All posts by hannahviolin

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

Do you like to run when you are sick?

January 9, 2013 hannahviolin 8 Comments

Today’s post is about being sick, running, and my cat.

Yesterday was my first day back to my gym this year. I’d thought it might be busier but I think it was in fact, emptier than usual. Then again it was 9 am on a Tuesday. It was lower body workout day with Mike (my trainer), so we did front squats, rear squats, one legged squats (which I remember being a disaster in the past but worked just fine), and kettlebell swings. It seems like that wasn’t that much stuff but we were doing a lot of sets of each thing.

(See that red mark—that’s from New Year’s Eve when I cut my foot on my own shoe! Thanks to Leslie for the purple Toms, which are not slippers, they are actually shoes.)

Stuff we talked about at the gym yesterday:

He said, oh, you have that half marathon coming up, have you been doing any running? I just looked at him.

We also discussed getting food poisoning as a diet method. He had food poisoning or a stomach bug (who knows, we are not doctors) the other week and lost ten pounds in one day (so he says). He was proud that he hadn’t gained all of that back. We decided that perhaps getting the stomach flu right after the holidays was the perfect timing, at least for him. (He had said before that he lost ten pounds leading up to Christmas so he could overindulge.) I can’t decide if I hate him for being able to lose ten pounds in the blink of an eye or if he’s my disordered fitness inspiration.

I told him I was excited that was going to live longer (according to the most recent study) because I was overweight. He said, looking incredulous, who said you were overweight? I said, um, BMI charts. He got really angry then at BMI charts and starting muttering under his breath about this, and then said, well, I’m probably overweight too according to the BMI charts. We high-fived for living longer. (We do a fair amount of high-fiving at the gym.)

(This is from a tote bag Leslie gave me for being her matron of honor.)

So when you are sick, do you like to work out? I hate it. It makes me feel like crap and I am of the opinion that when I’m sick I should take it easy and rest so I can get better as fast as possible. But then the internet says if it’s in your head you can workout, in your chest, stay home (I often think of it as “in your head” aka you aren’t actually sick you just think you are). My current cold is in my head (with perhaps some stomach issues as well which I won’t discuss here and have the potential to change the outcome of this discussion) so that means I should run.

(And foam roll. I got out of the habit whilst we were in Chicago and I can feel the difference.)

A friend suggested, if you are sick enough that you don’t feel guilty skipping your workout then it’s okay to skip. Otherwise, suck it up.

All of this to say: I canceled going to lunch with a friend so I could sleep a little longer and still get my run in before I go to teach. I can’t figure out if that is dedication or really messed up priorities.

Chicago, Travel

Visiting Chicago in Winter

January 8, 2013 hannahviolin 4 Comments

I didn’t start loving Chicago until I moved to St Louis. It seems like everybody here loves taking trips to Chicago more than anything else. It’s easy to get to and there’s plenty to see and do and EAT. It’s cold in the winter, sure, but it’s cold here too.

I’ve mentioned quite a bit of our trip already, so I just wanted to wrap it up and give a shout out to the restaurants we loved and to our hotel. Namely, Blackbird and the Publican, and the Hotel James. (Or James Hotel? I guess it’s just “The James.”)

We chose Blackbird for our anniversary dinner. (This was our first wedding anniversary so we were pretty psyched!) We checked into the hotel in the early afternoon and then took naps. I was woken up by one of the hotel staff delivering a bottle of champagne and chocolates with raspberries for us, free of charge!

(I can’t say enough nice things about the hotel, actually. We loved it there.) It was great sipping on champagne while getting dressed up.

What to order? We decided on the sweetbreads and the scallops, and then I had the duck breast and Chris had the elk loin.

It was all really delicious. I can’t decide if the duck or elk was my favorite.

We decided not to order the $150 tea and instead had just regular old french press coffee.

With cheesecake with sweet potato ice cream. It was a wonderful meal and a wonderful day!

We could have eaten at a world class restaurant for every meal, but we wanted to be lazy and spontaneous to some extent, so we only planned one other “fancy” meal. I had been to the Publican before but Chris hadn’t.

(I wore my best gray sweater.)

It was super dark in the restaurant and I detest taking flash photos in restaurants. Not even because of the quality, but because it makes you look like a fool.

This deserved one though. Short Ribs, Korean BBQ style, so juicy and delicious, with peanuts and cole slaw and it was just amazing. We also had a charcuterie plate, potatoes, and swiss chard. For dessert we had “Rice Pudding Creme Brulee” which was phenomenal as well.

Other notable things we did in Chicago:

We went up the John Hancock Building to the Signature Room and had a drink while enjoying the scenery.

We went to see “Second City’s Guide to the Opera,” with Patrick Stewart and Renee Fleming. The show was hilarious and highly entertaining! Plus our friend John was playing violin.

We went to a restaurant called Heaven on Seven that had a wall of hot sauce!

And we tried to perfect the couple self portrait.

How’d we do? Chris has gotten a lot of compliments on his fantastic beard.

Weddings

Parasols, purses, and personalization

January 7, 2013 hannahviolin

I can’t wait for the professional photos from my sister Leslie’s wedding. After all, that can’t be the best picture of the two of us, can it?

Anyway, today’s post is about three things that I think fit together pretty well. Parasols, purses, and personalization. Nice alliteration, right?

It hasn’t quite been three months since her wedding, but it feels like such a long time. There are so many details I’ve forgotten and I can’t wait to see them again. The parasols, the earrings, the jewelry, the inside of her dress where the seamstress made a little label with her initials and date (I think?). (One could have just used a label maker, like from the 80s..)

Have I told you guys about the parasols? When we went to the Japanese garden the day after her bachelorette party the sun seemed really bright (go figure!) and we realized that we wouldn’t be able to wear sunglasses because we wouldn’t want them in the pictures nor would we want the lines on our noses from them! What to do?

The aforementioned sunglasses which could not be worn at the wedding, by aforementioned pool.

So when we saw parasols for sale in the gift shop for $10 each we couldn’t pass them up. We thought they’d be practical plus would look awesome in photographs.

That’s the sort of thing I’m really looking forward to from her wedding photos, and what I really loved in mine and in life—all those crazy details. Obviously I’m also looking forward to the bigger picture pictures too, like the first look, the after wedding pictures of the happy couple at the garden, family photos, but I just LOVE the details and the personalization.

Here’s the purse from my wedding.

Inside there is a lovely label.

I gave one to Leslie as well for being my maid of honor.

Well, Leslie thought they would be perfect for her wedding too (especially since we barely used them) but her colors was different. The purple flower was removable so I asked the original vendor to make new ones.

Unfortunately on the first try the color was wrong, so I had to try again.

At the bottom of this picture you can see a bit of the final flower. It’s a lot pinker.

I absolutely loved that the purses were personalized. Of course that meant for Leslie’s wedding I was carrying a purse that said “Bride” on the inside, but I certainly didn’t mind. I also love that her wedding dress has a little label in it (not that she would forgot for what occasion she wore the dress, but STILL. And I should have gotten a picture of it from her before writing this post…)

My mom emailed me one! Thanks Mom 🙂

Basically, I love the idea of personalized stuff. I don’t know why I don’t do it more often.

(All the big brands like to do labels, so why not ourselves? Why advertise for Gap or some other store when we could advertise for ourselves, or our blogs! Or at least find your stuff at the Laundromat, right?)

If I weren’t afraid of ironing I could get iron on labels online and really put my mark on my things. That site also has pretty cool looking woven name labels that I bet would work well for gifts. I see that you can not only label your clothes, linens, that sort of thing (with your name, a date, perhaps even an inspirational quote) you can label stuff like golf clubs and perhaps electronics and books.

Honestly, sometimes (unlike blogging) labeling and personalizing things isn’t JUST about narcissism, getting attention, or remembering special moments, it’s practical in case you leave something somewhere—if I’d had my favorite water bottle labeled the day I left it at the gym then maybe I would have gotten it back.

(If not for the label inside, the personalized hanger would help us know this was Leslie’s wedding dress!)

And I’ll mention the parasols again—after we purchased two similar looking parasols, we realized there were slight differences. Leslie picked out the one she liked best (bride’s prerogative) and if we had been able to label them, we wouldn’t have kept having to figure out which one that was again! And that brings this blog post full circle. In a nutshell, labeling and personalization saves time and money, and if I had run with a parasol all summer long I wouldn’t have had such horrific tan lines to begin with!

Random thoughts

Pants always beats no pants

January 7, 2013 hannahviolin

This is her Dowager Countess face, I believe.

The best kind of yam, a Hannah Yam! Only 1.99 a pound, it’s a STEAL. (Thanks Sarah for the picture!)

I should probably clean my fingerboard?! Violinists, do you think I should be playing more on the tip of my pinky? And how often do you people cut your nails? Since I’ve quit biting mine (fingers crossed) I find they are constantly too long?

Does that say “pants?” What would the relevance be?

Chicago, Deep Thoughts

No longer a newlywed

January 5, 2013 hannahviolin 6 Comments

Reasons why it’s awesome we are no longer newlyweds:

1. They say the first year is the hardest. We have that behind us!

2. I no longer have the pressure of using an awesome wedding photo as my facebook profile picture, since it’s been kinda too long for that, so I can use ANYTHING I want, which is what I used to do, and I’d switch it up all the time. I can do that again. (I am half kidding, but honestly, I get bored with my picture a lot so it’s great to be able to switch it out and not feel bad.)

Right now, it’s this, for instance.

but maybe soon I’ll switch it to this:

or this

or this (only $50, a bargain!)

The possibilities are endless (especially since I take pictures of myself and other things every day)!

Things that I annoy me about being married (or perhaps, being a 30-something female):

I get a lot of questions about

1. When we are having children (or, worse, am I expecting?)

2. How have our lives changed since we got married.

These are both two really good questions.

One of the things Chris and I have been discussing on our vacation is how I should respond to these questions, particularly the first one. We’re working on a good response. I try not to use profanity on the blog, so I can’t actually print my response here, but I have one now. Suffice it to say that people are very nosy and need to mind their own business.

The second question is a perfectly good question, except that it’s kind of silly. The short answer is our lives haven’t changed at all, since we have been together since February of 1999. The long answer is, a lot more people ask me when I’m having children, but people no longer ask when we are getting married.

Things that are awesome about being on vacation in a nice hotel in a nearby city:

1. No real pressure to sight see since you’ve been here before and you’ll be back, so you can spend almost the whole day relaxing at the hotel.

2. If you do choose to leave the hotel, when you come back the room is magically clean! This is the opposite of being at home.

3. You can leave a ponytail holder on the nightstand overnight. When you wake up it is still there!

4. King size bed and amazing in-shower stuff.

Things that are great about being on vacation generally and not having to drive or work or do anything really:

Among others 🙂 And fantastic food. Highlights of our trip restaurant wise include Blackbird and The Publican. I will likely tell you more about those later.

From the hotel gym: unfortunately I did not stop exercising at the first sign of discomfort. (I think I thought my head was fuzzy, but perhaps it was just the picture.)