got brownies?

natalya and i made brownies the other night for her to take to school. she was a big help! :)

OM

natalya gave us a buddha for our backyard for mother's day. we planted the flowers and rocks around him. kinda peaceful looking isn't it?

and so it begins...

I started my 21st (wow!) season at Shoreline Amphitheatre last weekend. Our opening show was headlined by Brad Paisley -- he's a popular country artist. (Hey I just work the shows I don't book 'em). Anyway, let's just say that it was an eye-opener of an evening for me. This popular country cross-over stuff frightens me. Case in point: before Brad takes the stage the music of AC/DC is blasting through the venue and all of these cowboy hat covered heads are banging to Back in Black. Then the lights go down and Brad takes the stage and the crowd switches to country mode and they're all singing along with the guy who writes "tears in my beers" songs like Two Feet of top Soil:

Yesterday I thought that I was low as I could get
I had hit rock bottom ever since you up and left
But this morning when I saw you with somebody else
Well needless to say
Thats when I started sinkin' even lower
And as far as where I'm at today

Theres two feet of topsoil
A little bit of bedrock, limestone in between
A fossilized dinosaur
A little patch of crude oil
A thousand feet of granite underneath
Then there's me

Amusing but not my cup of tea...give me Back in Black any day and ROCK ON!

mother's day 2007

natalya did a portrait of me for mother's day this year. and she told me that she loved me "more than a potato chip." i'll take that as a compliment :)










here's a photo taken on my first mother's day
with natalya (2003). we've both grown a lot
since then.

another milestone achieved

Natalya has officially mastered a two-wheeler! Needless to say, she's feeling very grown up now. The day this picture was taken it was about 90 degrees outside. When Natalya got dressed for school she ran downstairs and grabbed her winter fleece jacket to wear.

Me: "Natalya it's going to be really warm outside today. You don't need a jacket."

Natalya: "Yes I do Mom. I need to wear the jacket to protect people from seeing my cute clothes."

Me: (making a mental note: don't ever tell Natalya that she looks cute in her clothes.)

playdate

got dreams?

Yesterday morning I told Natalya that she could ride her bike to school (I throw the bike in my car and she rides from the parking lot to the classroom). She replied "oh Mama you're the best! You make my dreams come true!"

And Miss Muffet makes my dreams come true as well — she's going to be an awesome basektball player! Here's a picture of her playing while her proud mom looks on :)

girls just wanna have fun

I love this pic of Natalya and her pal Yarden playing with shaving cream at Camp Rimon. Those two girls really know how to have a good time!

perhaps it was a premonition?

Florida State 68, Stanford 61

I am in mourning. My Stanford girls lost to Florida State last night. And they lost at home. It's so painful! I wouldn't feel so bad if we'd (yes we'd) played a good game. But we didn't. We pretty much sucked. This is really testing my resolve to not see loss as disaster.








Stanford center Brooke Smith wipes her eyes after Stanford was upset by Florida State 68-61 during their second-round game in the NCAA women's basketball tournament.

loss & luck

As we head into basketball season's March Madness where one loss means you're out of the tournament — I've been thinking about loss and luck in general. I certainly had my share of losses and luck in 2006. And it's still difficult not to initially view every loss as a disaster — but I'm working on it :) Here's a little something from Elizabeth Bishop:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost
that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.
Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel.
None of these will bring disaster.

Even losing you (the lovely voice, a brilliant smile) I shan't have lied.
It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like
(write it!) like disaster.

i met a REAL rock star...

The coolest thing happened last week: I finally met a real rock star! What do you mean by 'real' you ask? I mean the guy who invented the Apple iPhone!!! How cool is that?

I saw this guy at a Stanford game playing with what looked like an iPhone and thought to myself "that looks like an iPhone". But then I thought that it couldn't be an iPhone because nobody has an iPhone yet (except for Steve Jobs er -- and this guy).

Anyway, it turns out that the man who's been sitting in front of me at Stanford games for the past three years or so is the one and only Scott Forster. Not only did he create the iPhone, he created Mac OSX as well. A true genius and a true rock star in my book!

crime scene?

I found two of Natalya's Barbie dolls sprawled out on the floor this morning -- so far I haven't found any witnesses to the heinous crime.

who's your daddy?

So I'm laying in bed this morning cuddling with Natalya and listening to a CD: Lisa Marie Presley to be exact. At one point I looked at Natalya and asked, "did you know that Lisa Marie is Elvis Presley's daughter?"

Natalya looked at me with eyes wide and replied, "you mean OUR ELVIS?"

You gotta love that kid of mine :)

happy valentine's day

The Yahoo! billboard in San Francisco.

the agony of defeat

No. 8 Stanford Women's Hoops Upset By No. 21 California, 72-57 Stanford's winning streak is ended at 17 games.

Pinch me -- am I dreaming? No. It's a nightmare! That's right folks. My Stanford Women's Basketball team LOST to Cal on Sunday. I'm still recovering. I think I'm in the angry stage of grieving now.

How the f---k could my girls let this happen?! The Stanford women haven't lost to Cal in six years. And this is their first loss in the Pac-10 Conference this year (now they're 11-1). I know. It's still a respectable record for the season -- but lose to Cal? Unacceptable!

Freshman Center Jane Appel fights for a rebound

dental trauma

My little daredevil had an accident at school the other day. Natalya and her friend Ori were on the same swing playing "spider" (I still haven't gotten a straight answer about what this game entails) and Natalya fell off. Then Ori fell on Natalya and her teeth ended up in his head. Ori's head is fine. Natalya's teeth are not.

After two hours at the dentist Natalya now has "splints" on her front teeth. Turns out that the four teeth in the front (on top) were all injured and lose. Ouch!

She's feeling very grown up because "it's like I have braces like the big kids" and couldn't wait to show her pals at school. Thank goodness she's such an optimist!

We have a special mouth wash to prevent infection and will go back to the dentist in 10 days. The dentist thinks that the main two front teeth will fall out within six months on their own. She's trying to save the other two because the roots are still quite long.

Hopefully we've made our one and only trip to the "Dental Trauma Room" at her dentist's office. :)

fame

the other day natalya and i were in the car chatting about her singing talent. we discussed what it was like to sing in front of an audience "like Madonna" (yes. that's my daughter!) anyway, she thought for a moment and then declared that she didn't want to sing in front of a lot of people because she "might get stagefreaked."

by the way: Natalya has changed her stage name from Sydney Wicked to "Vicky Hartbrask". (don't ask -- I have no idea where she gets this stuff from).

krispy kreme car jack

i had a strange experience while driving to shoreline the other day. i'm sitting at a stop light and all of a sudden this guy is standing next to my car and yelling something at me. i quickly locked my doors. then somehow the yelling registered as "frantic" rather than "angry" so i rolled down my window.

guy: where's Krispy Kreme?
me: what?
guy: how do I get to Krispy Kreme from here?
me: oh. um. get back on 101 north and exit at Rengstorff.
guy: (while running back to his car which was behind mine) okay. thanks!
me: whew!


and here's a pic of my girlie doing one of her modeling poses.
she's modeling one of her gender bender outfits. :)

a new year on the horizon (and a confession)

went for a walk near Shoreline at sundown and shot this pic of the top of the tent. i can't wait for the new concert season to begin!














And speaking of Shoreline -- I have a confession to make: Kelly Clarkson kicked ass last summer when she played "the Shed"!

I really wasn't looking forward to the show. I mean -- it was only Kelly Clarkson afterall -- just an American Idol champion. It's not like Melissa Etheridge was performing.

The night arrived and Shoreline was filled with thousands of little girls with their moms in tow. It was the first concert for most of them and you could feel the excitement in the air (seriously). When Kelly took the stage the place erupted! Everyone was screaming for Kelly. The audience sang along with every word to every song. Kelly sounded fantastic. She worked the crowd and made sure that the first time concert-goers had a memorable experience... it was everything a concert should be. Kudos to Kelly! I'm a convert (seriously).

a very fine gingerbread house

natalya and i built a gingerbread house together over the holiday break. it was quite an experience to say the least. here's my favorite quote from the event:

"Natalya get your hand out of your pants. We don't stick our hand in our pants when we're building gingerbread houses."

i'm amazed at the things i say as a parent...