I have mentioned that I doodle madly whenever I deem it wise to keep my mouth shut. A couple commenters mentioned that they wanted to see my doodling. I don't have a scanner set up, but I do have paintbrush, so here are some reasonable facsimiles.

At the moment, my notebooks are all graph paper, so I divide a block of squares into smaller and smaller grids.

When I don't have graph paper, my most common doodle is a sand dollar (the middle star), but I can't recreate that in Paintbrush.

I have zero artistic talent. I mean, absolutely zilch. It's astonishing that anyone can not draw as much as I can not draw. So when I can draw anything at all that reliably resembles a real world object, I am fascinated by the fact that I can trick my lack of talent into creating an actual image.

When I was seven, I found step by step instructions for How To Draw a Dog and I have never forgotten them.

A week later, after lots of practice, I proudly showed my drawing to my grandpa, who sneered at it. "Draw a real dog," he laughed, and sketched out an actual German shepherd. I was crushed. So while my Dog has history, I can't consider it art.

My Bob Hope, though, is all mine. I was drawing angle brackets one day several years ago during a boring meeting and suddenly noticed that it looked like Bob Hope. Or a bald grumpy guy. I added eyebrows and an extended mouth. I don't know how to make a cleft chin. Sometimes I add ears and hair.

I haven't figured out how to give him a neck, though.

Anyway. When I am truly desperate to keep my mouth shut, the block of squares takes over a page or more per class. You can see page after page filled. Obsessive much?