Thanks for all the nice comments on the 'phage socks and the 'phage chart.

TChem, it seems lately most of the illnesses I've got have been virally, rather than bacterially, mediated, so I'm not sure a "blankie" with viruses, even bacteria-eating ones, on it would be helpful for me. (Maybe I need to chart out a T-cell or an antibody...I think the stylized depiction of an antibody that most immunology texts use would look cool charted out).

Speaking of viruses...I have a low-level cold. I thought I caught it at the health-food store (there was a big neo-hippie in there who seemed to have a cold; he was sneezing a lot). And frankly, I thought the irony of catching a cold at the health food store was too good.

But when I walked into my 8:00 class Monday morning and heard everyone coughing and hacking, I guess I must have actually picked it up on Friday from one of them.

I've been using the zinc spray, which I was disinclined to believe in, but this time it seems to be keeping me from getting too horribly sick (or maybe it's the "Dan Active" I've been drinking with breakfast every day. Or maybe it's that I force myself to eat my veggies. Or who knows). The only bad side effect of the zinc for me is that it makes my mouth taste like the water in the grade-school drinking fountains - you know, that kind of, "Someone swapped my jawbreaker out for a rusty ball-bearing" taste.

I didn't sleep well last night. It was probably a combination of drinking too much hot tea, generally feeling uncomfortable, and also thinking about what happened yesterday in Virginia. Because "man makes himself the measure of all things" (or however that saying goes), I was thinking about my own classrooms.

And it occurs to me: the doors open OUT into the hall, so they cannot be barricaded shut from within. And, despite what the very helpful "Emergency Procedures Handbook" (which are bolted to the wall in every room and approximately every 50 feet in the hallway - I KID YOU NOT) says, we cannot lock the classroom doors from the inside. And most rooms don't have an alternate exit, so you couldn't bug out one door if a wrongdoer was coming in the other.

So we'd be kind of screwed.

The only hope is that sometimes I teach in rooms with an attached, windowless, lockable prep room. But only sometimes.

But whatever. I suppose if we all really thought about all the things that COULD happen to us every day, we'd be cowering in a corner crying for helmets and kneepads and Kevlar vests.

So last night I decided not to watch the news....having read some early accounts in the New York Times and other places. Put on a dvd (yes, that is one of the joys of having a dvd player...you always have something good on tv) and knitted.

I finished the back of the Greek Pullover (which had been kind of in stall mode for a while). I cast on for the front but couldn't immediately locate the "smaller" needle so I didn't bother starting the knitting.

The Rowan Kid Silk is okay, but it's not my favorite yarn ever. I'm a little puzzled as to why people rave so over it - it's kind of splitty, if you're not careful, and it tangles easily coming out of the ball. And it's not as soft as some other yarns I've used. (And Rowan stuff is, at least in the U.S., expensive compared to other lines). Don't know that I'd be investing in it again for a sweater.