Pencil sharpeners

With a title like that, you just know it's going to be exciting, right?  If you have better things to do (and I really hope you do), just move on.  I'll never know anyway. 

Still here?  Then you get to hear the fascinating history of our pencil sharpeners.  We seem to go through a lot of pencils around here, which amazes me, because we really don't do that much work.  I had an old pencil sharpener, which I blogged about here.  I don't remember where I got it, but I had it for years, and it died a slow death.  I replaced it with a newer electric one, which was cheap and broke within a few months.  Then I bought this one:

It was cheap, but it was really cool.  It plugged into the computer and lit up in all different colors when you stuck in a pencil.  It didn't, however, sharpen the pencil.  So finally, I went old-school and bought this trusty, tried and true pencil sharpener, just like the ones I had in school hundreds of years ago, complete with pencil dust underneath:

When Mike saw it, he told the kids how he and his classmates used to raise their hands and ask permission to sharpen their pencils all day long, just so they'd have an excuse to get out of their seats and jack around.  I knew exactly what the result would be of telling my squirrelly students that story, so I gave him a look and said, "Thanks for that." 

Sure enough, they've spent more time jacking around at the pencil sharpener than doing anything productive today: