Where has the time all gone to? I could have sworn that it was June only a day or so ago. Even last week, the October temperatures were in the 70's. Now I know why another name for "autumn" is "fall" -- because the change descends on you without warning or notice.

Wonderful world of color -- or colour, as our neighbors to the north spell it. The honeybear and I drove up to Toronto (7.75 hours if you don't stop, 10 hours if you do). I can't complain about the drive -- mostly interstate highways, plus the Queen Elizabeth Way, so it's nice easy driving, plus we were going against the flow of rush hour traffic. The bonus was getting to see the fall foliage -- not in New England (as Yogi Berra said, there are so many people there nobody goes there), but in Pennsylvania and New York and Ontario. The best was in the hills of Pennsylvania, especally with morning sunshine. Driving doesn't get better than this.

And how was the vacation, you ask? Just fine, thanks. We stayed at a bed-and-breakfast just two blocks away from the Church-Wellesley neighborhood (aka the gay district). We had easy access to the excellent Toronto Transportation Commission network of subways and streetcars. (Fie to all those cities which gave up the streetcar! It's a nice way to get around, uses electricity instead of diesel fuel, and you get a leisurely view of the city. Every big city in the US would have them, if I ruled the world.) We had made up a list of things that might be interesting to see, but agreed that we wouldn't have to see everything on the list, which meant we saw most of them and had time to see some additional sights. We saw the Toronto "home team" of The Second City -- even funnier than we expected. And the food was, for the most part, very good. (Avoid the Bright Pearl restaurant in Chinatown at all costs.) Bill even found that his style of broadcasting is alive and well in Toronto.

Home for the holidays? Well, yes and no. Monday (October 11) was Thanksgiving Day in Canada, and the restaurant we ate at the night before (a pub in Church-Wellesley) was offering a turkey dinner with all the trimmings -- so you could say we practiced for American Thanksgiving already. And Toronto felt open and friendly to us, so in a way we were at home (staying at a b&b adds to that feeling).

All good things... Well, we couldn't stay there forever. We headed back home on the 11th -- through almost uniformly gray weather, with morning drizzle to send us off. Like every vacation, this one was too short. Like few vacations, this one is worth repeating, and (given the proximity) sooner rather than later.