Alphabet Attack

As we were preparing to go camping, I got the idea to make a set of foam letters for Andy that we could take along.  Unlike many other ideas that I get, I actually implemented this one right away--picked up some foam at Michael's, and then spent Sunday afternoon drawing and cutting out letters.  This is what happened next:  Andy fell asleep on the floor, and Kate labeled him. 



She thought this was hilarious and of course we had to get out the camera.  Which led to taking turns spelling out things upon the sleeping child:






(Andy is a very sound sleeper.) 





Kate pulls out the big guns--the whole entire alphabet!  If you look closely you might see Andy in there somewhere. 

Andy loves his letters, and was also quite intrigued by these pictures.  Perhaps he wonders how we took them.

Finding the value of tumpty

So this morning I got up, was turning on the computers and changing Andy's diaper, and I don't know what I was thinking about but suddenly the line "Thus ___ doth make cowards of us all" popped into my head.  I couldn't remember what the word was.  It'll come to me, I thought.  I waited a moment.  It didn't. 

I went back to the bedroom to ask Doug,
"What is it that makes cowards of us all?"
"???"
"Thus something doth make cowards of us all."
"Time?"
"No, it's two syllables."
"Ah. Tumpty."
"Yes.  Thus tumpty doth make cowards of us all."

Doug couldn't remember either.  I went to Google to look it up.

One of the many handy things about Google is that you can use an asterisk as a wild card in a search.  So I typed in the phrase like this, in quotes:

"Thus * doth make cowards of us all."

And up popped the answer, right away.  Conscience.  Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.  From Hamlet.  Of course. 

I'm still not sure where that came from.  I'm reading Alcatraz Versus The Shattered Lens,and last night got to the chapter where every line of dialog is a quote from Hamlet, but I don't think that line was in there. Or maybe it was. I'll have to go back and check.

(I should specify that almost every line of dialog in that chapter is from Hamlet--one of the bad guys quotes a line from Macbeth and Bastille kicks him in the groin.)

Tumpty is of course the placeholder for words of two syllables.  Frequently combined with its one-syllable companion tum. Used memorably by Nanny Ogg upon her first encounter with iambic pentameter:

"I suppose you're an expert at theater words?" said Granny sarcastically.  "They'd have to be the proper sort, otherwise people would suspect."

"Shouldn't be too difficult," said Nanny Ogg dismissively.  "I've been studyin' it.  You go tumpty-tumpty-tumpty."

Granny gave this some consideration.

"There's more to it than that, I believe," she said.  "Some of those speeches were very good.  I couldn't understand hardly any of it."

(From Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters)

I love the internet.

"Sounds like...."

There's a game that we play in my family, that goes something like this:

"I'm thinking of a word that's not board."

"Is it a plant like a squash?"

"No, it's not gourd."

"Is it the fiddly bits around Norway?"

"No, it's not fjord."

"Is it two or more notes played simultaneously?"

"Yes, it's chord!"

(Homophones count as the same word, so "The thing you use to plug in electrical appliances" would also be a correct answer.)

Of course, to play this game you have to understand rhyming. Barb told me she once tried to play it with some kids who were just a little too young, and it didn't quite work.

I've noticed that rhyming is a common theme in kids' programs, but I didn't realize how hard it is to grasp at first. Kate has recently been experimenting with rhymes and really not getting it yet. She knows that rhyming words sound alike, but she doesn't understand how they sound alike. The other day she told me that "Helena" rhymes with "hyena." Gee, thanks.

Pesky Plurals

I was commenting on another blog last night about how I used to draw little pegasuses all over my school papers. That's one of those words that doesn't really have a comfortable plural. "Pegasuses" and "pegasi" both look (and sound) awkward. Originally, of course, there was only one winged horse, and his name was Pegasus. No need to pluralize.

I was amused by the circumlocution in Disney's Fantasia. In the introduction to the Pastoral sequence, the announcer mentions unicorns and centaurs, and then says, "Pegasus, the flying horse, and his entire family." Ha. They didn't know what to do with it either.

Reminds me of the story about the guy who wanted to order two mongooses, but wasn't sure what the plural was, so he wrote, "Send me a mongoose. And while you're at it, make it two."

On a completely unrelated note, we are teaching Kate to say, "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

Them Apples

We ate out a lot on our trip, which meant a lot of time deciding where to go, traveling to a restaurant, and then waiting for our large party to be seated and served. It was nice, but as far as family bonding time went it wasn't really that effective, because it was often so noisy that the people at one end of the table couldn't hear the people at the other end. One night we went to Chili's (I got the fajita trio, which was fabulous). At one point I leaned over and said to my dad, "I wish it wasn't so loud!" and Dad (who is getting just a bit hard of hearing) said, "What?"

The day before we left, we went to Panera Bread for lunch. While waiting in line we heard the girls behind the counter taking orders, and asking, "Which side do you want? Apple, chips, or bread?" Now, looking at the way I wrote it (I'm a fan of the serial comma), it's easy to tell that it's three different things. But, standing in line, unable to hear the punctuation, it just sounded like "Apple chips or bread." Several of us thought that the first item was apple chips. Kyle even asked for apple chips, thinking they sounded good. I noticed a few people walking by with apples on their trays, so I figured it out before placing my order, and asked for an apple. (Doug got some chips to split with Kate.)

Later, after we'd mostly finished our meals and I was sitting there eating my chosen side, Betsey looked over at me and said, "Oh, it's an apple!" She said that while she was standing in line, she heard the girl taking someone else's order say "apple chips or bread," and she thought, "I don't want apple chips!" Then when she got up to the counter the girl said, "Apple bread or chips," and she thought, "I don't want apple bread!" (This may make it sound like Betsey's a bit of a ditz. She's not. But she had us all laughing while she was relating her story!)

That's it from California! Here's a picture of Kate sacked out at the hotel.

The Adventures of Mr. Penguin (a tale in Chinese characters)

When I was first serving as a missionary in Korea, I lived in a high-rise apartment complex with an elevator. As I rode up and down in the elevator each day, staring at the information panel, I noticed one particular character. It seemed to draw my eye every time. I would stand there and look at it and think, "It's a penguin!" Eventually I learned that it was the character for "heart," but I still think it looks like a penguin.

As it turns out, the penguin is used in other characters as well. Like this one--the "heart" character and the "door" character. It's obvious: Mister Penguin drowns his sorrows at the local saloon. I started looking for the penguin in more characters, and discovered quite a few other things that Mister Penguin had been doing.




Mister Penguin discovers the necessity of wearing his seatbelt.









Mister Penguin looks out the window and wonders what his neighbors are up to.









Mister Penguin installs a large aerial on the roof of his house.









Mister Penguin shows up at his friend's house with a gift.









Mister Penguin blows out the candle on his birthday cake.









Mister Penguin is not tall enough to go on the ride.









Mister Penguin is unable to find a parking space.









Mister Penguin wards off vampires.










Mister Penguin is attacked by the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Putting the Fun back in Fungi

A couple of years ago, when my family was visiting for the occasion of Kate's birth, I sent my dad out for salad makings and we got into a discussion about who did and didn't like mushrooms. After identifying the fungophobes and fungophiles, we got a little wacky.

If you're afraid of mushrooms you're a fungophobe.
If you like mushrooms you're a fungophile.

Which means...

If you're afraid of people who like mushrooms you're a fungophilophobe
and if you like people who are afraid of mushrooms you're a fungophobophile.

This can, of course, be applied to lots of other words. Think of the possibilities!

Beyond BLT

Last summer we discovered that BLT's make pretty good travel food (as long as you've got a place to sit down to assemble and eat the sandwiches, and aren't trying to do it while you're driving or anything like that). We added avocado to ours, which of course made BLAT's. One day, in a punchy mood, we came up with these other variations:

BLOT--bacon, lettuce, olives, and tomato.

BLECH--bacon, lettuce, egg, cheese, and ham

BARF--bacon, avocado, radishes, and feta

How I spent my Veterans Day vacation (2002)

(I dug this up from several years ago):

And it came to pass that we did journey unto the city of Seattle, even unto the market which is called Pike Place, and we did gaze upon the fine meats and the cheeses from many lands. And we saw that they were delicious to the taste, and very desirable. But of the fine meats and the cheeses we bought not, for the price thereof was exceeding great.

And when we were an hungered, we did buy of them that sold food from the land which is called Turkey, and we did feast upon the doner and upon the chicken talas, yea, and upon the lentil soup did we feast, and behold, it was good.

And we went unto the sellers of toys which is called FAO Schwartz, and we did dance upon the large piano keyboard. But behold, we could not play "chopsticks" as did Tom Hanks in the movie, and we waxed wroth. And I spake unto my spouse and did say unto him, "Phooey! This is lame!" and we did depart from thence.

And it came to pass that we did journey to and fro upon the streets of that city for many hours, and my feet did grow exceeding sore, for I did wear upon my feet the boots of hiking, to which I was not accustomed, and they did pain me, and great was the soreness thereof. But my husband, to whom the boots of hiking were grown accustomed, did say that his feet were fine and pained him not. And I would that he should not say so, for I did envy him.