Why Are They No. 2 Pencils ?

In a home with 7 children (5 of whom return to school this week) there is a constant need for an industrial strength electric pencil sharpener.  We have already been through two other models, but our current sharpener has withstood about a year and a half of aggressive use.  I am thankful for this because today was "Back To School Pencil Sharpening Day" in the Case Place.

As I sat there, sharpening what had to be more than a hundred pencils, my mind began a chain of thought that eventually led me to do research on a subject I never really cared about.  I don't hate that, but I sometimes wish my need to know the answer to certain questions wasn't so strong.

If you care, you can read Wikipedia or use a search engine like Google to learn more than you ever wanted to know about pencils, lead, numbering, shading, hardness, darkness, and so on.  For my purposes, it only took me about 30 seconds to find the answer to the title question of this blog post.

But then I read on for nearly 30 minutes about all sorts of other information I became interested in as a result of links and commentary and questions in the initial sites I viewed online.  I will almost certainly never use this information again, but now I know and ...

Song Of The Day:
When life puts me in situations where I just have to find the answer to some silly question, I feel "Taken In" or perhaps sucked into learning is a more appropriate phrase.  But Mike & The Mechanics didn't have a popular song about getting sucked in so this will have to do!

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