I really love the look of some of those clocks and the fact that one of those plans utilizes marbles and another is an orrery, really appeal to me too. Plus, you've gotta love a set of plans called "Weird Gears plans". Building one of those might be a lot of fun! I do wonder though, if humidity would affect their precision since they are wooden. I'll admit that I laughed a bit when I saw the Yarn Lover's Package.

Given your engineering background, have you ever built a Rube Goldberg machine? I've always loved seeing those and I'd imagine that they're a great time, but a great time like sledding is a great time: it's great when it gets going, but at some point you have to trek back up the hill. I suppose that's figuratively true for a lot of things though.

My other question to you is: if you can envision yourself using a laser cutter as part of your hobby or personal interest stuff and if you could afford one, why wouldn't you get one? I'd love to be able to have a workshop where I could just tinker with things and though my tinkering is limited, it always sucks to run up against that wall of lacking a particular tool and not being able to improvise a way around it.