I miss fall. So far it seems to be the only season in San Francisco that slightly mirrors the places I've left behind. The leaves turn brown show through with green, they crumple, their veins oddly vibrant. I pick some up off the Embarcadero on the way to work and hold them in my mittened hands, delighted. The air has the same weight and smells similarly and it makes me want to be home, on the other side of the country.

The apples are gorgeous, heroic in their variety. But even the tightness of their flesh reminds me of the East. It's October baseball and the Sox are in the playoffs (and the Yankees suck). Watching baseball makes me miss the shy and awkward enthusiasm of Bostonians.

I've got something really heavy and difficult in my life right now, and it requires me to act like a calm and rational adult all the time, and that is hard to do. Yesterday the situation got, oh, five percent better, which is something.

Last night after work I walked my bike home from the 24th St. BART in the rain and ran into my coworker from FH at his other job. You know you're home in a city when you run into your Mexican coworkers in distant parts of town and have conversations half English, half Spanish. I am here now, but this visceral longing unsettles me.

I've got Earl Grey ice cream base in the fridge, and orange shortbread cookies to make ice cream sandwiches, but what I don't have is the silky hot fudge sauce from work to drown it in. Tomorrow I am maybe, hopefully, eating persimmon ice cream and/or quince sorbet. Oh, and the noodle kugel ice cream is coming along. We have a plan. It is going to be fantastic.