After two weeks of following the Reds around Florida and then up to Louisville, it did seem a little anticlimacic that I didn't get to watch opening day in person. But not all of us get to play a game for a living; some people have to be responsible for keeping our economy running. Some of us have to do the real work: growing the grain, building the cars, staffing the hospitals, teaching the children and, as in my case, writing the online technical documentation. Or, to be more specific, sifting through the 117 email messages that had accumulated over the course of my two-week road trip, at least 15 of which being email messages telling me that I had too many email messages.

Nevertheless, I still had opening day jitters as I awaited my opportunity to mutter quietly to myself while I waited for the MLB.com gamecast to load. The only other baseball fan in my office is 1) out of the office for the next week , 2) a Red Sox fan, and 3) my boss, so I don't really have the opportunity to cheer or give high fives when the Reds do something not horrible. The best release I have is a move I have named The Amanda Dance, in which I stir-the-pot while turning around my rolling office chair. It's killer, but fortunately for my esteem among my coworkers, no one at work has actually caught me doing it yet.

I had a couple of minor opportunities to do The Amanda Dance during today's opening game, and I was shocked. I don't know about you guys, but I absolutely anticipated the Reds getting trounced. I thought Paul Wilson was going to get beat around like a 17-year old with a clumsy prom date.

I was prepared for the disappointment, but I absolutely did not call it. In a surprising move, the Reds utterly failed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as they demonstrated so often in 2004.

And now I'm all confused. Sure, I guess I'm having fun now, but I'm just too afraid to commit. You see, it's really complicated; I just got out of this serious relationship with a Reds team. They looked good at first too, but before I knew it, I was hurt bad. It took my heart the whole off-season to heal, and I don't want to end up on the disabled list of love again so soon. I'm just not in that place yet, you know?

Still, deep down I want to love again, and maybe this will be The One. Maybe this year, I'll flash a quietly smug grin at my Red Sox fan boss. Maybe this year the whole office will see me doing The Amanda Dance. It really is killer.