All posts by hannahviolin

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

Miscellaneous Mondays

January 14, 2013 hannahviolin 10 Comments

I’m starting a new thing (ha, we’ll see how long this lasts) where on Mondays I try to catch up on random stuff I want to tell you plus remind you of any awesome things that happened over the weekend, if you are just a weekday reader. Today I am giving you some discounts (Simply Snackin’ and Pretty Muddy Race Series), giving you a short book review, and telling you about what I was up to. You can always bookmark this post and come back later if you are too busy today to deal with all of this information.

1. Simply Snackin’

I was recently sent some chicken and beef meat snacks to try out and tell you guys about.

Each serving is 60 calories and obviously very high in protein. The company is family owned (if that appeals to you!), and honestly, these snacks are delicious. I’ve tried a few of them and I really like them. They aren’t too dry like some jerky is—they are juicy and tasty, and a nice afternoon snack.

Through January, you can go to simplysnackin.com and enter SSjan2013 for 10% off the purchase price. Again, even though I was given this product for free, I would buy it again for 10% off because it is tasty and I love high protein, portable snacks.

2. Book Review:

Champagne: The Farewell by Janet Hubbard

The main character in Champagne is a female detective named Max. Max is in France attending a friend’s wedding when her friend’s aunt is murdered. Though the French police are on the case as well, Max feels compelled to help, even while being involved romantically with one of the French detectives. She tries to use her position as a friend of the family to get the other family members to confide in her, while trying not to get too romantically involved with the detective, Oliver.

I loved the detail in Ms. Hubbard’s writing and I enjoyed being transported to the French countryside. Sometimes the book felt a bit tedious and the author really wanted to emphasize how French things were, but I generally enjoyed the read and felt that the mystery unraveled in a natural way, without any ridiculous plot twists. The ending surprised me but it all made sense, so that was a plus in my book!

Anyway, go to that link above to check out the book (it’s an Amazon affiliate link, so if you buy it I get a tiny percentage of the sales and that can help support this blog and keep me taking cat pictures and pictures of myself.)

I was provided a review copy free of charge but my opinions are my own.

3. Pretty Muddy Discount code.

Are you familiar with the Pretty Muddy races? I haven’t done a mud run before, but maybe I will someday. This is a mud run that is all women. My friend Rose has a great blog post with mud run tricks and tips, and my friend Adam (The Boring Runner) recently wrote a post querying whether “all women’s races” were fair. Both are worth the read.

They are offering a ONE TIME $20 discount. The code is GIRLTIME.

This special expires at the end of January…after that the price will never be this low again—no groupon or living social deals like you might have seen in the past. Supposedly there is going to be one in St Louis in September but it’s not on the website yet…

4. My life

I took a bunch of food pictures today, so I thought I’d share with you what I ate today in case you were curious. (Humor me because I realized I photographed basically everything I ate today, so this is possible. Why, I don’t know. Maybe I was bored, or I was playing around online with my friend Sarah and we realized if you instagram something and tag it with #crossfit you automatically get a ton of likes, or I’m obsessed with photographing my food because I’m becoming a caricature of a real human, or I get amused taking food pictures ever since a friend made a joke about turning food into poo…not like that joke has only happened once as some days I feel like my life is one big poop joke…but I digress.)

Breakfast: I started with this banana…

I had a lot of trouble cutting it, but I managed. (There is a banana slicer on amazon, please read the reviews if you haven’t.)

Oatmeal with banana, protein powder, and a little peanut butter for flavor.

Lunch was leftover Salmon Frazer from Friday night, with rice and beans and spinach on the side. Yummy!

Oh, then we went to see the Hobbit in 3D with some friends and I had some popcorn. I didn’t photograph that, but I ate several handfuls and it was tasty. The Hobbit was AWESOME in 3D. On the list of things I have said in the past that are incorrect: “I don’t see why anybody needs a camera on their phone” and “I don’t see why movies need to be in 3D.” I was wrong on both counts.

After the movie we decided to grab dinner nearby and went to Granite City Brewery. None of us had been there before so we were eager to check it out.

Chris started with the beer sampler. I actually just had one beer (the IPA) but the sampler was much more fun to photograph.

He and I are both huge IPA fans, and he ordered the IPA after sampling a bunch.

I had the Korean Tacos for dinner. They had pork and a “korean” sauce on them. Very tasty. Not pictured: side salad.

I didn’t eat the cucumber salad because I don’t care for cucumbers.

Our friends had brought us a small “anniversary”gift and we had the bag on the table. The waitress asked if I was my birthday, and I said no, but our anniversary was last week. She got excited and we were like, oh no, no, that’s not why we are out. But then I remembered Chris JUST had a birthday and I mentioned that (yes, I’m an excellent wife) so she offered us a free dessert. My rule is: never turn down free dessert.

It was a really big cookie that had just been baked. It had chocolate chips, almonds, and heath bar bits in it. The four of us managed to polish this off pretty quickly.

How was your weekend? Share in the comments!

Random thoughts, Weather

Why it’s best not to gloat

January 13, 2013 hannahviolin 6 Comments

Yesterday morning my friend Sarah was complaining of being so “cold” in Phoenix. I often give her a hard time about this, because “cold” to her is usually about 60 degrees and I find when I visit she is always wearing significantly more clothing than I am.

Then I went to check the weather. When you go to Weather.com the most recent cities you have looked at show up at the top. After seeing the results I made a little picture for her…and for the world…

That’s right, I have mad “Paint” skills.

But then later I checked back and…

Things got even worse from there but I had stuff to do so I couldn’t spend all my time making pictures on the computer! I had to take pictures of the cat!

I could spend hours photographing this magnificent creature. (I mean, I do.)

If you look closely you can see my gross black toenail(s). (She resembles a potato here I think. Or is potatoe?)

And then I had to go to work later. I saw this in one of the pieces we played.

And I had to make my friend take pictures of my tiny diet coke! (You know how I am about diet coke.)

Today—better go get some stuff done before we “have” to see:

How’s your weekend so far? How’s the weather?

(current weather…)

Cat

Birthdays and Cats

January 11, 2013 hannahviolin 13 Comments

Yesterday was Chris’s birthday. We went to the Schlafly Tap Room to meet up with some friends and have some beers.

I wanted to get a picture of Chris.

Me, recreating his pose. I think I succeeded and indeed, made it even creepier. Anyway, it was a low key night and we enjoyed ourselves.

Before we left the house…

This happened.

The cat loves lying on her back and she looks completely ridiculous when she does so.

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This part of her personality hasn’t changed since she was a wee little kitty, though luckily my furniture has been slightly upgraded.

I was reading Runner’s World Magazine (I’m not sure why I am still a subscriber but it sometimes seems exceedingly difficult to stop getting magazines) and found this interesting tidbit:

Mike (my trainer) and I often have discussions about my hearing. He is a low-talker, we are often in a room with lots of ambient noise and I often have to ask him to repeat himself. He claims none of his other clients have that problem. I don’t know.

Maybe I am a little hard of hearing, or maybe his other clients don’t want to make a big deal about the fact that he should talk louder. When I showed him that, he thought it was one of the most ridiculous “facts” ever and asked where I get this stuff? (Which implied that I am a constant fount of bad studies and incorrect information…?)

Sometimes it’s hard to know how to end a post. I shouldn’t just end every post with a picture of my cat judging you or giving you a sad look, should I? Did you know that “sad cat” is one of the number one searches for my blog?

Travel

Traveling the world

January 10, 2013 hannahviolin 2 Comments

My parents have always emphasized the importance of getting out there and seeing the world. I grew up in South Carolina, but my grandparents lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania and we were often driving up to visit. Along the way we’d stop in Virginia or other places to visit other family members, or we’d go to Philadelphia or New York City with our family in Pennsylvania.

We also spent a lot of time exploring our home state of South Carolina. We’d drive to the beach for a weekend, or to nearby historical or ecological places of interest like Chimney Rock, Cowpens, or the Riverbanks Zoo for a day trip or a weekend camping trip. In the summer we’d take longer trips, to the Grand Canyon, or to California and Banff, or to the Great Lakes. I learned that there was a whole world out there and it was important to explore it and learn as much as you could about it.

As a family of five or six (the sixth came later), the best way to see the world was to drive there. If we stayed overnight somewhere, we generally camped. We’d load up the car with the tent, sleeping bags, suitcases, camp stove, bug spray, water bottles, and bags of books, and off we’d go. My mother would encourage us to keep journals on the longer trips (some of which are still CLASSIC reading when we visit—I’d say my early journals were the precursors to this blog, in fact, I was perhaps the first Healthy Living Blogger as I’d generally document every meal!).

As I grew older I continued traveling though often the reasons were different. I’d travel for music festivals, to Colorado, to Europe, to small towns in Ohio. I’d travel to visit Chris in Miami, Cleveland, and San Diego. I’d travel for auditions for orchestras—to Houston, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh.

And sometimes I’d get to travel for fun. One of my favorite relaxing vacations is going on cruises (like for our honeymoon, and the summer before that, and Chris recently suggested we might want a cruise this summer). There’s just something about being somewhere warm, eating a ton and lying around drinking pina coladas to your heart’s content. Though going to Paris was amazing as well—tons of sightseeing and walking around, yet still eating a ton and drinking wine to our heart’s content. (You see a theme here, right? This is why I’m fat…)

If you read my blog regularly you probably notice I do tend to get to travel a lot. I’ve got another trip to Phoenix coming up soon, and we just got back from Chicago. After that I actually don’t have anything planned until the summer though. Summer plans so far definitely include a trip to Long Island for my sister-in-law’s wedding and possibly another wedding or two.

We’ve also tossed out the possibility of a cruise (There’s a great guide in the New York Times about cruising)—I’d love to do an Alaskan cruise out of Seattle, because that would be all-new to us– or you could visit a “sleeper city” like St Louis for fairly cheap (I love that Phoenix is also on that list!) If you are ready to book your vacation you can go here for airfare, hotels, and rental cars. There are also more articles about various destinations. I love reading about the travel possibilities and dreaming about my next trip…almost as much as I enjoy taking the trip! (I also love writing about it later and reliving the experience while looking at my pictures. To me this is all part of the travel experience.)

Where do you want to go?

Cat, Running

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.