I Admire All Forms of Obsessive-Compulsive Behaviour*

*This is one of my favourite sayings from the most brilliant and unique mind of my ex work colleague, Michael. Many years ago I worked in a particularly dull and uninspiring laboratory; Michael's wise maxim's, humour and warmth made it bearable.

Effulgent13 is all about the truth, except for when it's making things up. But this blog entry is truth-based. It's an exposé on a disturbing truth about my existence, in all its ugliness and slightly less ugliness. Behold, in wonder and terror, the ways in which I acquiesce to obsessive-compulsive behaviour:

• I love to (need to) look at graph's of the temperature, especially of the temperature where I live. My need is sated by this wonderful webpage set up by a professional obsessive-compulsive from the Earth Sciences department at the University of Melbourne. I am much calmed by the temperature's changing gradient. I have set this webpage as my homepage.

• In sync with the previous point, I also need to see the movement of rain across the city of Melbourne. The Bureau of Meteorology, in their infinite wisdom, have set up the beautiful BOM radar map (best appreciated when it's actually raining, otherwise it can look at little dull). There's lots to see on this website (eg the Doppler wind loop), enough to quell the most restless of obsessive-compulsive souls.

• An unrelenting and bizarre desire to read The Brother's Karamazov

• An insatiable, and completely futile, endeavour to calculate EXACTLY how much money I'll need for the rest of my life. And, as a corollary to this, how many hours I'll need to work and how much can I spend on DVD's, for the rest of my life.

• When my clothes are hanging on the line, after being washed, I have to spend at least a minute looking at them blowing in the wind and being warmed by the sun. I can just see the water molecules being liberated from the interstices of the fabrics, rendering them dry. Lovely.

• Collecting whiskers shed by Ms Willow Pussycat (thankfully I've stopped doing this for the moment). I'm not sure what I was going to do with the whiskers - perhaps build another cat.

• Giving Willow a pat every time I walk past her (she's just so damn touchable).

• Watching my married neighbour, Adam, getting in and out of his car. Whenever I hear the car door I bolt to the kitchen window and peer out, in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. (It's possible this is more about unrequited lust than obsessive-compulsiveness).

• Following on from the previous point, developing infatuations with unrealistic people or people who have no interest in me or people I don't know very much about.

• Hanging onto, and tenaciously repairing, old clothes that should be thrown away.

• Looking up in the dictionary every word I encounter for which I know not the meaning. (As I am currently reading a novel by China Mieville, who just adores archaic and obscure words, I am frequenting the dictionary with fervour. AND some of his words aren't even in my dictionary - The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary; maybe I need to consult the "Ye Olde-Medieval-Gaelic-Latin-Aramaic-You-Name-it-We'll-Define-it" dictionary.