Rationally speaking, I’m well aware of how ridiculous this sounds. But when Brett Favre takes the field tonight in a Vikings uniform against his former teammates, and indeed against the legions of Packer Backers who supported him in his darkest hours over a decade-and-a-half, I will feel personally betrayed.