Maya Warhol

Ah, It's Good To Be The Devil

Maya tricked and treated with her friend Annika and then went out again with me for a superb haul this year.

iPhone post

this is being written on an iphone

How to Dress Your Kid

Throwing Rocks

Standing on a Stump

Walk in the Park

More Devil News

Busy weekend for the Devil - and with a twenty four hour news cycle, multiple cable outlets, not to even mention TMZ.com - How can it be otherwise? Saturday the Devil found herself doing a Halloween play-in at Saint Joseph's School of Music (aka The Nerd Farm). After the play-in her grandparents took her for lunch at Chili's.

Devil's Night Out

Friday night this couple of pint size purveyors of doom got together to enjoy some well deserved r & r. Whether it be the harvesting souls or proliferating general malaise and hardship though out the land, it nice to see this kind of joy an commitment brought to any profession - after all, you have to love what you do. So dark forces of the universe take heart knowing the road to perdition is being paved well into the next millennium.

Devil Went Down to Georgia

For Halloween this year Maya is going as the Devil


Picture of actual Devil as point of reference.

Mouse DOA

We trapped the mouse in the house last night. At about midnight he was on his way into Maya's room (probably wanted to cuddle), but unfortunately for him he decided to have a little snack first, and that was his fatal mistake.

Maya's Grandma's Favorite Kind of People

Came across this article and thought Maya's Grandma would get a kick out of it. People like this make her so angry that I bet in her "hierarchy of disdain" they out rank serial killers and pedophiles. Personally, I'm grateful towards them as they make our own crass consumerism seem all the less raging.

Cute Picture of a Kid

Here is a cute picture taken by Andy Ihnatko, technology columnist for the Chicago Sun Times (and one of the world's good people) that's so cute I thought it deserved a link.

Raising Arizona

This is Maya's favorite scene in all of film:

More Violin Incentive

Lydia, Maya's violin teacher, yesterday said that if she is offering an incentive to all her students - those who practice 100 days straight she will take to a concert (she didn't say which concert). Maya is already operating under her practice for Futurama DVDs program so this is just added bonus. Boy this rat psychology stuff really works well on her.

Off to Lessons with New Violin

New violin - new book - new attitude.

Getting Picked Up After School

This is Maya getting picked up after school - this is when the nagging and whining process begins.

Teachers Convention

As we mentioned a few days ago Maya was off from school Thursday and Friday last week because of teachers convention. Zaheeda said she saw a report on the news how only about half the teachers who are supposed to go to teacher's conference actually do in fact attend the conferences. I was taking the trash out Friday morning when I noticed Kathleen, the next door neighbor who also happens to be a 3rd grade teacher, was raking leaves in the front yard, confirming to me of which half she was accounting. When I was little and Maya's grandparents would skip teachers convention they always went out of our way to not be seen by anyone, as there was a level of shame associated with not fulfilling one's requirements. How brazen to rake leaves right out in front of her house when everyone knows she's supposed to be at teachers convention. The proper thing to do would be to rake the leaves in the back yard where no one would be the wiser - that's how it was done back in the day.... What's the world coming to?

New Hat

Yesterday Maya got a new hat, and now she wont take it off. Who knew such happiness could be found in the Land's End clearance bin?

Cartoon

Reminder to Maya's Grandma

Word has it that Maya's Grandma has been going on shopping sprees and making some outlandish purchases lately - ala Michael Jackson. Most recently she purchased a leather chair - not a cloth chair mind you... A leather one. I want to take this opportunity to remind her of her commitment to support the arts - more specifically paying for Maya's violin lessons. I feel it necessary to mention this now before she does something like splurge on the mummified remains of Morris the cat or something.

Stange Yellow Object

The strangest celestial phenomenon appeared in the sky today - a glowing yellow orb that seemed to emanate light and heat throughout the land. Our usual daily pattern of twenty hours of rain followed by four hours of rain anticipation was interrupted by 70° heat. We broke with our usual lifestyle, one which seems to have grown eerily similar to that of Slestacks from Land of the Lost, and ventured out into the big wide world - and ahhh life was good.

Artist rendering of said object

Penguins

Being that Maya has the day off from school she is filling her time by making penguins. The design was made and posted by a blogger at Bread and Butterflies.

Addicted to the web

Maya and her friends from school have recently started hanging out at penguinclub.com which is a sort of social network for kids to talk and play games with one another online. Maya is able to sit in a semi-catatonic state for hours living life as a little blue penguin with a pet named Nibbler. The future is scary.

3rd Grade School Picture

Mylyn-Kren makes his/her photo debut

Colbert Pumpkin

Found this pic on the web and thought Maya's Grandma would like it.

Short Week

No school on Thursday and Friday this week due to teachers conferences - Maya needs a break.

Violin lesson tonight. I just got done burning the CD of all her recorded Book 1 pieces (may we never speak of it again) to give to the teacher for her review. Cd's are available upon request. All pieces are performed by Maya and were composed and arranged in hell by Satan himself.

Futurama Day

Today after putting in her daily violin practice Maya gets her monthly reward which is Season 2 of Futurama. She told me last night that as soon as she gets home she's going to practice so she can start watching it right away. Over the last month she's done a fantastic job practicing. I guess we all have our own motivators and for Maya it is animated cartoon humor.

Book 1 Graduate

Today Maya had her Book 1 graduation and recital. She is now done with Book 1 (may we never speak of it again). For the last month she's been working very hard at recording all the pieces and then today she performed Gavotte, got her certificate, and just like that she was done with Book 1 (may we never speak of it again). She was so relieved and thankful that this was over being that she's been working on Book 2 for sometime but just missed being ready to do graduation last spring by a couple weeks - this has left her in a bit of a "Suzuki no-mans-land" where she's been trying to move forward while still having to use her practice time to do review, record, and prepare to perform these old pieces she'd learned and tired of a year ago - but as of today she is officially done with Book 1 (may we never speak of it again).

Halloween Haylynn

Quiz: One of these is a pumpkin and one is Haylynn - can you tell which is which? (Hint: pumpkins are not known to drool:-)

Another Maya & Erin pic

It's pretty obvious from this picture that Maya is closely related to her uncle as she seems to share his genetic predisposition towards putting rabbit ears on people. Not cool man... not cool.

Dinosaur Report

Today Maya has a little project due about dinosaurs. Last night she was working on it all night - well... working on it and watching "Monk" DVD's.

Tomorrow she has group lessons then she has to give a performance of "Gavotte" for the powers that be at the music school so she can officially be graduated from Book1. She will also have earned "Futurama" season two on DVD from her parents for meeting her practice goals for the last month. She has done an amazing job of practicing for the last four weeks and it is apparent that if you control the DVD's, you control the girl.

The MN Zoo

Went to the Zoo with Maya's class today and had a good time. Maya's friend Erin was in our group and they had a lot of fun together.

Rainbows

Saturday morning I found myself sitting in my car in Edina weathering a thunderstorm, waiting to see what kind of books they'd have at this estate sale. When the sun rose, the rain stopped and there were these two beautiful rainbows in the sky. I wondered if this was harbinger of things to come - perhaps instead of a pot of gold I was going to find stacks and stacks of precious first editions for sale at bargain prices! It was not to be... I should have stayed in bed.

Breakfast at Highland Grill

Used to be when we ate at Highland Grill Maya only required a little bowl of fruit and some toys to play with. Now she wont even order off the kids menu - apparently not even a pancake shaped like Mickey Mouse can appease her, she has to have french toast.

Michigan

Last week Maya's Grandma & Grandpa went on a little vacation to Michigan. Since Maya couldn't talk to her Grandma everyday like usual she occupied her time by tracking their location on the map in her room. She even went so far as to check out a book about Michigan from the library so she'd have something pithy to discuss when her Grandma returned. Well her Grandma got back and Maya was frankly a little disappointed saying to me, "you know, Grandma just got back from Michigan and when I tried talking to her about the state it's like she doesn't know anything about it." She knew nothing about the state bird - the robin. Had no mention of the state tree - the white pine. And not so much as one passing anecdote about the state flower - the apple blossom. Turns out all she did was use the trip as an excuse to go shopping at Kohls!?!!! At some point Maya has got to wonder if her Grandma is willing to do the work necessary to maintain this grandmother/granddaughter relationship.

More rain... Storms came through again last night at about 2:30am and Maya was in our bed at about 2:35am. This morning the rain persisted giving Maya an opportunity to wear her rubber boots to school.

More Haylynn

Early Release Day

Only a half day of school today and it looks like a nice sunny day too.

Brown grandma is back in New York and Maya is back in her own room again. We are cautiously optimistic that Zaheeda's morning sickness is beginning to subside - so it looks like everything is getting back to normal here again.