My landlord called me this afternoon while I was up in the loft reading a mystery novel. That doesn't have anything to do with my landlord. I just thought it was cool that I found time to read today, when I haven't had time lately for anything.

Anyway, my landlord. He's leaving for a month in Asia, and he wanted to be sure I'd already mailed the rent check. (I had.) He asked if things were going okay, and if I had any problems.

I told him about the mud bog in my driveway. It won't be a problem until the real rainy season starts, and that's at least a month or two off. We're having a few wet days now, but it's too intermittent to take seriously. By February, if nothing is done to improve the driveway drainage, I might be living on an island, with no overland route out.

He made a vague promise to look into it, and that's good enough for now. I also told him I didn't know how I was going to change the light bulb in the ceiling fan, and he suggested I borrow his partner's (the other landlord who lives next door) eight-foot ladder.

Well, sure, that's fine. Then I'll have to find someone willing to climb it and wrestle with the light fixture while teetering that far off the ground.

Have I mentioned I'm afraid of heights? I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it. Sometimes I'll pretend not to be afraid of Ferris wheels, but if one stops with me at the top, I'm a basket case. Literally.

The other thing I mentioned to the landlord was the eccentric behavior of my sprinkler system. I never know where or when they're going to come on. I noticed this morning as I was rinsing my coffee cup that the water pressure in the sink was low. Then I walked out the front door to find my garden freshly watered. Since this was the first day in the last four that it hasn't rained, it probably wasn't absolutely necessary for the sprinklers to come on today.

With just one week until the election, I figure I have no more than two or three days to wade through my absentee ballot and mail it off. As usual, the California ballot is long and complex. What's different this time is that there are only eight statewide measures, so I should be able to get some sense of what each of them means.

I never vote against the veterans, so I'll be voting yes on Proposition 32, the bond measure that's supposed to help them get home loans. And I don't hate politicians enough to vote no on Proposition 33, which would allow state legislators to participate in the same pension plan as other state employees. That's two easy ones.

Proposition 38 replaces the public school funding system and allows some of that money to be paid for private and religious schools. Vouchers. The idea of using tax money to fund private schools seems wrong to me in principle, but even if I could get around that problem, I can't deal with tax money funding religious instruction. I don't think it would pass constitutional muster anyway, but I'm voting no.

Proposition 39 would lower the approval standard for local school bond elections from two-thirds to 55%. Well, that's a little closer to majority rule, isn't it? We've been fighting to get out from under the draconian restrictions of Proposition 13 for a couple of decades now, and while this doesn't quite do it, it moves in the right direction. I vote yes.

And that's it. Those are the only ones I've made up my mind on. I'll be working over the next couple of days to get everything else straight in my mind. I'm inclined to vote against the campaign reform measure, because both Warren Beatty and John McCain are against it, but I won't decide without further research.

Then there's that nasty presidential race to deal with. Shudder. I've almost decided how to cast my vote, but the fact that I'm wavering this late in the campaign is unnerving to me. I've been wanting one of the candidates to jump out of the pack and give me a reason to vote for him. (Or her, but I don't see any women's names on the ballot.)

So far, I've seen reasons to vote against all of them, or at least all of the ones I know anything about. So I have to base my vote on other factors, like what I think is best for the country. That's no small matter, and it deserves as much serious thought as I have time for.

I'm stressing over this decision as if my vote were going to make a difference, when I know that it'll make a difference only to me.

I had no action on the Halloween candy. Not a single trick-or-treater found the way to my door. I "forgot" to turn the porch light on, but I don't think it would have made any difference.