All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.
Random thoughts

Oatmeal Por Todos again

How long since I did an oatmeal post? Years, I think.

In the past, I’d been doing overnight oats. You add milk, yogurt or water to a serving of oats and refrigerate it for a minimum of overnight. That was before we lived in a house with a microwave. Since we have a microwave now, I’ve discovered that regular oats only take about a minute and a half to get to the consistency I like. I still do overnight oats occasionally or (and sorry I’m not sorry) I make OOIAJ (overnight oats in a jar) to use up the last bits of “nut butter.” Chris thinks I’m crazy but it’s a nice treat.

Oatmeal. 3/4 cup. Cover with water. Microwave for 1:30 (yes, I don’t care for it too soggy.) Add spoonful of “nut butter”, scoop of “protein powder” and your choice of fruit. And coffee. WIN.

Pictured below: raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. No banana this week: I ate those plain.

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Are you a creature of habit for your morning meal?

Deep Thoughts

Tacos

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Today was one of those days where I had other plans for my lunch hour which involved authors and lunches…and I ended up deciding that the best thing to do would be to play hooky (as it were) and get Taco Stand with my husband.

Now I’m sleepy and I have to teach in a little over an hour. Coffee is in order.

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(that’s an old picture of coffee, but I think you get the idea. also, I like cows.)

This morning at the gym was chest and back. I was totally bench pressing like, 55 pounds. (Honestly, for upper body, I feel pretty hard core just having any weight on the bar, which weights 45 pounds—so I’m psyched.)

Taco Stand didn’t actually fit into my plan of “lose weight so my muscles actually show” but I’m still down 2 pounds since about a week and 1/2 ago, so that kind of rocks. And I am not willing nor mentally able to do a diet that entirely cuts out my favorite things. I am willing to eat a very light dinner and eat well tomorrow to make up for it though.

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(Taco Bell is different than Taco Stand. Both are amazing. Yes, you’ve seen this picture before, but I’m lazy and sleepy.)

And I’m running. Regularly. Crazy. Runkeeper tells me I’ve run 31 miles since I started using it under a month ago. *takes bow*

Tonight: the final St Louis Symphony regular season concert. Well, they have four shows but it’s the final program of the season. There’s a post-concert party for the musicians and their significant others so I’m excited for Beethoven 9 and a party of sorts. Purple pants and red shoes seem to be in order, though that’s more common than rare.

Before that: teaching. My regular Thursday afternoon schedule. Which is a great group of students. I might be collaborating with Sarah Crowder on a video about me and teaching and she asked me to think about what I love about teaching. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, particularly this week as I’m contemplating my teaching future…it’s hard to pinpoint. The main thing I love is: playing the violin. And I want to SHARE that love with as many people as possible.

It’s tough because playing the violin is hard work and takes a lot of commitment, and there are so many things to worry about while you play, and I’m a firm believer in TECHNIQUE FIRST (this is also why I have a trainer at the gym, in addition to the motivation, but because I don’t know enough weight lifting technique to feel comfortable on my own—I do understand violin technique though!)

So you can see, my brain is all over the place. I’ve got a few professional personal things (personally professional..the lines in life are so blurry, aren’t they?) going on offline and it’s been making me take a hard look at myself and what I want from my career. This is a good thing, but an unfamiliar thing. I am not a “five year plan” type of person, but I’m trying to figure out what I want out of my career here in St Louis. Assuming we end up staying here, which we’d love to do…but…

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(Me, contemplating my five year plan)

And that’s a blog post for another day! Or not, really, as that’s not necessarily about me.

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I’ve been wanting to share that picture for awhile. I love it. Today seems appropriate.

Practicing

Thoughts on Practicing

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You can’t write a blog for your readers. Firstly, I don’t have any regular readers except (I believe) my mother. Secondly, whenever I ask a simple question, like, are there enough cat pictures in my blog, I get really different answers. (Ranging from: lady, you are crazy and need to find a new hobby to ALL CAT ALL THE TIME).

But I’ve had some questions over the years about professional things like auditions and practicing the violin, and I thought I’d ramble about practicing a little bit today.

While I was preparing for the Symphony audition the other month, Chris wandered into the room and commented on my practicing style—(this is normal for us—we give advice or comments occasionally)—that it sounded like I was just playing and that I wasn’t really working on something in particular. Really that’s the big issue I have: I am a terrible practicer.

I never really learned how. I’m lucky enough that I pick things up fairly well fairly quickly, and none of my teachers growing up ever taught me how to practice properly (I’m not necessarily blaming them as possibly I simply ignored their advice), and then in college probably none of my teachers realized I didn’t really know HOW to practice. Plus, (and this is the truth) I generally dislike practicing. Like most of my students, I greatly enjoy PLAYING THE VIOLIN and greatly dislike the arduous yet necessary task of PRACTICING THE VIOLIN.

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These are two vastly different things, and I do my best to try to help my students learn the difference. Practicing is something that should not be enjoyable to listen to. I try to teach my students that it’s okay to play through their piece once, but then they need to figure out what went wrong and why (the younger ones I mark this for them). If you’re missing a shift, repeatedly, then you need to isolate the problem, slow it down, break it down, and REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT until you don’t miss that shift. (The famous saying: don’t practice until you get it right, practice until you can’t get it wrong.)

The issue for me comes when I’m approaching the same piece again, for perhaps the 13th year in a row, and I know exactly where the problem areas are…and those problems are always the same problems. Thinking back (on the Nutcracker Overture) I didn’t spend enough time isolating the problems, and really working them, and I learned something really fundamental about arm and elbow motion and angles in the week leading up to the audition…I had never consciously thought about the movement of my left elbow as I shifted, and it was brought to my attention, and I didn’t have enough time to really work it out.

It’s hard, as an adult who is often performing the same pieces again, to approach a piece with new eyes. Often you see the piece with tired eyes, and simply repeat the same mistakes. My students complain that they are tired of a piece after a few weeks or months, and while I often try to respect that feeling, I also try to show them WHY we are still working on the piece, and how they haven’t mastered what they need to master before moving forward. And then if they are a Suzuki student, it’s not as if they won’t be reviewing that piece for a long time anyway!

(I know this isn’t a cohesive post about practicing. I just wanted to give some thoughts about it. )

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The other challenge is making the time for practicing. I tell my students that even ten minutes every day is a better thing that a few hours once a week. Yet when push comes to shove, I will cram my practicing, or skip it entirely, or “warm up” for a rehearsal by playing a scale with a student…completely ignoring all the hopefully good advice I am giving my students. 

I was joking with a friend the other day that I was trying to become more zen-like in my approach to life, and “live in the moment” more and be more conscious, and all that. Now, I was joking…mainly…but it occurred to me just now (in the moment!) that that is probably the best way to practice. I know I say a lot of things and then forget, but I shall try to remember this the next time I am preparing for an audition: to practice consciously and mindfully, and to dedicate as much brain power as possible to my work at the time. 

Thoughts? I hate writing a post and trying to sound like an expert. I’m definitely not. I play well, and I practice badly. I would play better if I practiced better, that’s for sure.

I should follow up writing this blog post with a good violin practice session but I’ll probably just end up wasting time reading stuff until it’s time for work. Oh well.

Deep Thoughts, Food

Mondays are my favorite: have I said that before?

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It was a busy but good weekend.

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Mozart Requiem!

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Pizza, beer, and pie at PW Pizza.

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My least favorite part of driving to Illinois…just like in Cleveland for “Dead Man’s Curve”, the idea of having part of an Interstate take a right turn is always a bad idea. BUT YOU CAN SEE THE ARCH AND THAT’S WHAT MATTERS.

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Always lots of time for kitty!

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I love her paws.

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We went to dinner at The Block Restaurant in Webster Groves. I’d been wanting to check it out for awhile, so I’m glad we finally had a chance to eat there. The lighting was dark so my food pictures aren’t worth sharing, but Chris had the ribeye special, I had the pork chop, my friend Vanessa had the pork and dumplings (AMAZING!), we split some “flash fried brussels sprouts” for the appetizer, and it was all really good. I also tried the chopped salad, and for dessert we couldn’t resist tried some of their ice cream.

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Which flavor do you think I tried?

I highly recommend trying the Block if you haven’t—they also have a restaurant in the Central West End (wasn’t open on Sunday) and we hope to check them out there. Delicious meal!

Why are Mondays my favorite? Because I get to relax until I teach at 3 pm. I could be doing stuff, but after working on the weekend I feel pretty guilt free about just sitting on the couch surfing the “webz” and generally doing very little. Some of you people get entire days off from work, so I hear, so I can’t feel too guilty!

I ran for 30 minutes straight yesterday. I went with Chris and I managed to keep going the entire time. It was life changing.

Random thoughts

Flashback Friday

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Everybody’s been doing Throwback Thursday pictures where they post old pictures of themselves online. I figured I’d do the same but I’m calling it Flashback Friday because people usually use that to link to an old blog post.

I could scan some old pictures in but instead I’m going back to 2001 when I first got my Snapfish account. You’ll have to sit on your hands and wait for something older than that…though of course I was a toddler then…

This is me holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Now, children and young people, you need to know this is an impressive picture BECAUSE we did not know until it got developed if it turned out. Back in the summer of 2001, things weren’t like they are today. I went to Europe and brought three rolls of 24 exposure film. I ended up buying a few more, and then I had to wait awhile to develop them when I got home because I’d used up all my money in Europe. We had to WAIT to see our pictures.

Spring of ’02. Heifetz and Oistrakh (aka her royal fatness). They rarely cuddled, but I took them on a trip with me and they were upset so they sat close to each other glaring at me the whole time.

Okay, one more, this from 2006, at Christmas time. My sisters with me—Leslie, me, Carrie.

What I really don’t understand is why I had wavy hair. I don’t have wavy hair now. It makes no sense.  Though Carrie had the same hair, so it’s probably genetic. This was at my parents’ house in South Carolina, which my dad built. It is a geodesic dome and is really neat.

One more, something tropical! For my 30th birthday my sister, my friend Sarah and I took a cruise from LA to the Mexican Riviera. (Leslie is already planning something similar for my 40th, though we have some time yet…).  Here’s us enjoying a few drinks on the deck in the sun. 

Today it is cold and rainy, even though it’s May 2, so a tropical vacation sounds pretty good. I know it’ll be hot again here soon enough (like it was the other day…man we humans have short term memories, don’t we?)

Cat, Random thoughts

My cat is stalking me and other random happenings in my life

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Lately the cat has taken to waiting for us at the top of the stairs.

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I HAD to stop and pet her for awhile. Then I tried to do that thing you can do to babies—you put your lips on their stomach and “buzz” and they laugh and laugh, and maybe pee themselves a little bit. Well, (and I already knew this) if you do this to a cat the cat just stares and you and then you realize that you mouth is full of cat hair. Oops.

And I knew that already, but I think the whole lips on belly thing must be instinctual and I was powerless to resist my own urges. I’ll probably be coughing up a hair ball tomorrow.

Other random thoughts and happening:

1. I was quite sad today because one of my students was observing one of the other teachers after his lesson. This is because my school is closing and I live farther from the school that they are willing to drive, and it was totally out in the open but I still felt sad. I will miss quite a few of my students. I still occasionally miss some of my students from Cleveland, and even from Charlotte, and wonder how they are doing. I’m terrible at keeping in touch for that sort of thing, and honestly I figure people have moved on and don’t owe me anything. But still. 

2. Yesterday another student’s dad asked if they could come every other week for twice as long because the student really loves lessons with me but he is worried driving so much each week would be difficult. I told him we could talk. (Ordinarily I require weekly lessons as too many bad habits can happen, but I make exceptions.) That made me feel really warm and fuzzy 🙂 I love hearing that kids enjoy their violin lessons, because if nothing else, I want violin and music to be a positive experience in their lives.

3. I got asked to play my first Wagner opera! It’s with Union Avenue Opera here in August, and it’s Die Walkure. I’m pretty pumped.

4. And, really fun news: Chris has been invited to play viola with the Colorado Music Festival this summer, and I will be spending a good bit of time with him in Boulder. We had a great time on vacation there last year so I am eager to go back. I might be able to substitute with the group as well (I was too late to apply for a position myself, but I suppose somebody has to stay home with the cat?)

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(from a hike last summer in Boulder.)

5. TV: We recently started watching “The Americans.” It’s really good! I love a good old-fashioned Russian spy drama and I love shows with strong female leads. I’m glad to see that it’s been renewed for a second season too. I recommend you watch!