1. There’s a special peril inherent in knit-blogging: your computer keyboard may collect little wisps of wool that will then multiply into dust bunnies thuggish enough to make your keys stick and your cursor cavort about the page randomly highlighting blocks of text and deleting them if you don’t stop typing fast enough. Cat hair has similar powers. Wool and cat hair together will go all Jackie Chan + Bruce Lee on your important work documents and you will spend half a day typing one character at a time and then tweezing the fearsome bunnies out from under the keys that seem to be causing the problem, which will turn out to be all the keys. It will take you all day to complete the layout of a single algebra lesson. Ask me how I know. (My husband tells me you can pay someone $80 to professionally clean your  keyboard, but I’m a cheapskate with a pair of tweezers and a firm will. The bunnies shall perish.)

1a. The “computer cabinet” at our school does not contain any computer-related equipment (such as, say, one of those air canisters for cleaning dusty keyboards), unless you count some extension cords and sundry cables. It does, however, contain PYthon (R) Dust, a “4th generation pyrethroid insecticide and photostable piperonyl butoxide” for the control of horn flies, ticks, and lice on lactating or non-lactating cattle, sheep, and goats.

2. Birds have no taste buds. I have not done any experiments to prove the veracity of this, but my friend Barb says so and I believe her.

3. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes is a treasure trove of heart-warming geekery the likes of which I have not encountered in some time. It weighs half as much as Ada does and contains useful diagrams and algebraic formulae describing the possible ways in which Colonel Moran might have shot a wax bust of Holmes through a second-story window without also shooting out the lamp casting the shadow of the bust or hitting the ceiling rather than the far wall of the room.  Thanks for the recommendation, Katherine!

4. There are sixteen days remaining before Christmas. I’m not panicking, though, because I have not yet taken stock of the number of gifts remaining to be knitted. This is for the best, I’m sure.