As you can probably tell from my username, I’m pretty crazy about books. I love the way they smell, the way they feel, and the way they sound when I riffle the pages. I can happily spend hours in a bookstore, and any day that I come home with a new book os a good one as far as I’m concerned.
FOOD… me like 
Full POWER TOOLS and a clean, neat workshop
Lush green lawn
Dynamite landscaping
I like maps. I have street maps of most major US cities even though I’ve never visited them and have no plans to go.
High-definition aerial photos, such as you can find on www.globexplorer.com.
Census data, especially as it relates to race and ethnicity.
Pie.
Office and School supplies in general make me all oogie inside. We go to Meijers and J can be found in the tools, JZ can be found in the CD section. I can be found drooling at the coloured pans and tempra paint. I can wonder for hours in Office Max.
Cows. Everywhere you look in my room, in the general computer area and in my dorm there’s cows. I’m running out of space quickly. When I get my own place i eventually want to own 2 real cows named Pouch and Cutlet 
Shoes. If I have a new pair of shoes, I pout over having to take them off at night and look forward to putting them back on again in the morning soon as I wake. My shoes are always terrifically fashionable and expensive, but they do the trick, I always get a lot of comments on them and they make me feel trendier than I have any right to at my age. I had a job interview the other day and a woman in the office cooed over my shoes and asked where I’d got them. I spent the rest of the interview glowing with happiness and completely distracted by the marvel that was my new shoes.
Good food. Expensive cooking equipment. (Hmm. This may have something to do with my screaming-in-agony scales…nah!)
Computer parts! Oh, yes. Nothing says lovin’ like a dual-processor, 1gHz RAM, G-Force 4, 80G HD machine. Mmmm.
Ozzy memoribilia and collectibles. I just currently aquired a 5 foot by 3 foot subway poster of the Down To Earth album cover. I almost orgasmed. Okay, fine. I did.
Cigarette cases. You know, the old metal kind? Yeah, those. And Zippos.
This could go on forever! For the mental well-being of my fellow Dopers, I’ll shut my pie-hole.
Books. I get a flutter of excitement in my tummy when I enter a bookstore or library. Mmm… so nice. All of those books! Want them all! All of those lovely lovely words. Things to know! The smell of a used bookstore is heaven.
And maps. Maps! Love love love maps! Which is funny, as I have a terrible sense of direction. I especially love antique maps, where they had things terribly wrong and/or incomplete. How exciting, to not be sure where things began and ended! I love the art, the gilt paint, the careful lettering, the familiar places with strange names. If I ever get a tattoo, it will be of a red and blue antique map compass. Mmmm. Mappy goodness.
That’s so cute! 
Plants - indoor and outdoor. I have about a zillion houseplants, and recently bought a house on a 3/4 acre lot (in the city) and have alsready dumped a few month’s salary into gardening it. I also can’t get enough outdoor tools - a power edger for my 9 feet of sidewalk, every possible hand trowel, spade, weedpuller, whatever you name. Gardening gloves, shoes, etc. I also have a greenhouse crammed full of planters, pots, cans, and every lawn chemical not currently banned by the EPA (and probably some that are.) I spend hours with graph paper and bulb catalogs plotting flower beds. I’m beginning to think (and my husband is already sure) that it’s a sickness and I need help.
(I also like giraffes a lot and seem to be collecting giraffe paraphenalia at an alarming rate lately.)
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Maps. Oh yeah. Love, love, love 'em. (I’m a geography major, but I’ve been an almost obsessive map collector since I was really small.) I had a National Geographic Map of the world on my wall when I was about 6, and I’d pore over it for hours on end. I had it memorized, and would get excited when I saw a capital city that had somehow escaped my scrutiny. I’d get all excited and run downstairs - “Hey! Dad! Did you know that Montevideo is the capital of Uruguay?I just found that!” Then I’d sprint back up the stairs.
My good friend has recently tipped me off to a collection of pre-interstate (Oh, there’s another one!) highway maps that he came across in an antique store in town. Gotta go there, for sure! -
I’ve mentioned this in other threads, but the US Interstate Highway system is a beautiful thing. So simple and elegant in its design - thousand of miles of roads built to the same standard, with an intuitive numbering system, linking every city and major area in the country. It’s free to anyone driving, and it’s probably responsible for a huge protion of the U.S.'s economic might. It’s stirring to me, it’s an example of what a great public works project can (and should!) accomplish. America’s glamorous big projects like the space program get a lot of attention, but how can you beat the reward that a great transportation provides to so many people? Amazing. I also worked for many years in the world of construction, and I love the aesthetics of well designed, well crafted concrete. I’m kind of specializing in transportation and economic geography within my degree, so I consider big freeways to be the physical embodiment of so many things I love. Few things have as much promise as a road that you conceivably drive on forever.
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Pens - oh, how I love stationery and pens. I sneer at staples, with their walls of plastic sealed pens by the dozen! Where’s the love? Grand and Toy - now there’s a stationery store designed by a pen fetishist! Each pen is grouped by brand, make, colour - and they’re all loose and available for testing. Little paper pads affixed everywhere, a rainbow of pens to play with, I can never go into that store without getting at least one pen! (my newest score is a burgundy gel pen.)
So basically, get me to write with a spiffy new pen about an interstate roadtrip that was planned on a map, and well, I’ll be a happy girl*
*And yes, I am acutely aware of just how geeky I am, thanyouverymuch!
DITTO for me, bigtime.
I had to add a second power supply to my case just to run all the little lights and shit that I added, which don’t really do anything in the first place, but look ultra-cool. I’ve been constantly this particular machine since about 1997. There is nothing left of the original machine, not even the case, but I’ve never started completely fresh, some parts always make the cut to the next incarnation. Gives it sort of a feeling of immortality.
I do this, too! I think I might live more in the world of my characters than in the real world. :o
I learned to knit about a month ago, so now I go mad over yarn, especially so-called novelty yarn (silk blends, different color threads spun together, etc.). I now have more yarn than I know what to do with…and I only know how to knit scarves.
Anything to do with old (pre-1900) public schools, especially high schools–yearbooks, historical narratives, anything. I’m fascinated by how seriously the students seemed to take it in those days, and how fortunate they considered themselves to be there. Only about 1 in 20 went to high school in those days. The level of writing by those students usually seems quite a bit more advanced than what you would see today, though sometimes awkward in their exaggerated attempts to achieve a clever turn of phrase.
Once they were done with high school, it seems that the graduates were well enough prepared to enter the business world and rise as high as their talents could take them. Well, the boys anyway. This was 1900, remember.
Thanks. Wow, first time I’ve gotten that reaction. Usually people just think I’m odd.
Well, okay, it’s a little odd, too. But, in a cute way.
And, I still can’t think of anything I have a fetish about. I find that disappointing, somehow.
Anyone here have a Nokia phone? You know the games?
I’m obsessed with Pairs 2 and Bantumi.
I get very excited about planning things. Trips, nights out, menus, I love writing itineraries, schedules and To Do lists.
I don’t follow them, but I like writing them.
Also, I could spend hours plucking my eyebrows…or rather deciding which EXACT hair I should pluck.
A few things,
- Audio equipment. Esp. McIntosh amplifiers
- All things sailboat
- Navigational charts, I LOVE charts. Don’t really care much for maps, but I will study an interesting chart for hours. Maine charts are great. So. many. islands.