Pointless Rituals [edit: or Games] Anyone?

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A walking-related game I played was to pick a spot about 20 feet ahead and try to predict which foot would land on it.
I got quite accurate, with no last-minute corrections involved to help fulfill my prediction - but it always felt really unsatisfying if it wasn't my right foot. It was like landing with my right foot was a bonus prize.

I like the TV volume downstairs to be a multiple of five.

I sometimes play with bitmaps for long periods of time to relieve stress or boredom. I make designs and then make them into patterns by rotating the image 90 degrees at a time and pasting it in, so that I have four blocks of the same image to create the larger one. Then I sometimes like to see what it looks like on the pipes screen saver setting. Alternately, I have test HTML pages I can try them out in as wallpaper.

I have *mental* games/rituals with words. I look at words and find the middle letter(or two letters), dividing the word in half. I also do this with the words in sentences, and the syllables in sentences. Sometimes i also read and sound out the word backwards in my mind.

I like to do things in odd numbers when possible, but it's not something i really HAVE to do... 3s especially. I've recently developed this habit where every time i get out of my car and lock it, i pull the door handle three times to make sure it's locked. It's sort of functional, though, because there have been several times where i've left my key in the door handle, and it gives me time to notice whether or not i've left my key.

I do this TOO! Its like a sock scavenger hunt!

Yeah, me as well, this is like the epitomy of my sock description. It has never occurred to me to make sure pairs are washed together. To me that's part of the beauty of chaos and then the real fun begins when I employ my various systems to see how long sock-chaos can continue to prevail. Often is prevails for several weeks.

The best sock trick I ever heard of was by Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman. He taught his dog the proper way to retrieve dirty socks for the laundry.

When the dog saw a dirty sock, it would run through the front door, around the house, through the back door, to the dirty sock, grab it with it's mouth, run out the back door, around the house, through the front door, and to the laundry where it would drop off the sock.

That was sheer genius!

One woman at work has brought her dog to the office for years. He's a little Maltese dog named Willie. I tried to teach him something much simpler, but equally ridiculous, but failed miserably. In the front of the building where you enter, there is a room with two doors that take you back to the rest of the office. I tried to teach the dog to only use the south door, never the north door.

The results were discouraging -- instead of me teaching the dog not to use the north door, the dog taught me not to try to teach old dogs new tricks.

I have had some success with Willie, though. Whenever the co-worker leaves town, she nearly always leaves Willie with me. I take Willie on a walk at 3 am every night he stays with me, weather permitting. Willie really likes those 3 am walks. Then, once she returns and takes Willie home, Willie wakes her up at 3 am for her to take him on his daily 3 am walk. She has to ignore him for a few days until he gives up.

I really don't like even number (except multiples of 10) and so I always make sure to use an odd number (or occasionally a multiple of 10). My volume levels are almost always set on an odd number below 25 or a multiple of 25. I also don't eat even amounts of food. (If I only have two apples, but I'm hungry for more than one, I'll eat 1.5 then save the other half for later. I count out my chips, crisps, etc. usually to 13 but other odd numbers will work as well.) Very few foods can be mixed together but when they are it must be the "lighter" food being mixed into the "heavier" food. (Corn into mashed potatoes, liquids into solids, etc.)

(With the exception of waste products) I smell everything that I pick up (even water). I turn basically everything into some sort of pattern/rhythm in my head and "play" it (usually by tapping my fingers). It just sounds like noise to others but I can "hear" what I'm "playing" and it helps me remember certain things (appointments, names, etc.). Not sure why, but it does.

I have a specific routine when it comes to hygiene and clothing. (Shampoo, rinse, condition, wash body, rinse; Floss, brush, rinse, wash, rinse; Underwear (briefs first, bra second, socks third), Outerwear (bottoms first, top second, shoes third, jacket forth, glasses fifth, hat sixth) - if I'm not wearing a certain item then I just omit it and continue with the order.)

I don't know why exactly I have these "rituals" because they don't seem to serve any purpose (other than to annoy my peers because I'm "making an easy task difficult"), but I have to go out of my way to not follow them, which distresses me, and besides, they delight me.

In another thread I posted I have several browser windows open at once, with specific tabs in each window, in a specific order.

If this order is disrupted, I often just close the browser entirely and start over. If it's only the last three windows, I can usually rearrange tabs so everything is where it belongs.

I also have to have a specific webpage open when I go to bed. This is mostly because I stopped using a screensaver after it would kick in while watching movies, and I needed a website with a dark background to dim the light (and because I leave my computer on all the time). After that website changed its background to something with brighter colors, I kept going to bed with that page open. Now I don't even read that site much, nor do I leave my browser open to that page when I go to bed, but I still open that page in its usual spot.

I almost always take a bath after a shower. Why after? I don't want to lay in bath water that has dirt and soap from bathing. This also causes me to be late to work almost every day since I have to start my bathing ritual 20 minutes before work and it isn't enough time. Yet, I can't seem to break myself of it 90% of the time.

I also have an issue with candy. Specifically, if eating something like Tic Tacs or M&Ms, I try to eat them only 2 at a time. This way, I can see if the machinery at the factory measures exact numbers of candies or does so by weight.

I also have a thing for symmetry. As much as possible, I try to make everything symmetrical when building something or organizing something.

I call that area the Lonely-Sock Dating Bureau. BTW, your boyfriend is a grownup. if he wants his socks sorted, what's stopping him from sorting them?

When I eat colored candies like M&M's or Skittles, I sort them first and eat them so as to even out the amount of each color until I have the same number of each.

i used to walk back and forth in the schoolyard on a pipe above a hole in the ground, and today i pace back and forth and flap my fingers, or wave a sock in the air. dont know if that counts.

My dumb dog would eat the sock. I have found way too many socks out in the back yard shaped like a perfect cast of his colon.