gods, devils, and the rest of the motley crew,
I just went to my home node, clicked on the "Edit Private" link for my scratch pad and submitted some stuff on it. I then navigated to Newest Nodes and back to my home node and clicked on "View" for my public scratchpad. Guess what - it was my private pad.
From within my pad, clicking on "View Public" is enough to revert to proper behavior but I doubt this is the intended process.