I don’t always notice things, I admit. Or, rather, I may not always notice things that others notice, such as, perhaps, my wife.

There is the chance that I keep track of some things which she does not, for instance, the San Francisco Giants’ team slugging percentage — but that is not my point here. My point is that, sometimes, we men do not notice what our girlfriends and wives do. What’s worse, we don’t notice the things they want us to notice. Oh, much worse.

Which is why I was so grateful to D, recently, and her story about her husband, R.

I hadn’t seen D for a bit, although she points out that the change in her appearance was apparent when we ran into each other on the stairs recently. I claim preoccupation, in self-defense.

It was quitting time, I happened to run into a coworker as we went out our office doors in the old neoclassical side of our building complex. We were walking down the terra cotta steps, chatting, when D came running back up. As she hurried by, I wisecracked something lame like, “you’re going the wrong way!” and she laughed and called “I forgot something!” and was gone.

I can hardly be blamed for not noticing her new appearance there, can I? I mean, it was fast. And I have male pattern blindness, which is where we guys only notice things in our own cognitive patterns.

This week I was assigned to work on an assignment with D, and complimented her on her new look.

“Would you believe R didn’t even notice?” She told me she had gone home after the change and talked to him and even stopped to look him right in the face as she spoke to him, and for about an hour and a half he didn’t even notice.

On behalf of men everywhere, we who suffer from male pattern blindness, I thank R for this. Remember, gents, you are not alone.

D finally got in his face again and said “R! Do you notice anything different?”

“Oh,” he said. “You have new glasses.”

The new ones are gray or maybe silver — unless they are a color of green which, being colorblind to some greens, I do not see. They look very sharp. I told her so, which is what precipitated my hearing this whole story, which I was glad to hear and happier to relate.

Her old glasses were … a darker color. I think. Okay, okay; I don’t remember.

I was tagged a while back: “… write a blog with 10 weird, random, facts, habits or goals about yourself ….” Twice. I even jotted down some notes but it has taken too dang long for them to find electricity. Here goes:

1.  On those aptitude tests they give you in grade school, I tested very high for mechanical reasoning. If there were three connected gears with 42, 17, and 24 teeth each and you spun one gear three times then gave me multiple options for how many times the other gear spun around, I could usually, by the process of elimination, sort it out.

Yet I still can barely tie my shoes.

2.  I am left-handed, colorblind, myopic, and presbyopic. As a kid, my dust, pollen, and dander allergies surprised even the allergists. I took part in a study and had the second highest reaction to tobacco they had ever seen. Only a woman in Virginia who touched tobacco and her hand broke out had tested higher.

3.  I’m usually ready to try odd combinations of food. When we have ripe fruit and I’m going to blend a smoothie, I’ll toss cherries, peaches, bananas in, with maybe cranberry/raspberry or blueberry/pomegranate juice. This makes my wife shudder. But she thinks different foods shouldn’t touch. That, for her, is pollution. She builds a little moat in her mashed potatoes to keep gravy from leaking out and touching anything else. She thinks even banana/strawberry is weird, while I think it is a culinarily recognized flavor.

4.  Other than stitching up the routine accidents of childhood, the only surgery I’ve had was for Schatzki’s ring.

5  I love baseball. I hardly ever go to the game any more. I listen on the radio or watch on TV while doing something else (often at this keyboard).  Back when I used to go to a lot of games, I often got restless in the late innings. Now, when the game ends, I am not miles away in a stadium, trudging out with thousands of others, waiting for a train or the Alameda ferry or driving out of post-game traffic. Now, I just get up and switch the game off and go right to sleep. I love that.

6.  I think most of my better posts are lost. It’s probably because they never get written down, so I never have to deal with any of their issues. I have insomnia and invariably, between the hours of two and four, wake up and write in my head for a while, only occasionally rousting to go tap a keyboard.

For a week or so I’ll have the notion in the back of my head, I liked that idea, accompanied by its twin thought: how did it all go again?

7.  I’m a slow learner. Thorough. But slow. Often when entering a new school my grades were C’s. Then I did better, getting B’s, until I’d been in that school system for a while and got the hang of it, and got B’s and A’s. I’m still not clear on why that was.

To some extent, it has happened in jobs, as well. I tend to interview well. I envision that as almost a left brain / right brain thing. I listen hard to what the interviewers say, can synthesize it and get it, answer honestly and try to ask good questions, and connect with people. (As the reluctant job-hopper, with numerous jobs shot out from under me and moved out of state, the skill helped.) But when it comes time for me to rapidly absorb a lot of new procedures and approaches and systems and techniques, I really struggled.

8.  I throw buckets of gray water off my back deck on a regular basis.

9. My digerati friend Jules has me on his blogroll as Viking Twin in Frisco, which I’m not keen on. I’m not even sure why. It’s his dang blogroll. I guess part of it is the thing San Franciscans have about not calling their home Frisco. I did not grow up there, and no longer even live there, but understand that those from there don’t call it that. Plus, I’m only nominally a football fan any more, so don’t think of myself much re the Vikes.  What do I care? But still. I see it, and kind of wince. Should I say something? Have I now, already?

 10  I’ve never lost my amazement at birds flying. I don’t care how commonplace it is. I still stand out along the shoreline watching pelicans or terns or loons and think, they can fly. How cool is that? They can fly.

As I have had a couple bad experiences with these tagging things, I’m not going to tag anyone else — unless anyone volunteers …

Last weekend we were up in the foothills of the Sierras, visiting some of the little Gold Country towns connected by highway 49, named for the miners who arrived there a century and a half ago, hoping to strike it rich.

We stayed near Sonora, largest of the towns, visited cute little Jamestown, and spent some time in Columbia, which is a state park, preserved as an old mining town. It has a working blacksmithery, Victorian hotels, saloons, and shops, an apothecary and a candy store with special significance for Mrs. Ombud, who visited here as a kid and loves to taste again the candy she got as a little girl.

The weather can fluctuate in the foothills, and the higher elevations had seen snow the weekend before. When we got there it had turned sunny and hot however, with the mornings pleasantly cooler, so we made a point of getting out early and staying out of the sun in the middle of the day.

Our dogs hadn’t gotten much exercise in the days before we left, what with finishing work, packing to get outa town, and driving. They’d had nothing but short walks, so we were looking forward to a hike and being able to run them a bit.

Friends had told us about a hiking area at the southern end of Los Melones Reservoir, at Table Mountain mesa. But we were on unfamiliar ground and when we got to the end of the road, becoming gravel then dirt at an orange cattle gate, Mrs. Ombud didn’t feel right about opening the gate. So we turned around, which set Ernie off, whining as if to say, ‘I cannot believe you took me all the way out here to torment me with a snootful of these intoxicatingly glorious odors and you will not let me out of the mobile den!‘ 

It was frustrating to be out in the countryside and know there was all that great terrain for dog romps out there, and have it all fenced off so we can’t get to it. We knew there had to be great areas for walking the dogs, we just don’t know where they are.

So, after looking for another option we returned, and this time, at the gate itself, spotted the hiking trail sign off to one side, behind a large bush. The dogs were beside themselves, eager to get out; Ernie in particular whining incessantly like a trophy wife without her credit cards. As the miners said:  Eureka!

So we set off, along a footpath through tall grass turned to light brown chaff, past groves of live oak, over gently rolling hills and into shaded valleys, with intense sun and cheerful blue sky, the air dry in the summer heat.

Edie ran up ahead in sheer Black Laboradorean exuberance, bounding through the tall grass, led by her nose everywhere, while Ernie jogged along after, nose down and sniffing, his tail swinging like a pendulum, matching his stride. He follows her, trots back to check on us, then jogs off after her, our conscientious German Shepherd, happily keeping track of our whole pack.

As Edie romped up ahead, I noticed her pause a couple times and swipe at her face with her left forepaw. I called her to us and as she approached she did it again, as if trying to wipe something off her face mid-stride. I gripped her chin and we both saw the small stem of grass protruding from her eye. Mrs. Ombud has worried aloud about foxtail grass getting stuck in their noses (it’s barbed, and can require a vet visit to remove). As I held Edie’s chin, almost in instinctive reaction, Mom-dog plucked the stem out of her eye.

It was over that fast and we continued on down the trail as Edie romped off, carefree as ever, while both of us processing what had happened.

“That was pretty gross.” “Yes, it was!” “In some ways it’s worse after it happens and you think about it, rather than before it and during. “It was pretty gross,” Mrs. Ombud said, “and next time you can take it out.”

I thought about that a moment, then answered, “I don’t have to.”

“What?” she asked, her indignation rising. “Why not?” she demanded.

Because I know you will,” I answered calmly. “I know there’s no chance you would ever leave that in your little girl dog’s eye.”

“Oh!” she gasped in recognition and outrage. “Sometime you are so bad!” she exclaimed then laughed, as simultaneously both her ultimate love as a Mom-dog and the perfidy of males was acknowledged.

We had a good walk.

 *   *   *   *   *

I had a reasonably well-crafted post about our trip to the Gold Country and this incident but (per my last post) when I hit the Publish button it vanished. It took three tries and this is the best I could re-construct. It was odd; with numerous bits all I could think was ‘how did I describe this before?’ but it was gone.

Ah, well, the old computer re-learned:  save early, save often. C’est la vie.

p.s. No, no, of course not. I could never leave a stem of grass stuck in my little girl dog’s eye — but you already knew that, right?

I just wasted an hour I could barely afford to spend crafting a post for this blog and WordPress ate it — the whole thing, without a trace!

I was logged in the whole time — I shouldn’t have trusted composing here. For a year and a half I’ve composed in MS Word just to take no chances since this happened once when I first joined, only this time I was in a hurry so wrote it quick, hit post and zwoop, it disappeared, gone — urk! Frantically hitting back back back to see if I could recover, copy and save to Word, but no, it’s gone. Arg!

First of all, I like Hillary Clinton. I do not like her as much now as I did half a year ago, but underneath the me-first attitude is a politician whose principles I generally agree with and respect.

Here’s the thing – we had about seven Republicans running for office half a year or so ago. It got rough and tumble with sharp elbows and all, and half a dozen of the major candidates dropped out (not counting “candidates” such as Jim Gilmore or Duncan Hunter) (who?).  Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and Fred Thompson dropped out, as did Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney and even Mike Huckabee, who arguably stuck around as long as he did on principles, making an ideological stand, which Ron Paul is perhaps still doing. They all saw the writing on the wall, and dropped out graciously.

Same thing for the Democrats. Aside from minor candidates, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dropped out, as did Mike Gravel and Bill Richardson and John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich. You know the kind of speeches they gave, essentially saying this thing is bigger than me, let’s rally together and campaign for the principles that unite us and win in November.

It just looks good. It’s classy and gracious and it makes you like them and, perhaps, think well of them next time. Sure, there’s room for the type of Ron Paul ideological stand, but that kind of stand can come with a cost.

And on what has Hillary based her stand? She has made much of being the first viable female candidate and, with a nod to Shirley Chisholm (who deserves it) that’s true – but I somehow don’t buy it. There was just something of a sense of entitlement to her, the latter stages of her campaign did not seem to me to be about ideals but to be about, mostly, getting Hillary Clinton herself back into the White House. Given what had happened in Michigan and Florida, her position was not one of principle, so much. She did not back those states’ positions in defying the party. At the time of their primaries she abided by the national committee’s position, until the cards were dealt, saw opportunity in her desperation, and then took a position that would reward those states for their defiance.

For if  Michigan and Florida were now allowed to seat their full delegations, flouting the national committees, why shouldn’t every other state do the same in the future?

This sort of me-first approach, the sense of entitlement, permeated what I saw of her latter campaign. I wish it weren’t so. I did not and still do not like how long this campaign has been. But if it had advantages, the grueling campaign schedule has given us a sense of our candidates’ characters under adversity.

Much as I dislike the GOP’s platform, I like the way Giuliani and Romney and the Thompsons bowed out. I like the way Biden and Edwards and Kucinich acknowledged the bigger goals and spoke of party unity. It would be a double standard to give Clinton a pass because she happens to be a woman, unless she were leading some kind of principled charge to change the party, as Ron Paul attempts to shift and re-align his party’s identity. But the Democrats’ agenda, the heart of its platform was not being shifted by Hillary Clinton. Hers was not some new feminist agenda opposed by the rest of us — quite the contrary, I think many of us (and include myself) would like to see barriers broken.

Yes, it would have been a first had she been elected president. And it will be a first when a woman is elected president. (Does anyone now doubt it will happen?) But now, after this hard-fought campaign, where it has seemed she did not care if it hurt Obama’s and the party’s chances if it meant keeping her candidacy alive – after all this, and at this late stage, she now reveals that she is open to being his running mate?

There is an avarice here, a desperation and Faustian hunger, that makes me sad.

It was called the war between the sexes, years ago. But some of that hyperbole might have been media-driven — these days I’d call it more like friendly skirmishing. And it’s all the better when each side can take a joke.

I have a friend I’ve known for years, I’ll call B. We get together once a blue moon for lunch. Even though our desk jobs aren’t close, we can each hike halfway to grab a bite and yak about sports, politics, whatever.

In the last year or so, when we get home and mention whom we lunched with, each of our wives will ask about the other. B’s wife, M, will ask how Mrs. Ombud is, and vice versa. More than half the time, we each say, “I don’t know, we didn’t talk about her.”

This is met with some matrimonial exasperation.

Which has in turn alchemized into some good-natured humor. I’ve pointed out to Mrs. Ombud that M must be fine, because B would tell me if she weren’t, right? And for the last half year, as soon as B comes in the door of the restaurant, he makes a point of saying “How’s Mrs. Ombud? There, now I can tell M that I asked.”  And we laugh.

Recently, four of us got together for lunch at Little Joe’s, an SF place that has been around for years and is now across from the SF Chronicle building. Both B and M came, and also J — her husband went to college wth B, and we’ve known him and J for years, too.

We first knew Little Joe’s in North Beach, on Columbus Ave, and later when it moved to Broadway. The kind of place that always had bowls of garlic on the tables, with a sign saying “Italian breath mints.”  Lots of good seafood and pasta and one of my favorite dishes — saltimbocca, which is Italian for something so good it “jumps” (salt) in your “mouth” (bocca). As I don’t like what is done to the little calves, I avoid veal and get the chicken saltimbocca.

So the four of us had a great lunch together. J told us about their recent trip to New Orleans, we made plans for later in the summer, talked about how wretched the Giants season is so far, etc. And about halfway through I realized that neither J nor M had asked about Mrs. Ombud. I smiled to myself, realizing what a chance I had. I admit, a couple times the conversation could have steered close, but I tried to keep it away.

When the check came, I ponied up my share of the bill and said I had to be getting back to the office. And then I took some pleasure in looking at B and saying, “well this was perfect. A good meal, good company, and all lunch long, nobody asked ‘how’s Mrs. Ombud?’” then turning to grin at M, I got up. B busted up laughing.

I could see it register on M’s face in three ways. First, her eyes got wide as she realized that she had forgotten to ask. Then, a little wider as she realized that she had forgotten to ask something she’d expected of B in the past, so this was going to double back on her. And finally, the realization that she had now lost the moral high ground on this one — that this might be grist for future milling and her window of opportunity was closing as I stepped away from the table.

As I headed for the door she blurted out, “How’s Mrs. Ombud?!!!” but it was too late. By the time I got to the door, she was laughing, too — to her credit.

And I laughed all the way down Fifth street, and as I turned on to Market.

Okay, it was a bit wicked of me. But only a little bit, don’t you think?

In response to my post on the Olympic torch and the Tibetan flag, someone emailed me about the “incredible bias in the western media against China (would you agree?) There has been for some time. … The average [Chinese] person on the street doesn’t know anything about politics and cares even less. Making a fortune is the focus of things. But, after the CNN comments the whole nation is up-in-arms.”

I think the western media, to lump them all together, takes its watchdog role very seriously. Usually, far more seriously than it takes copyediting and proofreading – to judge by some of the gaffes I find.

It’s not a new thing. Tom Jefferson was ferociously critiqued, the British monarchs have been mocked since our Revolution, and when Eleanor Roosevelt simply tried to help minorities and children during the Depression the American press ridiculed her savagely.

Some liken the public exposure of the media to sunlight, or bleach, for its antiseptic properties. The only group semi-protected from this is the right wing. John McCain, for example, is rarely criticized the way Democrats are. While Obama is criticized for his pastor’s comments, McCain’s connections to right-wing fundamentalists and their crackpot claims practically get a free pass. I think its because the American media is owned by right-wingers.

Almost a half century ago, the American media focused a lot of attention on John Kennedy’s Catholicism. The question pushed to the forefront of people’s minds was whether the White House would be run by proxy from the Vatican. My grandmother was convinced Kennedy would take orders from the Pope – she didn’t come up with that question on her own. (Since then, JFK’s reputation has been redeemed. Somewhat. Now they tar him for his sex life.)

In the west, any powerful institution that tries to operate without criticism is exactly the kind of target journalists look for to prove their worth. Journalists are like puppies eager to chew. China, therefore, with its burgeoning power and its monolithic media and aversion to criticism becomes an easy target.

I can imagine how the Chinese feel it is unfair – I wish it were easier to show them the history of our media in this regard. In 1978 a Chicago journalist named Mike Royko mocked California governor Jerry Brown for wanting to use satellite hookups for schools. He called Brown “Governor Moonbeam.” The name stuck, and the image of Brown as spacey was effectively used against him all across America; his national aspirations were thwarted.

After his defeat in running for the Senate, Brown went to Japan for a while and studied Buddhism.  Since then, schools did use satellite hookups – and 15 years after mocking Brown, Royko apologized for calling him Governor Moonbeam, saying Brown was just as serious as any other politician. By then, of course, the damage was done, and the caricature is how people nationwide think of him.

I once read a lengthy essay on power in China. The writer drew an oversimplified, general distinction. He said that, in the US, politicians will be publicly critical of each other, to show themselves and their opponents in stark contrast, but are often friendlier behind closed-doors. Capable of “backroom deals” with their opponents.

In China, politicians close ranks in public – they stress public harmony. It is only in private that they are comfortable disagreeing.

I don’t know how true this is. But it would explain why the Chinese have a very hard time with the public criticism they get from the western media. 

My only question would be whether there might ever be a day when the Chinese come to value the watchdog properties of the media the way the west does.

Hillary Clinton is beginning to seem like Hubert “The Happy Warrior” Humphrey to me. The prospect of Hillary running against John McCain feels to me a bit like choosing between Humphrey and Nixon.

Okay, I know there are big differences. It’s 2008, not 1968, first of all. And McCain is more of a loose cannon than the tightly wound Nixon ever was — although they are both western Republicans viewed as outsiders by the GOP’s eastern elite. After prominent runs for office, each has spent some time in different versions of the wilderness before returning to get their party’s nod eight years later.

Regarding Hillary — she feels like the party insider, the same way Humphrey was. If Hillary wins the nomination, I’ll support her over the Republican the same way I once badly wanted Hubert to beat Nixon — with the same earnest sense that we really can’t afford to make the mistake of choosing the Republican.

Yet in 1972, when he badly wanted the nomination after losing in 1968, Hubert pulled out the stops in a bruising August ’72 convention against George McGovern. It’s captured well in the brilliant documentary One Bright Shining Moment. (A number of well-known people are interviewed in the movie: Gloria Steinem, Gore Vidal, Warren Beatty, Dick Gregory, Gary Hart, Howard Zinn, and the man himself, Senator McGovern. Just as good are the contemporary flaks who were pulling the levers.)

Humphrey is portrayed as ready to stop at nothing in his efforts to win the party nomination. California’s former Speaker of the House and SF’s ex-mayor, Willie Brown, plays a prominent role in passionately pleading that they “give me back my delegates” from the California delegation who were ready to support McGovern. Of course, after winning the nomination, McGovern did himself no favors with the Eagleton/Shriver fiasco. You get such a sense, from this movie, of what an opportunity was lost, of what a decent and good turn our nation might have made instead of continuing the Nixon nightmare.

Likewise, as Hillary reminds me of Hubert, so Barack Obama reminds me, in a very loose, general way, of the decency and sense of hope George McGovern provided.

The kind of people we all claim we wish our politicians were, rather than the grasping, self-aggrandizing operatives on the lobbyists’ gravy train whom we disdain.

I hope Obama fares better in the rest of 2008 than McGovern did in 1972. Maybe it’s a chance to win back some of what was so terribly lost back then. 

On my way back to the house the other morning I realized where my wife’s keys were (also where she wouldn’t know they were) and that there was no way she’d have gotten out the door in time. I didn’t know it yet, but it was only one link in the mayhem.

Mrs. Ombud’s Mom has a sewing school, teaching kids to sew, and last weekend MOM had a fashion show in a nearby park for her kids. It was pretty cute. The parents came and she had music and a microphone to introduce each kid and they all modeled what they had made. MOM tells me some of the parents work at Pixar studios – one parent was happy with how much her kid learned and began telling others. (It’s cool to see how the kids’ confidence is built by their accomplishments. As an adult it’s easy to take that stuff for granted.)

Anyway, it was a lot of work getting it all set up and then put away, and the upshot was that MOM lost her keys. And so we looked everywhere and then looked everywhere again, and the next day, as we went back to our jobs, MOM went back and looked through the trash bins in the park. No luck, no keys. We keep a spare set of keys for her so we retrieved those for her, and made plans to have spares made – her car key, with the microchip, is not cheap.

Then, in the course of the week’s travels, Mrs. Ombud met me at a BART station and I drove home – with her keys still in the ignition. So that, when I went out to grab dinner somewhere I put her keys in my pack (for safekeeping) and promptly forgot them.

You see where this is going.

I didn’t realize until I finished walking the dogs the next morning that, of course, Mrs. Ombud couldn’t leave without her keys, so I hustled home and found her on the front steps, waiting for us.

The good news was that, in looking for her own keys, she found her mother’s keys, tucked in a pocket of her pack. For safekeeping.

All these efforts at organization and safety and the results were:  MOM was using Mrs. Ombud’s set of her own spare keys. Mrs. Ombud had her mother’s keys. And I had Mrs. Ombud’s keys.

The only keys actually with the person for whom they are intended were my own set.

 I’m somewhat grateful for that. Even as I despair of our efforts at organization, at times.

We all have our eccentricities. I have mine, I’ll bet you have yours. Sometimes they’re things we don’t share with the whole world. Or maybe what goes on at home isn’t known in the office, and vice versa.

Here in California we are prone to drought, and thus water shortages. Or perhaps it’s less a shortage of water (in the north) than an excess of people (in the south) but I’m not going to get distracted to the political.

We have a narrow backyard, maybe 30 feet by 70, with about ten trees. And raised garden beds with flowers and herbs and tomato plants and numerous other leafy friends, some with their species identity still just guessed at. (Are those giant flowers lilies of the Nile?) As such, it takes some water to keep everything and body happy in the summertime, when the rains stop.

Which is where gray water comes in. Gray water is a bath after you’ve taken it. Or dishwater, etc. Apparently, for a while here gray water holding tanks were illegal. Mrs. Ombud keeps up with the laws on this more than I do. But as our main floor is on the second story and our main bathroom is toward the back of the house, it seemed like a prudent solution to add a valve to our tub giving us the option to drain bathwater to a holding tank under our back deck, to then be used for watering the lawn.

Except that, now that gray water is no longer banned, Johnny Law is stipulating that the tanks be underground.

What’s the point of that?

I mean, if we could use natural gravity to drain the tub down to the tank, and then gravity again to deliver the water out to the yard, why make us store it underground where it would have to be pumped up to get it out?

I’ve got a simpler solution that doesn’t involve paying for storage tanks or plumbers or pumps at all. My solution has the added virtue of giving my sedentary, deskbound self a little exercise, too.

I use buckets.

Two of them. I fill them from the tub and heft them to the sink counter, for the water on the outside to drain off so I’m not dripping all over the floors — too much. Then I get a little upper body workout. A bucket at a time. It’s a few steps to get out the door and over to the edge of the deck, a story above the lawn, and there I perfect my flinging technique.

At first I keep the bucket level and give it a quick sideways thrust, and a nice flat little wave sheers off the top and breaks up into drops, watering the lawn right below. Again, over another patch. The next wave takes about half the rest and goes a bit farther out, and with the last of the bucket I give it a strong fling so it all arcs out into nice little droplets and drenches as far out as I can. I strategize as I heft, working on my flings to maximize coverage.

I get as many as five or six big buckets full out of each tub, and late last summer our lawn got  thick and green close to the house. I still have to water the back with the sprinkler, but it sure cuts down on how much water we use.

We learned that some of the plants aren’t too fond of gray water. But the lawn is fine with it — and it’s all biodegradable. One of the local proponents claims gray water is better for lawns than tap water — our results at least show the lawn is kept happy.

As I have to rise early to walk the hounds and deal with my cars, boats and/or trains commute (grr) I often empty the tub in the predawn dark.

I imagine our neighbors can hear the water landing. Boosh. Booooosh! Booooooooosh! Pause and repeat.

The other morning, in the dark, again, I was out in my slippers and bathrobe, flinging buckets of water over the rail of our deck. There is a section of our nearby street where a passersby could glance up and see our back deck.

I was noticing that I wasn’t hitting one spot of the lawn between our tomato raised bed and the concrete patio I use for brewing, so rather than tipping the bucket away from me I tried to give it a little jiggle outward then tip it toward me, so it would go straight down. I have not yet perfected this technique, and my first clue was the cold bathwater drenching my ankles and slippers. As I stood. Outside in the cold. Just before dawn.

It occurred to me that if another early riser were passing by, and if he glanced over at our deck, there is enough ambient light to see that performance. He would see a man in a bathrobe, with bed-rumpled hair dishevelment, swinging a bucket out over a railing away from himself then sloshing cold bathwater on his own ankles and slippers.

And if I were that passerby, I would quite probably laugh and think to myself, what a nut.

But hey, our plants are happy.

Now, what eccentric habits do you have?