Today I discovered

[mme_hardy]

 ... that my house, which I had always vaguely assumed was on an east-facing slope, is actually on a north-facing slope.

I found this out by installing a compass app and saying to my husband, "Hey, this compass app is broken!"     Apparently it isn't.   All these years, I figured that "My back window looks across San Francisco Bay to the other side" meant that I was looking east, or some variation on it.   Somehow I reconciled this belief with the knowledge that on both solstices the rising sun shines in through my bedroom window, which is at a right angle to the back slope.

I can only say "Duh". 

Comments

[genarti]

Oh dear! I laugh, but it's the kind of thing I'd be capable of too, even though I've generally got a pretty good sense of direction. If I stopped and thought "Okay, the sun rises there, so north is over there," I'd be fine. But it's very easy to go "well [town] is north of us, [town] is vaguely that way when I'm standing on the corner down there, that's north!" and not pay attention to the fact that the road bends* or something, and just not stop to think about the data that's in conflict.

Once I've stopped to sort it out, I'll generally remember that okay, that landmark is north so we're traveling southwest right now, or whatever, but I don't always stop to sort it out for quite a while.

*I live in Boston. Straight roads at right angles to each other are a weird and disconcerting rarity.