eclaire (what's in a) name?

i just read a very interesting article in the new york times (thanks, dad!) about female swim coaches – somewhat surprisingly there are very few of them in the competitive swimming world – and only three who coach 2008 olympians, all of whom reside in california.

i just don’t get the preconceptions that female coaches will be “easy” or “less competitive” than male coaches, but that’s probably because when i was in high school we had an awesome, laid back male coach who created loooong, grueling workouts for our afternoon practices. but in the morning (we’re talking 6am monday-friday, people), we had this gnarly female coach who made us focus on stroke refinement instead of yardage. i believe it’s due to her that i dropped so much time in my events my senior year – as well as the reason why i was able to in turn teach swim lessons for almost a decade. i ran into her a couple of weeks ago when i went swimming with my mom at ucsc, and she’s still going strong with the coaching, setting up the next generation of swimmers for success.

ok, enough from me, check out this article:

Women Jumping in as Elite Swim Coaches

ps- is anybody else excited about the summer olympics? i don’t know bout all of you, but i plan on spending all of my free time in front of the tv, watching my favorite summer sports!

my grandmother, marion claire white, passed away last week after a long fight with alzheimer’s.

below is a picture circa 1981 – my mom is in the upper left corner wearing the green dress, my grandma marion is next to her in the printed dress, i am the baby seated on the lap of my great grandmother clara, and next to clara is my great grandfather charlie:

and here’s a more recent picture from my grandparent’s 60th wedding anniversary in august of 2007:

the second fire in santa cruz county in the past two months raged in bonny doon this afternoon (a solid 10 miles from our house), but we had a pretty clear view from our backyard. all of our neighbors were outside, snapping pics, complaining about the heat, and feeling pretty amazed at the power of fire. i felt a mixed combination of relief that the fire was far away from my home and sadness for all the homes that were burning and lives that were changing. mike and i walked around a bit to try to snap better pictures, and we saw several empty uhaul vans being driven FAST up western towards the blaze, which we could only assume were about to be filled to save their belongings from being destroyed.

check out more fire pictures here.

while you’re on flickr, check out pics of linnea’s last resident string quartet performance and linn’s 22nd birthday.

this isn’t a real post, my dear readers, it’s just a notification that i have put pictures on flickr from our last two weekends that have been filled with great friends, lots of fun, and even more food, so you should check out said pictures.  as soon as i recover from all this fun, i’ll get back to posting as usual.

angels camp

cinco de mustache cuatro

linnea’s bachelor of music recital on the viola last night was AMAZING!!

pics from the evening are here and mike will be uploading some movies to youtube soon.

congratulations, linn, on such a phenomenal event!