What's your current obsession?

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I love history but have terribly neglected this period. I was considering taking a college course in it just for fun. Any good book suggestions on the topic?

I'm between obsessions right now because work has gotten very busy and stressful, but here are my major obsessions in chronological order:

Cats
Ciphers/Cryptology
Pi (history of)
Pi (memorizing)
Mazes/Labyrinths
The Marx Brothers
Reading/Libraries
Conjoined Twins
Esperanto
Snowflakes

Cockatiel care. I've even been reading up on making all-natural toys at home and how to handle common health concerns.

My obsessions seemed to have slowed down as I've aged, currently they are -

EvE Online
Sketching churches (an old one that has resurfaced after 45 years)
Ancient history
Reading (I have an electronic library of 34,000 texts I keep on a private server)
Flying (an on/off thing since getting my pilots license at 40)

Knitting.

Knitting
Motorcycles and maintenance
Psychology
Non verbal language
Linguistics
Drawing from life, exteriors n architecture
Special effects prosthetics
Physics
French
Flamenco guitaR

okay, maybe i took the question a bit too literally, lol....here are my "interests" --

collecting/listening to music -- i have a few thousand songs...all only stuff i LOVE...yeah, i love a lot of music....yet, i can go for months without listening to even one song -- then, all of a sudden, i can't get enough, which is how it is currently.

sudoku -- love it! but hate the idiots who create the puzzles using "trailing" -- look it up if you're into super difficult puzzles and can't understand why you can't freakin' solve them! i didn't even KNOW about trailing until recently...that explained a whole LOT.

documentary films -- HUGE fanatic. i've seen virtually every single one that netflix has, a ton from amazon prime, and several from other sources. i love biographical ones especially, as well as social, and sometimes, political.

crossword puzzles -- a tie with documentary films as my current greatest passion of all...a few days ago, i watched the documentary "Wordplay" -- which delved into the world of Will Shortz (the editor of the NY Times puzzles), his annual competition, and all of his fanatic followers -- *extremely* interesting to me (and probably as boring to others as a star trek convention documentary would be to me, lol). i've done eugene sheffer's puzzles since i was a teen, and just started doing NY times puzzles about a month ago, but i'm not nearly adept enough to fully complete a saturday puzzle yet...let alone a friday....or thursday, LOL.

COOL!! i never even believed people actually won those things.

i entered a few back in the stone age, when you had to mail them in. a month after i sent my entries, i received a fedex letter, stating that i'd won a trip to the Indy 500. however, i didn't remember entering that one -- and seeing as how i hate all sports with a passion (lol), the chances that i'd forgotten i'd entered were slim to none.

about two weeks later, just for the heck of it, i called the number on the letter and inquired, and this woman said in a hyper-happy voice:

"Hi! I'm BARB! YES, you are one of our GRAND PRIZE winners of an all-expense-paid trip for two to the Indy 500, compliments of Valvoline! -- CONGRATS! -- we were so worried you wouldn't get to us in time, as there are only *two days* left to claim your prize! now, since the Indy is less than a week away, we'll overnight your plane tickets and vouchers as soon as we receive your notarized affidavit; but you need to send it TODAY so you don't miss the deadline...oh, and make *sure* you include your *social security number*, or you will be disqualified." -- and that's when i hung up on her...

as i then KNEW it was a scam, and those poor people who took the bait and sent in their affidavits probably ended up with their identities stolen and bank accounts drained. i told my husband about the conversation, and he said "Told Ya", and laughed his butt off that i could be so naive.

but then i thought about it a minute and said, "wait, how will i know if ANY sweepstakes win is ever legit? i mean, they've got to have some way of going about it, right? on the outside chance that i *did* enter this sweepstakes, and it *is* legit, i'll miss out. i'm going to do some investigating...and if it's *not* legit, which, it's probably not, i'm going to take legal action against this company." upon which, my husband laughed even more.

so, i called the supposed "sponsor" of the sweepstakes, and explained my story to the head of the marketing department at Valvoline's corporate headquarters...he replied, "yeah, i'd be concerned if i were you, too, as there are a lot of scams out there. hmm, well, we did have some type of Indy sweepstakes recently, but i don't know who the winners are, as we have another company handle that...let me put you on hold for a minute, ok?"

then he comes back on the line and says "yes, it's legit -- you won. congrats. oh, and btw, Barb says 'hi'" -- yep, he'd been talking to the same lady i'd just hung up on!

i was one of 33 winners -- round-trip airfare, luxury hotel, all ground transportation, all meals -- including a champagne dinner with a live band and drawings for prizes of $50-$500, several souvenirs, and a private meet and greet with all of the drivers right before the race....my husband was thrilled!

but that wasn't the BIG part of this prize: each of us was assigned a driver...and if your driver won, you'd win $50,000...and, if it was a *Valvoline* sponsored driver, you'd win *$250,000*. .that was a whole LOT of money back then.

we were excited when we learned that our driver *was* Valvoline sponsored....that is, until we read the background and stats on him, and knew our chances of winning were about as good as getting struck by lightning on a cloudless, sunny day.

however, it was great fun, and the two guys next to us won. we were very happy for them, but THEY weren't happy at all. -- the one said, "this sucks...it's only $50,000, and i have to split it with my brother."

some people are just never happy, i guess.

Kayaking
Wrong Planet
Calculus
Playing Piano
Painting

Current:
Motorcycles - 1/2 years
Video Games - 25+ years
Formula 1 - 5 years

Past:
music
guitar
cars
alcohol etc
dragonball /dbz /dbgt

I have had three major hobby obsessions the last 32 years:

model trains, numismatics (spurred business), and girls (strip club hobbyist) the last nine years. The last one has been the most expensive (had a number of strippers as mistresses). Model trains, I have basically lost interest in due to concentration on last two. Its waiting there for me when the last one burns out.

Another obsession would be games like Empire for windows (war game) and Playstation EA sports College football (Probably 35 yr ago I had designed college football game with teams using playing cards.

Converting Visual Studio 6 applications to Qt for multiple platforms and making them ADA compliant. I really want to start doing this at work, but it is hard to find time to learn everything and get started.

Raw cacao and my man.

Writing. I think I could explain women to the satisfaction of Stephen Hawking, but it is hard to stay interesting while covering the basics, and then, it tends to take all the mystery out of life.

Canadian football.

I've switched back to pyrography. I burned a pattern on one box for a friend on Saturday, and yesterday, I spent three hours transferring a design I made on paper to the box. I then woke up really early and spent another two hours completing a design and transferring it to another box. I will probably work on other boxes I have when I get home. So I switched from writing which I just have not been successful in finding time, to a need to complete pyrography.