All posts by hannahviolin

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

2021: Looking Back

I promised a recap of sorts of the year. I sometimes forget about 2021, and think we just finished 2020…I’m not sure what that means.

Highlights: getting a new President in January, getting vaccinated in March, getting to see my parents in person again, taking a trip to Arkansas, weekly zoom visits with my family, actually visiting family in New York over the summer and having them visit us too, teaching in person again, having an outdoor in person recital in May, seeing students graduate and perform in person, attending concerts again, having meals with friends at restaurants, enjoying food from my garden over the summer, eating foods I’ve prepared (fresh, frozen, and canned!), getting outside for walks and hikes, summer “happy hour” outside on our new patio furniture, watching the cats on the catio, taking a few short trips, getting a new back porch built, getting stuck in a bison jam at Lone Elk Park, visiting family over Thanksgiving and Christmas, seeing so many different lights in December, hosting two small holiday gatherings at my house…

It’s funny, I didn’t realize what a wonderful year I’d actually had until I just scrolled back through my posts and my calendar. I thought of 2021 as being a pretty blah year, but really, we did a lot of really fun stuff and I need to be better about counting my blessings, as they say! It had some downs, but it had a lot of ups as well.

Books: I’ve listed books throughout the year, but I thought I’d mention a few that have stuck in my head the whole year. The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré, Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones, The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, American Royals by Katharine McGee. There are more I enjoyed, but those I particularly enjoyed.

Concerts/Shows: We saw Opera, symphony, jazz shows, so wonderful! I particularly enjoyed watching my student Catherine play her Senior Recital live at Wash U, seeing my sister Carrie play a Doctoral Recital streaming, seeing the Clark Terry Centennial Concert at Jazz at the Bistro in December, seeing Opera Theatre St Louis’s production of Highway 1 by William Grant Still, and seeing a few SLSO concerts in the fall, though at the moment none in particular are sticking in my head. I also loved seeing A Christmas Carol at the Repertory Theatre.

Food: homemade fruitcake, homemade eggnog, orange chocolate chip ricotta cookies, dilly green beans for canning, dinner at Louie, dinner at the Crossing, corn casserole, cinnamon rolls, frozen peaches at my Mom’s, fish tacos and shrimp fajitas at Lily’s Mexican Restaurant, goodies from Nathaniel Reid Bakery for Louie’s birthday, dinner at Brave New Restaurant in Little Rock, swiss chard pesto with bucatini pasta, tofu enchiladas at Mezcalitos’ in Atlanta, and more!

Downs: there are many I won’t list, but the attempted coup/insurrection on 1/6, people taking the side of the virus for political gain, having to keep worrying about COVID and losing work again, getting things canceled due to COVID, people getting sick, worrying about family, being busy and stressed out (especially in the spring), not being able to travel freely, having to worry about the reaction of other people in rural areas when we wear masks in public, having to wear masks in public still because not enough people got vaccinated to avoid more mutations, etc, etc, lots of downs due to COVID concerns and worries. (And it’s a new year, I know, but I have students who are currently sick with COVID and missing their lessons.) Ugh, and feeling like my go to cloth masks aren’t good enough but not likely any of the other mask options I currently have…

So, here we are on January 10: what’s next? I don’t have any real New Year’s resolutions, other than, get through it! Hoping to travel this summer, planning not to take on too many commitments, see more concerts, cook more, do a garden again, read a lot of books, exercise, hike and walk, keep decluttering the house, maybe get a new roof, do activities with friends, and who knows what the year will bring!

Did you make resolutions? Did you have a good or a bad year, or somewhere in between? Read any good books lately?

Christmas, Travel

Happy New Year!

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Happy New Year! I feel like I should give you all of my New Year’s Resolutions and wrap up my favorite parts of the year AND tell you all about my Christmas Vacation, but since it’s already January 5, hmm what to do?

I’m back to work officially now, though I have the rest of today off. I taught my class this morning, and thought, since I’d been wearing cloth masks and everybody says cloth masks are bad I’d try a surgical mask instead (what I had on hand). I don’t know how people play the violin in a surgical mask, it is impossible and it pokes me in the eyes. Sigh. I’m not quite sure what to do as the only masks I have found that I can play violin in are cloth masks.

Yes, isn’t it great that the pandemic has grown so large again and things are being canceled? So, maybe that’s where to start telling you about my break. We were told oh yes if you are vaccinated/boosted it should be fine to travel, don’t worry, and then suddenly everybody was getting COVID anyway. But we decided to risk it to see our family, because at this point it’s been nearly two years, and it was fine to avoid activities for a bit, but you have to live your lives. I mean, driving down to South Carolina was still probably the most risky behavior.

The last week before Christmas was busy with finishing up teaching, packing, playing with Mannheim Steamroller, seeing my friend April, seeing Louie’s family, and playing Christmas Eve gigs.

Christmas Eve selfie (me in a mask in front of a Christmas Tree).
Swedish Christmas Dinner at Louie’s mom’s house–she has several of those chime candle things that the chime turns from the heat of the candles.

We had a wonderful dinner with Louie’s family, lots of good Swedish food, including a homemade Princess Cake. It used to be that no one knew what a Princess Cake is, but now, thanks to the Great British Baking Show, they not only know but they have very strong opinions about it.

The Princess Cake.

Truthfully, I do not love marzipan as much as some, but it was a lovely cake.

We drove to Clinton, South Carolina (my hometown) on Christmas Day, which was a terrific drive. It was warm enough that we ate lunch outside at a rest area, at a picnic table! I’d packed egg salad from AO&CO which was a fabulous idea–it made for a lovely picnic and a treat. Driving on Christmas Day meant that most restaurants would be closed, but that the traffic was nonexistent! We made excellent time and were at my parents house (also known as home) for dinner. My mom had a few casseroles for Christmas Dinner, so we enjoyed corn casserole and sweet potato casserole with chocolate cake for dessert (I think!).

The next morning we had my family’s traditional Christmas Day brunch (though it was the day after) of cheese grits and fruit cocktail. We also had shrimp cocktail, which was traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve. My other siblings had other Christmas plans this year, so it was just the four of us, which was very nice and low key. We hung out, went for a bike ride, and visited.

My dad helping me get set up on the electric trike for our ride.
My dad adjusting the seat.

My dad has an electric assist “trike” and he just happened to have an extra one on hand that he had purchased for one of my aunts. Louie had to ride a regular bike, though he got a chance after our first ride to switch out.

The next day we drove down to Columbia to visit Congaree National Park. We weren’t the only ones with the same idea, and while it wasn’t as busy as Arches or Grand Teton, we did have to park in the “oversized vehicles” lot as all the regular spaces were taken. There are boardwalks through the swamp area that you can walk on, as well as many miles of trails and canoeing to be done. We opted for just the boardwalks since my parents weren’t up for more extreme hiking.

It was a beautiful day, eerily warm, but lovely to be outside. We walked around for about 2 hours and then had a small picnic.

Lots of swampy waters, though it seemed like a pretty dry time. I imagine it is much swampier in the spring and fall.
My dad was likely pointing at a large loblolly pine tree, since that was a big feature of the park.
You can see some dwarf Palmetto trees in the background.

We also went down to the Riverwalk to walk along the Congaree River near downtown Columbia, but didn’t go too far: my parents were tired of walking and in the words of my niece, it smelled like Chautauqua Lake in places.

It was my parent’s wedding anniversary so we wanted to take them out to dinner. (They tried to insist on paying, but that’s how things go). We ate at the Bonefish Grille on the way back to Clinton and enjoyed a lovely meal outside. We didn’t want to eat inside with them as to avoid anybody getting COVID.

The following day we went up to Greenville to walk around and have lunch. We also visited an electric bike shop and test rode a few bikes with electric assist. We learned there are two different kinds, torque assist, where the bike goes according to your pedaling, and I forget the name, but the bike just sorts of goes faster. These were Pedago bikes and even had a throttle, you could simply go up to about 20 mph without pedaling at all!

Our next stop on the trip was Macon Georgia to visit Louie’s in laws from before. They are wonderful people and very supportive of his relationship with me, so it was a fun time. The mom and two sisters were visiting, and we had a great time eating, drinking, playing games, chatting, and doing a little sight-seeing. They had two dogs there too, so the house was a bit louder than at my parents’.

We had some great meals, a good seafood and tapas dinner outside a restaurant, a fancy Christmas dinner with some more family (mushroom wellington for the vegetarians, along with potatoes, brussels sprouts, homemade rolls, and tomato salad), and New Year’s Eve with fancy appetizers and leftover dinner from Christmas. We were so glad to spend time with everybody!

The table, set for Christmas dinner.

COVID wise we saw a few more people than we might have felt comfortable, but everybody was vaccinated, and a few even took rapid tests here and there, but so far we are still not showing any signs, so I think we might be safe.

After that we drove up through Atlanta and spend a day with my friends April and Charlie. It was something close to 80 degrees so we hung out on their front patio and then had dinner at a really good Mexican place near their house. Louie and I both had the tofu enchiladas which came with a mushroom sauce and were amazingly delicious. We have already attempted to recreate them but ended up making enchiladas with mushroom gravy–oddly tasty, but perhaps not quite right.

April and Charlie’s house, fully decorated for Christmas!

We headed back home the next day, and hit every possible traffic spot, stuck in traffic in Chattanooga for probably 1 1/2 hours, another 1/2 hour in Nashville, slow downs north of Nashville due to snow and traffic, and finally got out of the snow and the traffic to get home around 9 pm. The cats were thrilled to see us!

So now I’ve been back a few days. I’ve spent a fair amount of time simply reading and relaxing. Today my plan is to start packing up the Christmas Decorations, and then read some more. Tomorrow I’m teaching some private students (officially the semester starts Monday, but I’m doing some makeup lessons from last semester) and then Friday the same plus my early morning job. Next week we are back to my full teaching load at home plus early morning, and then the following week is the start of the college semester, except we are online for the first two weeks, so I’m not sure how that will affect things (i.e. which of my students brought their instruments home?).

How was your Christmas and New Year’s Eve? (if you celebrate) Did you get some time off? Did you get COVID? Did you see family and friends?

Christmas

Less than a week away!

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I think it would likely make more sense to have more time off BEFORE Christmas, i.e. swap Christmas and New Years, to get ready for the holiday. In fact, that should go for all holidays. What ends up happening is that we get so busy and stressed out leading up to the holiday that by the time it gets here we are just so tired, and perhaps don’t enjoy it as much as we’d want.

That being said, I’m enjoying everything, I’m just ready for a break. I hear the Senate is off, but the rest of us are still working. There’s two more days of school, and I’m working until Christmas Eve as usual. I do have Christmas Eve Eve off though! I’m playing with Mannheim Steamroller tomorrow, and I have two more early morning classes this year.

The weekend has been fun. We went out to Nixta on Friday night, which was nice. We’ve watched entirely too much Yellowstone (for us that’s like 4 episodes over two nights, binge tv watchers we are not), and we watched two sets at Jazz at the Bistro last night. We had bought tickets because Sean Jones was playing, and then it turned out that a friend of my sister Carrie’s, a fabulous pianist named Aaron Diehl was playing as well. We loved the performance and had a great time.

The Clark Terry Centennial Celebration Band.
Selfie! This is the new autograph, right? And proof of meeting someone, of course.

This morning I’m getting ready for friends to come over for a little brunch. It’s basically my quartet, except the personnel has changed a bit since Eliana had her baby and we also haven’t been meeting anymore. But we have a concert with the St Louis Chamber Chorus this afternoon and we thought it would be great fun to get together beforehand. I made an egg casserole with spinach, mushrooms, and goat cheese, and the others are bringing things. (I’m also setting out a few other things, a small cheese ball that was in the freezer from cheese ball making last weekend, and some dilly snack mix I made for sharing and snacking, plus probably fruitcake cookies.)

Tonight we are meeting friends to walk down Candy Cane Lane, which we have never done. And this week we are having dinner with Louie’s family, hanging out with my friend April (woo hoo!!!!) and of course, getting ready for the holidays. We are traveling south, and I’m excited.

Since the holidays are coming up and you might have more time to read, a few recommendations:

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo. I almost put this one down after starting because I found the writing style annoying. I’m glad I didn’t because I ended up really enjoying it. So many characters, so different than myself, such a great read. Really really good.

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult. It’s a novel set during the beginning of the pandemic, which is…maybe too soon right now, but it’s really good.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. Light, fun, unique, a little sci fi.

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. Strange and different. Cloning is bad?

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty. Makes you feel glad your family is less dysfunctional. Communication is important!

That’s it for now! I’d better finish getting the house ready for guests and bake an egg casserole.

Random thoughts

Christmas Time Is Here

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It’s been a busy month, but in a good way!

I’ve realized that when I don’t hang out with musicians as much I don’t experience the whole FOMO about gigs and stuff. Musicians are always, oh are you playing the such and such on Sunday and then you feel like if you aren’t that you should be, and that can turn into a vicious cycle. I’ve played so many gigs here and there and everywhere, and they all run together…spending a Saturday morning rehearsing with yet another church choir can be perfectly fine, but it’s not what I spent my childhood practicing for!

In any case, I’ve been busy doing all manner of holiday things plus the usual teaching up a storm.

Last weekend we finished celebrating Hanukkah. We found it tough to fit in lighting the candles each night after work, but it forced us to give that time, to stop working, to relax, and to sit together with the lights. I teach from early until late, and Louie works all day as well, hoping to finish his doctorate by the end of next summer, and weekdays are long as a result.

We attended a Jazz at the Bistro show with Keyon Harrold. It was packed, which is both fun and a little scary, as always. (They require vaccination OR a negative covid test, but that doesn’t guarantee anything, does it?)

Work wise, we did “open house” all last week at my before school job, which meant that each day some parents were there and the kids performed solos for them. This is no small feat, and very exciting and stressful for the students, to perform a short piece from memory in front of a group of people! Though I have some things to work on in my group teaching, I was overall pleased with how my students did.

Other happenings this week: we went to see A Christmas Carol at the Rep on Thursday night. I really enjoyed the production! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the play live, and it was a lot of fun. I only took one photo there, but it was very interesting, because I didn’t realize that so many of our traditions come from Victorian England. Or, that is, I probably did know but forgot, as I am prone to do.

It was fun to see a few actors I knew from my Runaway Cupcake days as well.

Saturday morning I attended a party that a student’s mom invited me to. I went with my friend who is their piano teacher, and we stayed for a bit. It was mostly outside and was a hot chocolate/cookie decorating party. I took home a small box of cookies to decorate and enjoyed chatting and eating spinach mushroom quiche baked in bread.

We had friends over Saturday night for eggnog tasting. I’ve made 4 batches of eggnog over the past year–if you add enough alcohol it will keep in the fridge indefinitely. It wasn’t a super scientific process, but the overall favorite was this recipe, which I made in January. I used Jim Beam Bourbon, Grand Marnier, and Xo VSOP Brandy instead of cognac. The second favorite overall was this recipe, made in October, though I don’t know which rum I used, I think whatever I had on hand. The other two batches were the same recipe from Serious Eats, from July and November, and while everybody liked them as well, they just weren’t the favorites. I suspect the Grand Marnier recipes had a bit more oomph, and the longer aged one with spices was just more complex and delicious. We have more eggnog left so we may do the testing again on a few more people, but the basic gist was that aged eggnog is tasty!

You can see everybody had the four samples of eggnog to taste. We labeled the cups 1 through 4.

We also ate goodies: cheese ball, nuts, latke cookies, and so much more. I have been lax on my picture taking lately and I didn’t get a photo of a whole tray of cookies I put together (sad face) but you are probably tired of cookie photos anyway. We took a break from snacking to attend the Garden Glow at the Botanical Gardens, which was very well done. It was a nice night for it: cold but not so cold that wearing a coat and hat didn’t keep you warm enough.

We waited in line for a while to go into the house, so we watched the light and music show about 3 or 4 times through! The lights project onto this house. This was during the Nutcracker music.
We waited in line a few times for pictures and made strangers try to take our pictures. Louie got nervous after one woman fumbled and almost dropped his phone so I insisted they use mine as it is super protected.

Coming up this week is the last full week of teaching, woo hoo! No specific holiday festivities planned this week, but I have a concert this weekend my quartet is playing on (with the St Louis Chamber Chorus).

Today is a day off. I’m enjoying a slow start, a relaxing day, and planning another batch of cookies before starting to package them up for gifts. (I wrote gifting first and then said, what, no, no, I’m not doing that.)

Phoenix

December?

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I managed one post in November, yay me!

Happy belated Thanksgiving and Happy Hanukkah!

We traveled to Phoenix over Thanksgiving.

Wearing masks at the St Louis Airport.

I’d been stressed about getting ready for the trip for a variety of reasons. Leading up to it I had a busy weekend with a gig and three student recitals (in person!). They all went well, but I was exhausted overall from the year. Then I had to teach a morning class right before we went to the airport, so I had to be all ready to go by 6:30 in the morning and then trust Louie to finish up getting ready to leave the house empty for several days. He picked me up at work, and we got to Sky Park, through security, all that with no problems.

We flew Spirit Airlines since it was significantly cheaper than our other options. You are only allowed one free personal item, so we decided to pay for one checked bag (up to 40 pounds only, which wasn’t an issue for us but if you are considering it, just an FYI). Mask wearing on the flight out seemed pretty good, but the way back was NOT GREAT, and at one point the pilot came onboard threatening to land the plane in Amarillo and boot people off. It got better for a short period of time but several people near us took their masks off to “eat” and then never put them back on. When we landed back in St Louis mask wearing at the airport was about 50-50. Phoenix airport was very good about it though.

Anyway, we spent Thanksgiving week visiting my sister Leslie and her family, and my sister Carrie flew out to visit as well. It was nice to see them together, the weather was lovely, we made a huge meal, we ate that huge meal for at least three more meals, and it was nice to have a few days off teaching!

We did a short hike on Thanksgiving morning to work up an appetite!
Everybody except Carrie on the hike. Carrie took the picture.
At the playground on a different day. Carrie is picture, far right. Luca is swinging.
Oh, here was Carrie doing a proof of actually being there. I left my phone in the car because my pockets aren’t big enough so I had to depend on the kindness of others to share photos.
Chocolate bourbon pecan pie
Pumpkin pie
Old Fashioned Cream Pie, my favorite.

As pictured, we made three pies. We also made turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, corn casserole, green bean casserole, brussels sprouts, and cranberry relish. I think that’s everything?

In addition to just hanging out, the hike, and the aforementioned playground, we went to Zoo Lights at the Phoenix Zoo. It was really cool! So many lights all over.

I loved this style of lights/decorations. There was a whole path of animals like this, set up in various habitats.
Lights reflecting off a large pond.

We flew home on Saturday in order to save money, so I was able to decorate on Sunday. (And catch up, clean, laundry, etc.)

Nothing to see here, just a Christmas tree with a large cat in it.

Anyway, I’m sure December will fly by! I’m finishing up the semester, a few more weeks of teaching, makeup lessons, open house performances at school, some extra gigs but not too many, and a few parties/social events.

We are doing the Garden Glow one night with friends and having an aged eggnog tasting afterwards–what snacks go well with eggnog?

Anyway, 22 more days until Christmas break! That actually includes two days off, which long time blog readers know is rare for me. Thanks to the pandemic for pushing me away from so many gigs, for cutting down on the number of gigs, and for making me see that having a day off here and there is nice…though I definitely have some creep of pre-pandemic busy-ness returning…I think it’s okay.

How was your Thanksgiving? What are you doing this month to celebrate the holidays?

Teaching, Weather

November

I keep asking time to slow down. I can’t believe it’s already mid-November and soon it will be Thanksgiving, then Hanukkah and Christmas. This is my favorite time of year and it’s going by so quickly!

November has been pretty busy: the usual overload of teaching, plus some weddings and a few extra things. We’ve gone to another symphony concert, and have plans for one more before Thanksgiving. I’ve gotten more used to my early morning schedule…I had a few nights this week though where I was in bed at 8:30 pm, though I didn’t always go to sleep right away, I was exhausted! Some of my colleagues live closer, but I do have a 20 minute drive, and I like to just start my day, have breakfast and coffee before so that I feel normal.

This week I’m starting another wonderful online course. I’ve taken quite a few and this is with a teacher I’ve heard great things about. It’s about a time in the development when bow technique really starts getting exciting and I’m looking forward to learning a few more ideas. I will say this, I have found most of the classes I’ve taken to be super helpful with ideas, and I’ve found my teaching to be much more enjoyable over the past year or two. Somehow, the more I do, the more I enjoy it. I don’t know if it’s old age, or just acceptance that this is my career now, or what.

I’ve been doing some decluttering as part of a group, and ran across this bookmark. Carrie is my youngest sister, and she gave this to me some time ago!

The one thing that bothers me is when people say things commenting incredulously at how many hours I teach. It’s really not a big deal. Yes, I teach a lot of hours (33-34 including before school, university, and private, plus a couple extra students right now for another teacher’s maternity leave) but if that’s all I do, my admin work is only about 1-3 hours a week (more when there are events/recitals/grading to do). I do some practicing, but I haven’t been doing much lately–I play a lot in lessons, so I don’t feel out of shape exactly, though I may want to add more in soon.

I guess my point is: yes, I work a lot. So do many people. It’s not like people pay me not to teach though!

Okay, okay enough annoyed ranting, I know, I know.

The weather this month is finally like fall! We had cold weather, hot weather, and cooler weather again, and the trees finally turned and the leaves are falling. It’s gorgeous outside. Except our front lawn where our volunteer black walnut tree lost its leaves right away and just looks craggy and dead. I put the garden down yesterday, took down my posts, yanked some stuff, put down cardboard and leaves and such. We had a good season, with basil, swiss chard, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, and peas. I made a lot of dilly beans, pesto with chard and basil, some pickles, and we ate lots of peas, chard, green beans, and lettuce. I’ll decide later what to plant next year.

Last weekend we got over to Forest Park for a lovely hike, though it was pretty warm. Today we are thinking of heading to Creve Coeur Lake to walk around, though it’ll be much cooler.

Cooking wise this month: I’ve made a carrot cake, black pepper tofu and eggplant (for the second time, highly recommend this dish, it’s delicious!), roasted shrimp and pea couscous salad, and an improvised crockpot lentil, sweet potato and kale coconut curry. We’ve also started eating out more normally, having gone to Union Loafers for lunch and dinner–they are seating again though you have to order at the counter and then sit down, to Rooster on South Grand for lunch, to Little Fox for dinner with Louie’s family (delicious!!!) and to Lily’s Mexican Restaurant for dinner–lately I’m obsessed with the fajitas there.

Reading wise I haven’t done anything exciting lately. I’ve been reading some new titles from a cozy mystery series I had enjoyed before (Meg Langslow series) and that’s been pretty much it. I have to read a book this week for my book club though, so I’ll start on that next. (How the One-armed Sister Sweeps Her House.) TV wise we started Yellowstone, are watching Succession, and also started season two of The Morning Show.

What have you been up to lately? Any books or tv shows to recommend?