Friday!!!!!!!

Ah…today I woke up and realized I hadn’t taken cold medicine in OVER NINE HOURS.  I quickly took some, of course, but still, obviously I’m improving.  Sadly Chris is sick now, and spent most of the day yesterday lying down.

Today we are all doing a workout with Mike and then tonight going out to dinner with some of my friends.  Other than that…who knows.  We’ve been shopping, watching Alias, and made some vegan cookies (that are QUITE famous in the blog world, but that’ll be another post)…

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Carrie at the airport—we had to wait about an hour until Leslie’s flight came in.

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Drinking tea at Lemongrass.

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HOT POT!

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Wonder twin powers…activate?  And I finally don’t feel totally crazy having my ring on my RIGHT hand.  Nothing like being around other crazy violinists to make you feel sane.  (We all had the same childhood of practicing hours and hours everyday rather than doing anything else that regular people did.  Pros and cons.)

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The yellow shirts are for today’s workout.  Not quite sure why we tried them on over our ridiculous flowered dresses, but, there you have it.

Enjoy your Friday!  And I’ll tell you all about Mama Pea’s Dough Balls another time. 

Bridesmaids Dress Shopping

One of the reasons my sisters were coming to visit was to go shopping for bridesmaid dresses.  This was not as fun as it should have been because David’s Bridal is just not that fun to shop at.  Sorry, but it’s true.  I don’t want to look at the catalog.  I want to look at dresses.

Anyway, they had a little fun with the dresses–

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I liked this one quite a bit, but it wasn’t the best of the bunch.

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It’s Little Red Riding Hood!

We did decide on a dress (not pictured) and I think it’ll look great on everyone! 

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The three of us!  Together at last….

Much more to come, but that’s all for now. 

Fire (probably unrelated to the earthquake)

Breaking news from my neighborhood!  It’s a very special blog post in the afternoon.

I was lying on the couch watching the office and got a call from Chris that he had just gotten home, but that the neighbor’s balcony was on fire and he had just called 911.  Naturally I grabbed my phone and ran (well, limped, actually…) outside to see!

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It quickly became apparent I needed my actual camera, so I went to get that.  It reminded me of the last time I was part of a situation where 911 was called.   Such an eerie silence, then masses of sirens.  Luckily this time no one was hurt or even in the building, as far as we could tell.  (No ambulances came, so I feel pretty secure saying that.)

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This is two doors down and that empty parking space on the left is ours.  It seemed that no one was at home.  The fire trucks arrived in about two to four minutes, I would say.  The police arrived first and got there before I even got outside.

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Finally remembered I had a zoom in feature on my camera.

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Bringing out the hose!

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And the ladder!

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WATER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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AQUAMENTI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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All of the neighbors who were at home and not afraid of the police were out watching the drama! Yes, the presence of a police car makes quite a few porches of people disappear.  I think that’s the sign of a problem.

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Last blast of water!

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And packing up.  Good job guys.

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After the excitement I needed to go back inside and sit down (working with a bad head cold here), but naturally I first wanted to put out a very special blog post!  Hope you enjoyed.

Bike trip

It looks like my dad’s cross country bike trip starts today!

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He’ll be here in a few weeks I guess.  Rumor is he is planning to attend CPSTL‘s September 8 concert (and you should too!). 

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Because yes, I learned he is leaving on his bike trip today from twitter.  Not from some other way that other people in other families might do it?

I am glad my father is on twitter.  I feel like this way we will really learn to communicate.  My dad is not a big talker and is not much on the phone.  We’ve spent countless hours in the car together (particularly when I was doing college auditions) and hours would go by without any talking at all, except "do you need to use the bathroom" or "are you hungry".  But, now he has a twitter, PLUS Leslie said that he TEXTED her the other day. 

I can’t be the only woman whose boyfriend (well, fiancé, but that always feels strange—should I skip to husband since some of Chris’s friends simply refer to me as his wife?) is more likely to have an actual conversation via text than in person?  I recall Chris first told me he loved me on AOL Instant Messager.  That set the tone for our relationship.  I’m surprised he proposed in person rather than via text or perhaps facebook chat (Chris doesn’t use twitter yet.)image leslie

(Wait, how did those pictures get in there?  Leslie, suiting up for a 10-mile run over Christmas break.  Leslie, finished with her first half-marathon.  And…wearing the same top and jacket?)

Not that I am much better talking about my emotions.  Now, I LOVE to talk.  I can talk for hours.  My favorite thing to do is talk with my friends (and I work really hard to listen too, I swear!) But, in my family, we don’t talk about feelings.  Actions speak louder than words.  For instance, my dad is the sort of dad that, if your car broke down in Kentucky on your way to school, when he found out, would turn around and drive through the night to get you and take you to school (this wasn’t me, but my sister Leslie).  I’d rather that sort of dad any day.  Much more helpful to know that if you needed something, your dad would drop everything and go get it.  Maybe that’s why I don’t have children yet…I’m too selfish to imagine that sort of devotion.  I worry it wouldn’t come naturally.

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That being said, obviously I am pretty proud of what my dad is doing and I think it’s really cool.  He’s biking from where my parents live in South Carolina to here, and then to visit my sister in Arizona, and then (I think) to maybe LA, where he is going to hop on a train to go home.  I think—that was the last plan I heard a few weeks ago.  He’s got all these maps from other bikers of the best routes to take various places and where all the bike shops are along the way.  It’s been a pretty huge endeavor, just planning the trip. 

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Anyway, I look forward to following his progress (and you can, on twitter!) and seeing how thin he looks when he makes it to St Louis (we’ll have to try to fatten him up a bit before he gets going again.)  Safe travels, Dad!

Sublimely Self-Righteous

Boy I was cranky last night.  I felt sick for awhile more and finally bit the bullet and took something for it.  I don’t know why, for a headache or other pain I take ibuprofen in a second, but for stomach issues I always wait for it to go away on its own.  In any case, around midnight it finally passed…at which point I realized I had a sore throat.  Two of my good friends have been sick over the last week, so I’ve got a bad feeling about this.  I woke up and immediately popped a Sudafed PE.

Today is going to be fantastic though.  I’m taking the day off from working out (and running), and practicing the violin.  My shoulders, arms, wrists, and hands are all feeling the effects of ten hours of rehearsal over the weekend, and the rain today doesn’t help.  I have some students later in the day, but no big deal.  Maybe I’ll clean the house or get a pedicure.  (One of those sounds more appealing…)

I took some pictures over the weekend at various places, but most of them turned out fairly poorly.

Friday night was the grand opening at the Tavern of Fine Arts, where Chamber Project St Louis will be playing on September 10.  It was a fun night, though in retrospect we should have done something else, SINCE all my weekend rehearsals took place there too.

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At least we look tan?

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Though they look pretty tan too.

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The chocolate cake was really good.  Adrianne was trying to do a crazy pose, but kept cracking up.  This is the best picture that I got.

The food was a buffet of all the menu options, but tiny portions.  Gazpacho, hummus, flatbreads, sandwiches, and then chocolate cake and a strawberry pound cake.  There were $4 wine specials also.

Saturday was spent in rehearsal for the upcoming CPSTL concert.  We rehearsed Britten in the morning and Prokofiev in the afternoon.  I hadn’t worked with a few of the musicians before and frankly it was a lot of fun.  The only issue was by the end of the day I was utterly exhausted (4 pm) and all I could manage to do the rest of the night was lie on the couch.  It was a shame because one of Chris’s groomsmen, Norbert, came through town and I wasn’t able to go out with them because I was old and tired.

Sunday we did it all again.  Britten and Prokofiev.  By the end of the day I felt as if I had been hit by a truck.  And I still had a run planned with Jen, who was getting back from a family visit.  Which leads us to last night’s sad and pathetic post.

I’m over it now.  At dinner Chris told me to stop being so dramatic, that every run didn’t have to be a good run.  I’d love for SOME runs to be good runs, because I feel like it’s been so long since I’ve had even a mildly good run, but I guess it really is the heat.  And I need to be more careful of my diet, both on the day of a run and the day before.  I can’t eat a bunch of crap and drink wine on Friday nights and then ask myself why Saturday’s run sucked.  Yet I am also unwilling to give up my social life for a run, because I need that interaction.  I’m going to think about this.

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At dinner last night Chris HAD to try the Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale.  I asked him to pose in a self-righteous manner.  This is what he came up with.  Yes, this is the man I’m going to marry.

He thought it was good, but didn’t love it.

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.