For Barack Obama, this time of year carries a special significance: today is his 16th wedding anniversary, and we are heading back to Chicago after a rally near Philadephia so the candidate can take his wife Michelle out for what he promises will be a "romantic dinner". It'll be just the two of them (plus the Secret Service, a press pool and the inevitable crowd of onlookers).

Obama told supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Thursday that he had "a gift all picked out" for his wife. However, marital discord is possible as the baseball World Series approaches. For the first time since 1906, Chicago's two arch-rivals - the Cubs (Michelle's team) and the White Sox (Barack's) have a serious shot of both making the season finale starting on October 22.

"No fans are as passionate about their teams as Chicago fans, so the Cubs-Sox rivalry gets pretty heated - even in my own household," the Illinois senator said on ESPN Radio Thursday.

"I think I'm going to skip the last week of the presidential race if it's a cross-town series," he joked.

"We're just going to be back in Chicago. I'll tell America, 'Sorry guys, but I've got my priorities straight'."

If the polls continue to go his way, the election might well be sewn up before November 4. Not, of course, that Obama will be taking any chances.

That extends to forswearing his beloved basketball for the time being. Obama explained to ESPN that he couldn't risk turning up for one of his two remaining presidential debates against McCain with a broken nose or a missing tooth.

But on Election Day, the Democrat is promising himself a pick-up game - just as he did, as a good-luck charm, on mornings of his crunch primary races against Hillary Clinton. "By that time everybody will have made up their minds so it doesn't matter if I get hurt," he said.

Meanwhile, for Obama's travelling press corps, the autumnal weather has meant numb typewriting fingers in chilly tents at recent outdoor rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan. But that's just a staple of US campaign reporting, and the sudden demise of summer means that after a race that seems to have gone on forever, E-Day is now just a month away.