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

[ironed_orchid]

That was my thought. Bodies of water are often tricky like that.

When I moved to Canberra it took me several months to realise that the campus map had been printed with a view to fit the campus onto a rectangular piece of paper, and not with a view to making sure that North was at the top. It was only when I realised the sun kept setting in what I thought was North that I twigged, and even then it took a long time to reorient myself.

[sara]

I never used to have much of a sense of direction, and then I went to work in a business where I regularly had to find parcels that were drawn on fairly terrible maps.

I have a little trouble sometimes if I've flown into a new city, but my sense of direction and my ability to dead-reckon my way around is much better than it used to be. This has led me to think that all that "men are better than women at wayfinding, because hunting so evolution" is probably bullshit, and that men are often better than women at wayfinding because men often have jobs where they wayfind all the time and it's a SKILL at which one improves with practice. I consistently test as "male" on direction and spatial-orientation tests now, which I certainly did not as a young adult.

[mme_hardy]

A friend of mine didn't believe how bad my direction-finding memory was until she turned right into my hotel room with me, then left the room and again turned right down the hall, fondly believing that I was going back the way I'd come.

[sara]

Well, hotels are terrible because they try so hard to make it all look homogenous. If they would put different colored carpets or something on the different levels it would be much easier.

[mme_hardy]

Oh, yes. Such a very good idea!

[sara]

Distinctive silk flowers, a statue of an elephant once in a while...really ANYTHING. But noooo, it's narrow taupe corridors all the way down.

[mme_hardy]

Parking garages figured it out long ago.

If you did it right, you'd have a Downton Abbey/stately homes vibe. "You'll be on the Orchid Floor."

[mme_hardy]

I just realized -- had you already resigned from the cemetery board?

[sara]

I was actually a cemetery employee, not a board member. It seems likely that a colleague of mine will be replacing me in that position, but I'm remaining available to them during the transition for anything that's too weird for them to deal with.

My term on the other board finished over the summer, and I was really ready to be done so I didn't take up another board position. Which has obviously turned out to be a good call!