"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." - Mark Twain

I was recently given a planner by my mother. My first planner, incidentally, and I was quite excited to have my own book to write down any date or engagement I wanted. It really hasn't been flooded so far, but it is rather fun to write down the dates I have. :-) My problem now? Whether to write in pen or pencil.

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Do you keep a journal? I really dislike the word diary, I suppose because it is such a stereotypical term. I am pages away from finishing a my latest one. It is rather thin, but It has taken seven months to fill. When I began making entries I wrote only a page or two once a week, yet now I am in the regular habit of writing about fifteen pages a week. The one I just finished is my second, the first being a much larger one that I wrote in erratically over a period of about 2.5 years. As you can see my writing fluctuates. :-)

Now I shall begin my third, which promises to be the most frequented yet. :-) It is a whopping 250 pages, which I received from a wonderful friend on my last birthday. Yay for journaling!

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Amidst my characteristically random research, I found this delightful list of phobias. Who in the world would guess there would be a classified pathological fear of vomiting due to airsickness? [Aeronausiphobia] I will of course include the link to the entire list, but I have pulled out the most interesting. In my opinion. Post worthy? That's your opinion. :-)

Now, several of these are not found in my dictionary. Are they real? Quite possibly they are made up by the person who put the site together. If that is the case you might as well at least have fun reading someone's pretends; it must surely be as good as The Jabberwocky.

Exhaustive list of phobias:
http://www.phobialist.com/index.html

How phobias are named:
http://www.tqnyc.org/NYC051742/How%20are%20phobias%20named.htm

• Allodoxaphobia: Fear of opinions "No woman ever falls in love with a man unless she has a better opinion of him than he deserves." - Edgar Watson Howe
• Anuptaphobia: Fear of staying single I heard once that people who marry young live longer. I have never researched this, but that is a very strange idea.
• Apeirophobia: Fear of infinity. "Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed." - Blaise Pascal
• Aulophobia: Fear of flutes
• Caligynephobia: Fear of beautiful women "Beauty is no quality in things themselves; it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them." - David Hume
• Decidophobia: Fear of making decisions "Some persons are very decisive when it comes to avoiding decisions." - Brendan Francis
• Ephebiphobia: Fear of teenagers "The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another." - Quentin Crisp
• Ereuthrophobia: Fear of blushing This seems like a phobia one might be embarassed about. I can see why they would be afraid to blush - it really appears quite circular.
• Helminthophobia: Fear of being infested with worms Ikkkkk...
• Levophobia: Fear of things to the left side of one's body
• Ophthalmophobia: Fear of being stared at. Wouldn't you spend all your time staring suspiciously at other people to see if they were staring at you?
• Tremophobia: Fear of trembling. It seems to me that if you were afraid of trembling, you would tremble with fear, which would lead to greater fear and trying to stop trembling, and being so afraid of trembling that you would tremble....which should quite suddenly result in an indefinite hospital stay, no?
• Xanthophobia: Fear of the word or the color yellow. Oh dear. That seems to be potentially quite traumatic. Like epilepsy, only there is no regulated medication...Hmmmm
• Xyrophobia: Fear of razors. Just think of the questions you would have to answer all the time! You might move to an Amish community just to be able to answer yes!

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