What's the Strangest Bookmark You've Used?

A quick note: I have company this week, so will be delayed in responding to your comments and visiting your blogs. I will do so as soon as I'm able.

Normally, I will be updating my Project 52 progress on Thursdays, but since I've been preparing for guests (and now hosting them), I haven't made any real progress. Instead, I thought I'd talk about bookmarks.

I can't stand to dog-ear a book I'm reading, which means I am sometimes scrambling for a bookmark. I will occasionally use the book jacket, but only if I'm not that far in; it tends to ruin the book jacket and make it fit weird.

Instead, I will grab whatever seems like it will work. I've used toilet paper, tissues, receipts, napkins, post-its, random slips of whatever paper I could find, photos, a paper tampon wrapper, business cards, magazines, a book of matches, string, ads, clean straws, even a smaller book in a desperate moment. I've also removed the book jacket and stuffed the whole thing into the book when I was too far in and had nothing else at hand.

Lest you think I'm completely uncouth, I do own regular bookmarks, too. I even have one with a picture of my god daughter on it. However, I seem to misplace these quite easily. Right now, I'm using a magnetic bookmark I got from the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center in Divide, CO the other day. We'll see how long it takes me to lose that one.

The problem with using random things as bookmarks is that my children occasionally "save" my book by removing the offending item. At least when it's a real bookmark they know to leave it in there!

I also wanted to pass on a useful post from a fellow blogger, Beverly Diehl. On her blog, Writing in Flow, she posted a helpful tip on how to put a link in your blog that will open a new window, rather than take your reader away from your page when you use the "insert link" option. If this is something you might find useful, see her article entitled Nick Cage & Making Sure Our Readers Are Not Gone in 60 Seconds. Hopefully it works, because I've implemented it in all this week's blog posts!

Do you dog-ear your books? Use the cover? Have you used anything unusual as a bookmark?

May you find your Muse.