Shake it, shake it, Cali.

So after my second trip to California in as many months, I have this verdict: the Bay Area is deceptively attractive in the fall. When you can see every building in San Francisco sharp against the horizon, and trees are changing to orange and yellow, and it's in the mid-60s with a pin-prick sky, you can't help but think: I want to live here.

Of course it's not practical. Or affordable. I would have to trade my little piece of heaven in Austin for some rented hovel in the Mission District for twice the price, where I would have to nudge bums and used needles out of the way to get in the front door. And then the whole thing would collapse in the Big One.

But no water bottles and no plastic bags, and health insurance for all city residents!

Strangely enough, I didn't even go to San Francisco while I was there. That's a lot of longing for not a lot of visiting. Instead: me, six friends from college, and three of their children went to my parents' cabin in Twain Harte, about an hour north of Yosemite. Beautiful, fun, haunted: all the things you want out of a vacation cabin.

Did I get haunted?

Yeah, I think I did. But please take this with a grain of salt, since reality can roll up and slide sideways when you really want something to happen. In fact, I was so riled up for something to go bump in the night that I eventually got too scared to get up in the dark and go to the bathroom. But for the record, I will say this: I think something touched the side of my shirt while I was sleeping the first night.

Also, the second night, I might have been sassing a ghost when I apparently said, very calmly, in my sleep, "I don't think so. Nice try, though."

On the way home yesterday, on my flight from Oakland to Los Angeles to El Paso to Austin (I like to stop at as many airports in the western U.S. as possible, apparently), we flew over several of the fires burning in Southern California. And even though the Santa Ana winds were well over 60 mph and were whipping the fires forward, from the air the plumes of smoke looked still, like someone had captured them on film and posted them in the airplane window. A terrible beauty.