Used to be, when I did an organized bike ride, I’d get a badge or patch for finishing. These days it’s more likely to be a t-shirt. Those t-shirts eventually end up as rags, but I keep my patches in a box and it’s fun for me to go through them — and included in that box is my badge sash from my days as a girl scout (which always reminds me that I wish I could remember all the wonderful knots I once knew how to tie!)
I quite enjoyed finding the website Nerd Merit Badges. They sell the Printer Hero Merit Badge to the left (that thing under the sword is, apparently, a laser printer) — requirements: You don’t earn this badge by fixing printers and copiers. You earn this badge by being willing to try. (Apparently at the office most people ignore printer paper jams, hoping someone else will deal with the problem.)
While that doesn’t apply to me, as I’m the only one here, the other badges they sell are equally silly — including one called Inbox Zero with the requirement that “You’ve reached an empty email inbox. For extra credit, you maintain an empty inbox from Monday through Friday!” or Homoynms (requirement: “You know how to spell words correctly that sound the same, from the simple: ‘to/too/two’, to the tricky ‘insure/ensure’.”) Check them all out here. { First seen here on Printeresting. }

In this 2008 Penguin ad campaign below, the image encapsulates the story in the book, with little page numbers giving the viewer a hint to the narrative. More examples are here. See the other posts about Penguin ads here.

I got a note from my bookmaking friend, Sharon, the other day, saying she was laid up with a broken ankle. She’s going to use this as an opportunity to “start on a small book I’ve been thinking about forever. Quotidian. Drawings/watercolors of the every day things in my life.” Then I saw a post about the work of Melanie Bilenker. She makes jewelry featuring tableaux of everyday ordinary life. “I do not reproduce events,” she says, “but quiet minutes, the mundane, the domestic, the ordinary moments.” They are jewelry mostly made of gold, ebony, resin, pigment, and hair. I was just going to send the link off to Sharon, but I’ve stopped my haiku writing habit this year, and thought posting it here would inspire me to start again. Check out all of Melanie’s lovely drawings here.