Five Weird Habits

Folks have been posting these around the blogosphere, but I didn't get around to it yet. (Here's karmic_jay and watertiger and NTodd, though--three of my favorite co-marchers.)

1. I chew straws. Like, fast-food straws. I don't smoke or bite my nails, so I guess this is my oral fixation. Tiny chewed-up straws all over the damned place. Drives Thers nuts.

2. I really do listen to power pop almost all the time. I check on Ebay for especially obscure things, and keep my turntable alive just so I can listen to them. (For example, I have original versions of Shoes Black Vinyl Shoes and 20/20's Sex Trap, both pretty hard to find.)

3. I obsess, reading books or watching TV shows multiple times. For example, even though I wasn't home last Sunday night, I've watched this week's Big Love about 4 times this week, and will undoubtedly watch it again before Sunday. Also, I look up stuff, not usually about the show, but historical background and such, when I'm really interested. (I know a really lot about the FLDS church these days....) And I read nonstop. I can't fall asleep without a book. I reread all the LOTR books and the Harry Potter books about once a year. I also love crappy romance novels. I'm especially keen on the Native American ones, the kitsch value of these being particularly high. (But why is the originary boundary-crossing always a generation back? Almost all of the male protagonists have white mothers. I blame Freud.) I've been known to spend unreasonable amounts of money (sometimes more than a dollar) acquiring Harlequins I can remember reading at my grandmother's house when I was an adolescent.

4. I rearrange the furniture at least every six months. It's a good way to really thoroughly clean the house, and it gets boring if you never move things around. (File this under "drives Thers crazy" as well.)

5. I talk to myself. You get in the habit, when you have children, of narrating everything you do to a largely unresponsive audience--it's supposed to be good for their language development or something. But I find myself doing it in the car and, every now and again, in public. I hope people just think I have a hands-free cellphone.

What are your weird habits? (And NTodd, where are your archives? You need to streamline your site, my friend.)