Monthly Archives: February 2014

Weather

Cold But Sunny

That’s the weather for here in St Louis. Now you don’t have to go outside to tell, since I just told you.

Okay, so since starting the Whole 30 diet, how am I feeling? Well, I’m feeling okay. A little tired, and generally hungry all the time, but not wanting to eat anymore (technically you aren’t supposed to be hungry, but I find I can’t eat enough at meals to NOT be hungry afterwards, but I’m okay with that at this time as it’s only the third day.) The other thing is that I find myself thinking about food and planning my next meal constantly…I’m not sure how I feel having to think so much about food, but again, it’s only 30 days.

Yesterday I had a long run around Tower Grove Park (more than one time, as I’m sort of half marathon training…) and saw this awesome birthday cake. St Louis is having its 250th birthday this year and there are cakes placed all over the city! This is the first one I’ve seen, but I’ll have to seek out a few more. (They aren’t actual cakes, just FYI.)

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Can you tell exactly where it is?

I had a rehearsal last night for a church service this weekend at St Francis de Sales Church. It is the second largest cathedral in the city (after the Basilica) and is absolutely gorgeous. And absolutely not heated, so it was quite cold last night. Luckily beautiful choir music (a Mass by Mozart) and great string playing kept us a bit warmer than we might have been…come check it out Sunday morning at 10 am! It’s a traditional Latin Mass.

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My view—this is a very unimpressive picture, but it looked really awesome at the time, except for that light ruining everything.

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I think my cat has managed to gain back a fair amount of her weight loss. This is of course, all my fault. But I love her anyway. Look at that soft creature!

I realized I have a lot of practice and some studying to do–we are preparing some new quartet music, I have a solo violin/piano recital booked for the fall and am being pretty ambitious with that repertoire, and there’s lots of other random stuff that I need to look over (opera…opera!).

I also have a couple books (one on Prokofiev Sonatas and one on Baroque String Playing) that I want to delve into a bit more than I have so far, and I need to figure out a bunch of stuff for my private teaching (repertoire, theory, that sort of thing) that I’ve been neglecting. I’m hoping the warmer weather and the diet (and thus, less social activities, ha) will make me a very productive Hannah!

Don’t forget: Celebrate Fitness is just around the corner! I’m in for the bootcamp and really looking forward to it. Check out my post about it and let me know if you have any questions!

Food

Day 1 of Whole 30

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So my “crazy” diet (Whole 30) has begun. I’ve never been one to believe in fad diets, nor have I been willing to give up my beloved grains, but I wanted a bit of a shake up and a challenge, so here we go. So far breakfast and lunch have gone well (eggs, salad, eggs, shrimp, etc.) and dinner is already prepped as I have to run to a rehearsal after teaching. Normally I would have packed a sandwich to eat while driving, and this time I have food I need a fork for, so my hope is to get to rehearsal in time to eat, and if not, then that’s what break is for?

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(this was a fun gig—background music for a school fundraiser—they were really nice and the gymnasium was absolutely transformed!)

The weekend went well. I’m getting back into the normal swing of things, which means lots of gigs on the weekends and extra rehearsals during the week. It’s not that I’m incredibly busy, it’s just that I have very few days off (no such thing as a weekend for a working musician) and lots of different concerts and gigs, and I am also trying to re-dedicate myself to working out and eating well and it’s tough to reconcile everything—along with practicing and keeping up on housework and errands. It’s just a matter of planning and trying to use my time wisely (and get out of bed at a reasonable hour…which means GOING to bed at a reasonable hour…)

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(view from Winter Opera’s rehearsal rooms—poster from last month’s production)

On an unrelated note, today is my mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mom!

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(those are actually beautiful flowers a student gave me for Valentine’s Day but it works, right?)

Tell me that I’m not crazy and that I can go 30 days without grains, dairy, and sugar…so far today is good and I have that feeling of “yes, I’m doing something good for myself and I’m going to eventually fit back into my purple pants even though by then they will probably be out of style” but I suspect the next few days may be a bit challenging as the new-ness wears off and I start missing the ability to eat a sandwich with one hand while driving with the other.

Or tell me that I am crazy…either way.

Random thoughts

Heck yes, it’s CATURDAY!

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I had a couple student cancellations today (this is what I get for attempting to schedule students on Saturdays, I think…not a regular thing for a reason) so I have a quick moment to blog. I have so many things going on: lucky for me it seems that late February is when the gigs really start picking up, so it’s a concert tomorrow afternoon, a ton of rehearsals for various things, and background music for a school fundraiser tonight. Whew!

But I promised you cats:

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Regular readers will of course recognize my cat. Did you know her given name is Oistrakh? I’ve been calling her the fatness for a long time, but lately I’ve been trying Oyster, or Dr. Oysterman (seems more official, and respectful…technically the Fatness was short for Her Royal Fatness…so it’s all pretty respectful as you see.)

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I texted this to my sister Leslie and her husband and they were shocked that I could have cords out around my cat. Theirs destroy cords.

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This is a picture of both of their cats. Somehow. Albergo (black and white) and Catalunya (black.) Interesting fact: I have that same pillow with the camel on it.

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My friend April sent me this one: it’s her parent’s cat enjoying a little car trip with the family. Sometimes I think that I should let the Fat Oyster come along on trips with me but then I remember the last few times she rode in the car and how she acted like I was obviously trying to kill her. (I’m sure she can read my thoughts as she just gave me a dirty look.)

If any readers want me to showcase their photos, send ‘em  on! I lost track of Caturday for awhile, but I’d like to bring it back as a more regular feature, so email me at hannahviolin at gmail dot com with pictures, comments, or whatever.

Fitness related:

1. Whole 30 Starts Monday…I bought avocados and sweet potatoes at the store today in addition to some other stuff. My freezer has some meat in it, fridge full of veggies and eggs, so I’m ready. I’m trying to eat up all my “non-compliant” food in the house. I’m worried this will affect my lunching abilities for the month, but we all have to make sacrifices, right?

2. I only made it to the gym once last week. I also went on a run and a long walk (it was going to be a run but there were extenuating circumstances.) I considered running this afternoon but today is the one day per month that I definitely allow myself not to do any workouts (don’t make me elaborate!) so tomorrow will be a workout/run day. I have a 6 miler on the schedule for half marathon training but with my current busy weekend schedule I’m looking at pushing that to Monday or Tuesday instead to have a little breathing room. (Or heavy breathing room.)

3. Leslie is coming to visit in late-March. This is good timing because it will be right after the Whole 30 concludes so we can eat normally together. I was looking at a race we could do together (it’s the weekend before the Go Half but I’m really not even worried about that—it’s simply my goal to finish and have fun, and feel good about what I’m doing for myself.) Anyway a little research and I found this race, which includes a COMMEMORATIVE HONDURAN COWBOY HAT. I’m hoping she’ll give it the go-ahead.

I just read this article–

Olympic Dreams? Bah, Humbug! Children, Here’s What Really Matters

and thought it was worth a read…(snippet) “They had a dream. They overcame great adversity. And now they may reap the ultimate reward — public glory!”

Random thoughts

Snow Dome and whole 30 challenge

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My mom read my blog the other day about the snow and sent a picture of their house.

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It’s so pretty in the snow! Perhaps someday it will also be a museum.

So I’ve decided to do something pretty crazy for my diet. I’ve decided to do the Whole 30 Challenge starting on Sunday or Monday (google it if you like). Basically it’s a ridiculous elimination diet- no grains, sugar, legumes, or dairy for 30 days. Why? Well, I thought it would be a great personal challenge, first off. I also wanted to do something drastic to shake some bad food and drink habits that I’ve gotten myself into, and then lastly, I thought, well, honestly, I’ve always had some digestive issues with dairy. After the 30 days you are to gradually add things back in, and I’m guessing that having 30 days without dairy will open my eyes to some issues. I’ll let you guys know how it’s going. I expect to be fairly cranky, but I think I’ll manage well, and hopefully come out on the other end, stronger and lighter. I figure I can do anything for 30 days.

Diet is a weird thing, isn’t it? It seems like every week some study comes out contradicting a previous study on how to eat, and if you try to follow everything it will just drive you crazy. The best thing, I think, is to figure out what works best for you, to make you feel at your best while living a balanced life, not thinking about food all the time, and enjoying life to the fullest and healthiest. I honestly feel pretty healthy right now, and I eat a lot of vegetables generally, so I’m looking forward to the challenge, and wonder how it will affect me.

Without challenging ourselves, we don’t grow, do we?

Performing

Figure Skating

I was a little late to the Olympics watching (I missed the opening ceremonies and first few days, including the new “team figure skating”) but I’ve been trying to catch up. I’ve seen skeleton, luge, slopestyle skiing, halfpipe snowboarding, biathlon (which you’d think Americans would have embraced more because of our evident love of guns, but I guess trying to just hit a specific target is too challenging…), and a couple of other things too. I did miss the Bob Costas pink-eye fiasco, but that’s probably for the best.

Figure skating is my favorite sport. It’s beautiful, artistic, and technically challenging all at the same time, and accompanied by instrumental music, often violin (!).

I think that playing the violin is similar to figure skating. You work for many many years to gain your technical expertise (scales, scales, and more scales!), and then when you put it all together, you don’t want the technique to be all that the audience sees. Sure, those triple and quadruple jumps are important to land, effortless (or shifts, in violin), but if that’s all you worry about, the audience isn’t moved. But, if you MISS a jump (or a shift, or a series of notes), then that’s all the audience and judges notice. And if you do mess up, then it’s all about what happens next. You have to leave it behind in your performance and just stay in the moment (or a few seconds ahead of the moment, always planning ahead, but not looking back) and continue to do your best performance.

The one thing figure skaters get that we violinists rarely do is the wide scale audience! As popular as the Olympics are, I don’t think the yearly World competitions and smaller scale competitions get nearly the coverage, so it’s similar in a way—you work so hard, for so long, and mostly people don’t appreciate what you do, or truly understand the effort and skill involved. Perhaps they even discount your hard work by constantly referring to your “talent” for the sport, rather than realizing that it is primarily the time you have put into your craft that sets you above others. (This is a major pet peeve of mine. Rarely do people say someone has a “talent” for surgery or business. Often the idea that an artist has “talent” is what keeps our pay low, rather than thinking we are driven or hard working.)

But I’m not trying to get on a soapbox here. Honestly, I just love watching the Olympics. I’ve never been much of an ice skater, and I’ve never been skiing or snowboarding, so it’s all just amazing to me to watch. And you can also tell, that despite all the hard work and training the athletes put in, they are generally having the best time of their life showing off their skills, and that’s so important. I can’t imagine flipping around in the air like so many of the athletes do, or moving so fast, but I know how it feels to really nail a challenging part of a piece for the first time, or under pressure, and it is the best feeling in the world! I also know how it feels to fail to reach your goals, no matter how hard you worked for them.

I don’t know how it feels to wear an all pink body suit though. That needs to be something I do soon, right?

What’s your favorite Olympic sport? Am I trying to make the Olympics too much about me by likening it to playing the violin? Should I step down from my fancy soap box?

Random thoughts

I forgot

I forgot how I feel when I’ve been lifting weights. Now, I’m not an expert, and likely I’m doing a lot of things wrong 😉 but I’ve been sore more often than not since I started hitting the gym again. Today I can barely lift my arms over my head—let me tell you, showering and drying my hair was FUN.

That all means of course, that I feel great. I love being a bit sore and feeling like I got a great workout in (some might argue you don’t have to be sore to do that, but it always makes us feel good about what we’ve done, doesn’t it?)…so I’m not complaining. I’m just saying.

I was a little late to the Olympics party. I was so busy with opera and being social over the weekend that I missed the first few days, but I’ve been playing a little catch up on figure skating, which I love, halfpipe, which I don’t care for plus what’s up with the outfits the US athletes are wearing??, and now some biathlon and luge while I wait for the start of my day. I’d been planning to practice violin, but it wasn’t urgent, and the whole “not being able to lift my arms without struggling” DOES put a damper on things. Why is fitness so hard!

Random thoughts:

Why does the news only cover the blizzard and whatever is happening in the south in as much as it affects Atlanta? Do they know there are other locations? I know that South Carolina isn’t the largest state, but they’ve also been getting tons of bad weather, as evidenced by texts from my dad and facebook updates from high school friends. Maybe I’m just watching/reading the wrong reports, or maybe if you don’t live in a big city you don’t matter at all, I’m just not sure. But there really is more to the south than Florida, Atlanta, and New Orleans. (Not MUCH more, but a little bit.)

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This is the view from the porch at my parents’ house. Or was the other day. I haven’t gotten a more recent update so it’s likely the house is completely under snow.

We are supposed to get a few more inches tomorrow. It’s like that song, “I’m dreaming of a White Valentine’s Day.” (That sounds wrong on so many levels.)

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