Playoffs!?! Playoffs!?!

It's been quite a year for the Harrisburg Senators. To start, the club opened a brand new stadium that rivals any in minor league baseball and hosted the Eastern League All-Star Game. Months before Washington DC first celebrated Stras-mas, the holiday spirit swept through Harrisburg. Drew Storen, another huge prospect who ended up in Washington, also started the season on City Island. Modern legend and World Series hero Orlando Hernandez made a brief cameo too.

Now, after another wretched start to the season—mirabile dictu—the Senators started selling playoff tickets yesterday morning. That's right, playoff tickets.

Now let's not get ahead of ourselves—the Senators haven't clinched a postseason berth. They are currently a half game ahead of Bowie and one game up in the loss column for the Western Division's Wild Card playoff spot with seven games to play. All of those games are on the road, but five are against Binghamton, which is currently seven games under .500. Two of Bowie's six remaining games are at home, and four are against Richmond, who is also seven games under .500. It's really too close to call.

Harrisburg’s Best Guilty Pleasures (Radio Edit)

I don't deal with stress well. Don't get me wrong, I love being busy, but when I'm legitimately stressed, I'm a textbook case of what not to do. Basically, I push myself to the limit and then turn to some comfort object to blow off steam. Usually that means ingesting substances that aren't good for the body. Calm down. Not those kind of substances. If you'd get arrested or fired for doing it, it's not on the list.

Things have been pretty crazy lately, so I've been leaning on my typical crutches, and since I work in downtown Harrisburg and park on City Island, I usually have to make due with things that are close at hand. If you're having a bad day, bad week or bad month and need to indulge yourself with a pick-me-up, here are five of my favorites in Harrisburg.

Spotobe Top 10: August 26

The Spotobe Top 10 are the 10 events viewed most by Spotobe readers in the last seven days. Enjoy:

1. Dauphin County Jazz Festival: September 11 & 12 at Fort Hunter Mansion, Harrisburg
2. Yorkfest Arts Festival: August 28 & 29 in downtown York
3. Williams Grove Steam Show: August 29–September 6 at Williams Grove, Mechanicsburg
4. Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge Bust: Saturday, October 2 at the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, Columbia
5. Annual Shippensburg Corn Festival: Saturday, August 28 in downtown Shippensburg
6. New Cumberland Apple Festival: Saturday, September 28 in Borough Park, New Cumberland
7. Fort Hunter Day: Sunday, September 19 at Fort Hunter Mansion, Harrisburg
8. Long's Park Art & Craft Festival: September 3–6 at Long's Park, Lancaster
9.15th Annual Hanover Chili Cook Off: Sunday, September 5 at the Good Field Complex, Hanover
10. Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire: Through October 31 at Mount Hope Estate & Winery, Manheim

Dancing Like the Stars

I have a confession to make. For the past three consecutive seasons, I’ve been obsessed with Dancing with the Stars. Not so much the glitz and glam of the show itself, but the underlying notion that with the right amount of guidance, anyone can learn to ballroom dance. Like many DWTS fans, I’d watch the show every week, my toes tapping along to the poor rendition of the latest Katie Perry song wondering if I could learn to Rumba like Erin Andrews.

Picking up on my sudden fascination, my boyfriend decided to surprise me with dance lessons for our two-year anniversary. He’d packaged the gift certificate and circa 1985 marketing pamphlet atop a dozen long-stem roses and sent them over to my office. The flowers were quite beautiful, but the outdated brochure made me wonder if ballroom dancing wasn’t as cool as it looked on TV.

Spotobe Top 10: August 18

The Spotobe Top 10 are the 10 events viewed most by Spotobe readers in the last seven days. Enjoy:

1. Dauphin County Jazz Festival: September 11 & 12 at Fort Hunter Mansion, Harrisburg
2. Yorkfest Arts Festival: August 28 & 29 in downtown York
3. Fort Hunter Day: Sunday, September 19 at Fort Hunter Mansion, Harrisburg
4. Hershey Half Marathon: Sunday, October 3 at Hersheypark Stadium, Hershey
5. Long's Park Art & Craft Festival: September 3–6 at Long's Park, Lancaster
6. South Mountain Fair: August 17–19 at South Mountain Fairgrounds, Arendtsville
7. New Cumberland Apple Festival: Saturday, September 25 at Borough Park, New Cumberland
8. Harvest of the Arts Festival: Saturday, September 25 in downtown Carlisle
9. 15th Annual Hanover Chili Cook Off: Sunday, September 5 at the Good Field Complex, Hanover
10. Attack The Gap 10k: Saturday, August 21 at Kings Gap State Park, Carlisle

Summer Fun on the Susquehanna Heartland Wine Trail

Every summer my sister and I migrate north to Klingerstown for the Summerfest Wine Festival at Benigna’s Creek Winery. The event is pretty simple. After a small admission fee you are given a glass and left to visit with each of the wineries on hand to find out which wines are best for you. You can stick by beloved Cabernet Francs or Chardonnays or be more adventurous and try wines like Cosmic Charisma or Bell Bottom Blueberry. Traditional or whimsical, whatever your fancy, it's there.

Each winery is unique so the afternoon never gets old. Some wineries have a featured wine, while others have specialty drinks featuring one of their wines. I've been going for a few years and I've always found everyone to be extremely pleasant to chat with and more than happy to answer questions. My sister and I are definitely not wine connoisseurs, but over the past few summers we have learned a lot and have enjoyed doing so.

Am I an Old Crank?

I've got to get something off of my chest. I initially felt as though it wasn't my place to say something. Like I was making a big deal out of nothing. But after talking to Dori, who has two young children, and Mark, who has a baby boy of his own, I feel a little bit more confident putting this out there. I'd like to preface what follows by saying that no, I do not have children. I don't understand the stress of watching over a little one.

On a recent Saturday night, my wife and I went out for a spur of the moment dinner date. It was no big deal. We were sitting around on the couch after working out in the yard in the morning, and decided that it might be nice to go out. We tried a place that we'd never been before, which will remain nameless. This restaurant is certainly not a fine-dining establishment. More casual chic. At the same time, it's not a family restaurant either; most meals cost between $20 and $30 dollars. This wasn't dinner at the Ritz, but it wasn't the Cracker Barrel either.

Smoothies: The Coffee Cure

It might be more addicting than the cigarettes. It might be more addicting than crack cocaine. People need their coffee, and everyone goes through different trials and tribulations in search of the bean. Hectic mornings in the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru. Being jostled in a packed Starbucks. Freezing rain on the walk to the Downtown Café counter. Coffee’s a year round phenomenon. It’s your routine, your habit, your caffeine dependence. It's steaming right under your nose, beckoning on your desk.

People, wake up and smell the baking asphalt. It’s 90-some degrees out there. You don’t drink hot chocolate while your basking out on our deck relaxing at the end of the day, do you? Mix it up with a smoothie—the perfect healthy, cold, fruitilicious summer treat.  Here are two of my favorite places in the Harrisburg area who’ve mastered the ancient Brazilian purée art of smoothie mixing:

Easy, Awesome, End-of-Summer Camping Trips

Summer is slowly slipping away, and you're itching for one more vacation aren't you? Just one more get-away before you settle in for Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and then months of bluster and numb fingers. If you're one of those people who has a tropical get-away planned sometime this winter, we don't want to hear it. Seriously. Go away. For the rest of us, why not consider a camping trip?

When I was younger, my family went camping every year. I don't mean park-your-RV-in-a-field camping. Real camping. It's a great end of summer trip; easy to plan, inexpensive and a hell of a lot of fun. After the jump, I've collected a few possible camping trips that I've enjoyed in the past. Pack up the car and hit the road!

Spotobe Top 10: August 4

The Spotobe Top 10 are the 10 events viewed most by Spotobe readers in the last seven days. Enjoy:

1. Lititz Rotary Craft Show: Saturday, August 14 in Lititz Springs Park, Lititz
2. Marysville Lions Carnival: Through August 7 at Lions Park, Marysville
3. Dauphin County Jazz Festival: September 11 & 12 at Fort Hunter Mansion, Harrisburg
4. George F. Hempt Memorial Polo Match: Saturday, August 14 at Hempt Farms, Mechanicsburg
5. Historic Canoe Trip: Saturday, August 14 at Fort Hunter Mansion, Harrisburg
6. South Mountain Fair: August 17–19 at South Mountain Fairgrounds, Arendsville
7. Yorkfest Arts Festival: August 28 & 29 in downtown York
8. Perry County Fair: August 19–24 at the Perry County Fairgrounds, Newport
9. Attack the Gap: Saturday, August 21 at Kings Gap State Park, Carlisle
10. Columbia Wrightsville Bridge Bust: Saturday, October 2 on the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge