When I first read the thread title I was fascinated. What a great idea! No pet peeves or compulsions came to mind…although I live alone, so every probability is I'm completely nuts in a thousand tiny ways and don't even know it.

Funny you guys would mention the toilet seat thing. I don't clean the seat, but some months ago I began cleaning UNDER the RIM. I wipe the indentation under the bowl's rim. I don't want there to be a bug in there, is the reason.

Weirdly, though, there's never been a bug in my toilet, I don't think; it just occured to me one day that if a bug were in there, I wouldn't see it.

So I MUST clean it every time.

I talk to myself, too. Though I caught myself doing it recently in public and put a stop to it.

Pet peeve - the typos are a big one. You're and your are annoying mix ups, but the one I REALLY hate is the recent confusion about THEN and THAN. It's all over these days! How did this happen all of a sudden?

I even saw it in this actual BOOK I'm reading. Drives me up the wall, faster then you'd believe! (heh)

That “then” and “than” thing isn't something I've ever come across, but it sounds like something a spellchecker might be responsible for. They don't know the difference between those words or the intent of the writer and the writer might not pay attention to the changes the spell checker asks to make…?
Just a theory,

Further to that theory:
It could only be limited to a certain family of spell-checkers too, especially if you're just seeing this recently. In that case I suspect the Apple family… maybe an ios spell checker or something in Safari?
The reason is because that's a great huge homogeneous block that rolls out changes and affects a massive amount of people all at once, so if a little thing like that happens it'd be reflected by a lot of people
-unlike more heterogeneous systems out there (Windows, Android, Linux etc), where some people are on this version, some on that version, some use one program, some another etc.

When I was reading a book once, I saw a word that was misspelled. I really couldn't tell you what book it was or what the error was. All I know is that the book came from the school library and the word in question was missing an end letter. (Couldn't tell you if it was “a,” “e,” or “s”) I got a pen out of my bag and fixed it for them.

It's at its worst when you read a book in the pre-publication review copies and galleys and see the typos and you figure, “oh they'll catch that.” Then you get the published copy and there's the same mistake, but you see other typos that were fixed and they still missed this one.

Then you want to re-read it and get a copy out of the library and it's a fifth printing and there's that typo still there…

ozone - that's a great point, man. Hadn't considered that at all! I mean, bad spelling is rampant online as always, but a glitchy spellchecker could be behind some of the booboos in the published world. A ray of hope!

bravo - Totally agree. What's up with that? There's a great, fun series of fantasy books that are in something like their twelfth printing…I keep losing books, so I've read several editions of the series over the years…and there are some GLARING errors that I can't believe have never been caught over the decades. Crazy.

Of course, I'm not writing letters to said publishers. When I do, I'll add that to my list of compulsive behaviors. Then I'll smack myself in the face.

Banes wrote:
When I first read the thread title I was fascinated. What a great idea!

Danke. I like to think that I can manage to come up with decent ideas, every once in a while.

One particular behavior of mine, that I've always had a hard time explaining has possibly something to do with some sort of ambidextrous nature of mine. I'm trained to be right handed and I write as one but in general I make no distinction regarding which hand/foot I'm supposed to use in a given situation unless the tool is specially designed for left/right handed use. However, when I do end up performing some action or experience some sort of sensation with one side of my body, the other side gets… kinda jealous and wants to do/experience it too. This can be stuff like, scratching an itch on one leg/arm and then instinctively scratching the mirror side of my body despite not having an itch there, touching/playing with some sort of bump or texture with one hand and then needing to touch it the exact same way with my other hand, pumping into something and then feel the need to bump into it again with my other side and so on.

When I place my hands together, it feels more comfortable for me to maintain a perfect unison of sensation between my hands, that is each side touches each other the same way, like so:



…rather then clasping them in an uneven formation like so:

Baneswrote:
I talk to myself, too. Though I caught myself doing it recently in public and put a stop to it.

I do it all the time myself, usually in private but it does happen in public. I actually do it to reflect on the things I'm working on or thinking about, so it's more of a form of abstract thinking…

Product Placement wrote:
*hands*

I actually noticed that the time I met you and Hillary. Didn't think about it then though…

gullas wrote:
Product Placement wrote:
*hands*

I actually noticed that the time I met you and Hillary. Didn't think about it then though…

Good catch. Like I said, it has something to do with me feeling unnerved by some sort of an imbalance of sensation between my hands. If I clasp my hands together like in the third picture, I need to repeatedly alternate the hands in order to maintain some sort of balance so I prefer doing the Xanatos thing instead.

…..Pardon if I'm not quite getting what you're all talking about. I think I do but then again this is me coming down from about thirty hours of no sleep. Which is kind of big deal for me since I usually try to get at least ten hours if I can…not counting naps….I digress…
Splash back when I am washing my hands kind of bothers me. I'll be washing my hands and then I'll see the water splash and the droplets fly back onto my hands again and though I know I'm just going to end it all by touching the dubiously clean faucet. I'll just have to keep washing. It'll continue until such a time occurs that I either haven't resplashed my hands with the dirty water….or didn't notice that I did…
Either way I almost always end up…well not wet…I'd call it moist … but that's not quite it…beside disney sort of ruined my taste for the word by giving it these weirdly perverse, but funny connotations….soaked I guess..hmm..
Anyway there's that I suppose.
I almost always will wash my hands to the point that it looks like I might as well have just climbed inside the sink instead. Then I'll go find somewhere to sit down with my soaked shirt, or suit, or jeans or what have you and pretend that it doesn't bother me to be uncomfortably wet for a quarter of an hour.
After which by the second quater hour I'll have to go to the bathroom again because I have a hysterical bladder thanks to a mildly unpleasant experience with public transportation. And the cycle will continue.
No joke if I ever die with unfinished business or grudge or something I'm sure they'll know it's me by the sound of faucets running.
Ooooooh…and thus it shall continue till the end of time because I doubt ghost me would ever be able reckon that his hands were properly washed long enough to finish whatever made him a ghost.
……Typos don't really bother me much I always figure that I'll deal with them in the second or third run through. Which is convient because I usually get deadlocked with the work by the first. I think I'll just let sleeping dogs lie on that case.

I actually just was informed of a particular behavior of mine that apparently drives a lot of people nuts. Because I work for myself, over the last couple years I've developed an almost compulsive habit of jumping in and doing things when other people aren't moving fast enough to suit me. For instance, when someone has emailed me saying they'll call me next week, I'm apt to wait until Wednesday afternoon and then Thursday morning I'll just go ahead and call them. It's my way of keeping myself in work and making a living, because if I didn't do it nobody would ever get around to giving me projects, but there's places where it drives people up the wall when I do it. I can't help it though, I'm pretty well trained to always be getting something done, and if you're not doing it, it's now part of my job to make sure it gets done so I can get on to doing my job I would otherwise have to wait for you to finish the task in order for me to accomplish mine.

I think my biggest pet peeve is people taking and using things that belong to me without asking. It especially irks me when people tell me I shouldn't be bothered because it was something with little value. I'm not upset about the cost to replace the item, I'm upset because someone took something from me without asking.

Probably one of my most noticable compulsions is the need to have things organized. This isn't the same as being obsessive about things being clean. Someone could dump out a trash can on the kitchen floor, and I'd be more bothered by how disorganized it all was than the fact that there was garbage strewn everywhere.

Pet peeve: passersby or neighbours shouting loudly outside my house or playing loud music, that I hear loud and clear while being in my house or on my balcony. It doesn't matter if it's normal or inappropriate hours. I just hate it, I want to whack them with something.


Compulsion: When getting ready for art (and art only) I must sit crosslegged in my chair. Otherwise I can't draw or write.