Found Treasures VIII: Singular: Louse

This is a second found treasure that takes a playful stab at my high school English teacher, Mr. Yates.[1] It didn't start out that way, though. At first it was just an exercise in mocking some of the unusual plurals that exist in the English language [2]—though sometimes the fake singulars/plurals I came up with weren't particularly clever themselves. I brought it all back in in the last paragraph, but then it got away from me and ended on a rather abrupt digression from the previously established pattern. It's fun but not important enough to fix up.

Thaylen Glyphs

Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive (which I read last year) takes place on a planet called Roshar. One of the countries on Roshar is called Thaylenah. Thaylen writing is based on the same letters that are used for making glyphpairs [1], but with some important differences.[2] First, Thaylen is an abjad, which is a writing system that only has consonants. As a result, the spoken language tends to produce large consonant clusters.[3] Second, Thaylen is written vertically. It is implied that Thaylen is a unique language, but in the pictures in The Stormlight Archive books they are used to write transliterated English. Just as I've already done with Rosharan glyphpairs, I decided to write the names of my family members using Thaylen letters.

Rosharan Glyphpairs

I resisted starting Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive for a long time because 1. he hasn't finished the series yet, 2. he says it's going to be 10 books long, 3. each book is over 1000 pages, and 4. it takes him 3–4 years to publish each one. The fourth book is set to publish this year (2020), which means that we can expect him to finish the series by 2038. 2038! By that time I'll be 58 years old. (And Brandon will be 63!) Brandon's books are so intricate that I don't think I can keep track of all the characters and plot details for that long. So my plan was to just wait until they were all published and then read all ten in one go. But then Leann started reading the first book, The Way of Kings, and I couldn't fall behind, so I started reading it along with her.[1] In the story we learn that men who follow the religion Vorinism are forbidden from learning to read.[2] Men will still use marks, called glyphs, to identify themselves or signify a particular idea.[3] The glyphs are formed from actual letters, but the letters are calligraphically stylized. Glyphs are often combined into a glyphpair. I decided to create glyphpairs for the members of my family.

Mayan Hieroglyphs, Part VII

It's been a few years, now, since I posted anything to this blog. Looking back I can see that the time I had available for blogging decreased with each new child. We now have three children, but I've only drawn Mayan hieroglyphic names for two of them.[1], Our third child is already three, but I've always had this nagging desire to draw a Mayan name for him so that everything will be rounded out and complete.

Funny Faces

For my maternal grandmother's 80th birthday, we (all of her descendents) wrote down our favorite memory of her [1], which was then bound into a book and given to her. At the same time, we also downloaded the PrankMirror app on our iPads and took funny/bizarre pictures of ourselves (which she then had to identify). Some of ours were too hilarious not to share with a broader audience. Let me know which ones are your favorites!

Lincoln's Milestones

I've been really awful about posting Lincoln's milestones, so you're going to get several of them at once. (And a few updates, too.)

Lincoln's First Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year

My apologies for not posting these sooner. I didn't have enough material for Thanksgiving to post by itself, so I waited for Christmas. We signed up for a free 1-month trial of Amazon Prime so we could take advantage of the free shipping for Christmas presents…and then I didn't have time to prepare this post because we were furiously watching shows on Amazon Prime before our free trial ran out.[1]