All posts by hannahviolin

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

It was sort of like the Titanic

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We woke up this morning, thinking it would be a nice lazy morning with coffee drinking and perhaps even french toast, reading a book while listening to the sound of the rain hitting the windows.

But no. Because the sewer drain in the basement was flooding, and suddenly it was a fight against the water. The perils of home ownership and a finished basement! Louie worked valiantly but we soon realized this was a job for a professional with more than a shop-vac and a little pump, so we called Roto Rooter. They were great and were there within 20-30 minutes, and solved the problem. Then we had some cleaning up to do which I won’t discuss, but I’ll just say, what a morning. The cats were very excited and couldn’t decide whether to be terrified of the water or explore it. I’m sure they’ve actually tracked unimaginable things all over the house, but I’m sure it’s not actually worse than what they normally do either.

It’s been a stressful week. Things are getting settled, and soon I’ll be on “spring break”, but I was hoping to spend most of today relaxing. The good news is that I’m relaxing now, and that I’m looking forward to our trip later next week. Both of my college teaching jobs are off next week so I canceled a few days of lessons so Louie and I can get out of town for a few days. We are heading to Branson, Missouri to relax, hike, see a show, and be touristy. We know that most of our friends are saying, why Branson, but we are saying, because we haven’t been! So it should be fun (it will be fun with Louie no matter what because he always loves new places) and it will be a nice diversion.

I think I’m getting all my summer travel dates figured out too. We planned a trip to visit Chautauqua, NY this summer where my sister Leslie will be with her new baby, and we have a Memorial Day trip planned with friends, and then a long road trip at the end of the summer. I must admit I feel very lucky to be able to do so much, though I hardly feel it sometimes! I know that most people can’t take a 3 week trip, but I also know that most people don’t work as many days and hours as Louie and I do on a regular basis (he rarely takes a day off either). In other words, we feel lucky, but not too much. If you add up your weekends, if you have them, you have way more vacation time than I do Smile. But nonetheless, I’m also happy and grateful that having to pay for the plumber didn’t knock our finances too badly either, and that we can still afford to leave town. I know others aren’t so fortunate.

No pictures lately, which is a sad oversight—well, not of the water, but of say, the cats or something delicious I’ve been eating or something funny I saw. I’ve been feeling a little low and stressed, and that means less pictures. It’s nothing huge, just a million tiny things adding up. I think a few days out of town will be just the ticket, and I can’t wait to share the trip with you here later. I’m hopeful the weather will cooperate and not be too rainy, and we are definitely planning to see Dolly Parton’s Stampede and probably stopping by Mansfield Missouri en route to see the Laura Ingalls Museum and House.

Have you been to Branson? What are your recommended activities or places to eat?

Do you get your sewer lines cleaned preemptively or do you wait until there’s a problem?

Deep Thoughts

I’ve been voting so much

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Does anybody else feel like there are dozens of elections each year? Since I’ve been living in the same place now for 4 or so years, I actually get all the little cards telling me when an election is coming up. I usually do a little research, and then BOOM I go vote. It takes about ten minutes round trip from my house, and even on presidential election days I have never experienced a wait. Sometimes Louie has to wait, but that’s only if we go together and he insists on adhering to the rules of voting chivalry.

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Did you have an election today? I suppose we don’t actually have dozens of elections a year, but we do have perhaps half a dozen? I often think of this when people talk about making Election Day a national holiday: what about the other elections? I do agree that it would be a good idea, and I’m all for more people voting. It’s just that I think people need to vote more often, and not just once every four years. Every step of the way your vote is important, and if you worry your vote doesn’t matter, then go vote in a tiny election when you walk in and the people working the tables are standing up chatting with one another since so few people are voting. When I put my ballot in the machine around 2 pm the count was 85. I don’t know how many have voted electronically (I will never again do this, due to my fears of hacking, even though we do have a paper trail here), but either way, that not very many. Therefore, my vote counts much more!

You better hope I voted correctly. I was torn, but I made a decision on the moment, and I hope I don’t regret it. I know I won’t regret voting. They gave us different, cooler, stickers today than in the past. I am wearing it proudly. Or confusedly.

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I’m loving the look of my hair in that photo, but the length has been annoying me lately. I might get it cut off…I experience wearing my hair more than I look at it.

How often do you vote? Do you vote early and often? Do you only show up occasionally, or do you think that your vote doesn’t matter and you are too busy to deal with it?

Random thoughts

Ice

This winter has been kind of outrageous as far as precipitation. This morning schools were canceled due to ice. I didn’t have anywhere to be in the morning and so I didn’t go anywhere. (Deep, I know). I did have some errands to run after noon and I hoped my car would have warmed up. No such luck!

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I did not drive away like that.

It’s still precipitating a bit but the roads seemed okay, and the sidewalks are pretty icy where they are untreated but if you do the penguin walk you’re probably okay. I haven’t heard any cancellations from my students so I’m assuming we are on…we’ll see what happens!

As far as illness and inclement weather, I do let my students cancel. I trust that they won’t take advantage, but if they are sick, I don’t want them to come or feel obligated, and I don’t want the responsibility of them coming out in bad weather they aren’t comfortable with either. It’s how I run my studio. I do request them to come otherwise, and I try to be particular about absences when possible, and I am especially sticky about “no-show” absences, when they don’t let me know and don’t show up. (In case you are a music teacher and reading this! I have them pay for the month in advance and then if I miss a lesson or they do they carry over, but I have my money in advance most of the time. A few end up paying later and to me it’s not a huge deal as I actually enjoy getting a few more paychecks over the course of the month.) I keep track of all the payments by hand in my little book and if somebody hasn’t paid or gets behind I get in touch.

But you probably don’t read this for my business ideas do you? Actually, let me know if you have more questions about how I run things at the studio-I’m happy to share. I’m always thinking about things and reevaluating, but I’m pretty happy with my current policies. There’s always some teeth pulling and at times I feel like I’m herding cats, but the students keep showing up and the parents keep paying me and giving my name to other parents so I think it’s working well enough!

Obviously I’m in work mode right now. I was on the computer doing some other things (reconciling accounts for February, getting things planned for March, looking at hikes at Glacier National Park) and figured I’d pop in for a blog post. Maybe that’s the way to get more readers?  Posting?

Teaching

Post Recital

I had a recital for my private studios over the weekend. I always think of trying to have them twice a year, but mostly end up only managing once a year-it’s not easy to put together and get everybody to agree to attend! It’s always worth it though, to push the students to practice, to get them to hear other students and hopefully be encouraged, and to get the parents to see the progress that their kids (and perhaps compare them to the other kids in a healthy way) are making.

I got a lot of nice comments afterwards, and I had a few parents talk to me about their hopes and goals for their own kids’ violin playing. It’s good to hear, especially when those goals are reasonable and fit into the plan we already on, but it’s good for me to reevaluate how I’m encouraging each student and how I can be pushing them to do better. Every student learns in a different way, and one of the probably more underestimated challenges of teaching is figuring this out, and then continuing to teach in a way that helps each student the best. There is no one way, there is no one path, and what works for 5 students won’t work for the other 5. Sometimes I figure a student out quickly (this is obviously easiest when they learn and are inspired by similar to things to me) and other times it takes much longer. Sometimes I’ll really hit the nail on the head for awhile and then something changes-sometimes I’ll get a beginner who progresses really well for the first few years and then really stalls out, or other times a student will have a very slow difficult start and then really fly. Sometimes I get a transfer student (one who came from another teacher) and I’m very different than the previous teacher so it takes awhile to get adjusted. Or that transfer student will have a lot of technique difficulties that I have to address right away and the student feels like I’m nagging them too much and resists, and I have to figure out how to strike the right balance between letting them play and making them fix their posture.

I think I’d been feeling kind of negative the past few weeks, and I’m glad to have the recital behind me as well as a stressful quartet performance. I feel a great weight is lifted off, and I am hopeful that spring is (somewhat) near. I always worry about recitals, but then they end up going well and the parents seem happy.

Then I start thinking of how to improve the recital and when to set up the next one—it HAD been a year, though I’d planned one in November which I had to cancel. Maybe I’ll shoot for that again, something in late October or early November. I’ve been keeping information about this sort of thing in a “bullet journal” I’ve had for a few years now (I don’t write every day, obviously). I have a list of what to bring for recitals and a timeline of what I’ve done that works. I also brainstorm ideas for future events.

The most important thing I took away from the recital is that I’m doing okay with the students, and that I will keep encouraging and pushing the in the ways that I can do best.

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And there’s a picture of the quartet from the other week. Action shot!

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Winter Weather

This winter we have certainly had a lot of snow, ice, and sleet! Tuesday night my quartet had a concert at the Sheldon Concert Hall, and while we ended up having a nice crowd, it was definitely smaller than we’d hoped for, and I assume a big part of that was the winter weather that was predicted. The gloom and doom of the newscasters “stay home, stay off the roads” kept people at home, and then the snow ended up starting right after the concert was done, so we got home no problem.

It’s hard to judge, isn’t it? If we cancel things every time they predict bad weather, you end with things canceled and nothing happening a certain percentage of the time. Other times, you don’t cancel and things are worse than expected!

Our concert was a lot of fun. Sometimes I forget how fun performing is. One of the things that I enjoy about playing with the quartet is that generally things go better in concert than in rehearsal—or at least, they rarely go worse. I’m not sure exactly why that is, but I think we are much more focused in performance.

I have been feeling like I haven’t been doing enough performing over the winter. Yes, it’s winter, and the weather, and the cold, and nobody comes out. But I often worry that I’m wasting my so-called talents when I spend most of my days cajoling young children to stand up straight and watch their bows. Then again, that’s important too!

I dreamt that I decided to drop everything here and move back to Cleveland and teach/freelance there. After arriving, I realized it had been a huge mistake and that I’d left all the things I’d gained here.

In any case, I think that the constant barrage of horrible news involving today’s political situation doesn’t help my frame of my mind. I feel stressed about so many things completely outside of my control and it just gives a low level of stress and feelings of failure. Sigh.

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We have a drawer in the new bathroom that I’ve been keeping the extra toilet paper rolls in. Yesterday I needed one so pulled open the drawer, and found this. I actually screamed first! Then I closed the drawer.

We are taking a short trip to Branson in March. Have you been? What do you recommend?

Hiking, Performing

Winter Hiking

Louie and I have been prioritizing doing some hiking when possible this winter. Sometimes we have too much going on to manage, but again we were able to last Saturday! We hit up Russell E. Emmenegger Nature Park (another 60 Hikes in 60 Miles hike) for a short hike first. It had snowed the night before, but much of the snow had melted off the paths already.

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You start the loop by crossing that bridge. Then there are some paved paths at first, but an unpaved trail went off to the right, so we took that. It actually wasn’t exactly right, we don’t think, or we missed something, because we had to cut up ridge and then we found the trail again. This was a nice hike, with some elevation change too. The main downside was the highway noise—the park is located right near the intersections of Interstate 44 and 270 and the noise is LOUD. An advantage to the location is that it’s closer to get to, since it’s just off the highway Winking smile

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I thought the winter landscape was really nice.

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I have a friend that likes to hashtag some of her posts “nerdmarriage”. I think this picture of Louie doesn’t need a hashtag.

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I think my eyes are shut, but my eyes were shut in more than one of these photos. I got a lightweight winter coat for hiking. It might make me look more like a potato than I would prefer, but it was comfortable, and it’s lightweight and squishes down quite a bit. Amazon basics, y’all.

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One part of the trail took us up on a ridge over the Meramec River. It was pretty! There’s quite a lot of development around the park, but that doesn’t mean that the park isn’t pretty.

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After our hike, we decided to head to Powder Valley Conservation Center which was also in the 60 Hikes book and which we had passed on our way to Emmenegger.

Powder Valley has a very nice visitor’s center with some lovely displays and taxidermy. I think especially kids like it, as it looks set up well for families and field trips. We poked around a bit after using the restrooms.

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Not a real raccoon, but it is real.

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I don’t think that is the bear that broke into our car.

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While posing for this photo we got passed by a couple with two small children who likely thought I was strange. I enjoy posing with fake animals at zoos and whatnot.

We started to take another short hike, but the path was paved and ICY and I decided I didn’t want to risk falling, so we turned back. Evidently all the paths there are paved, which isn’t my favorite—I understand they are more accessible, but they are also harder on the knees and not quite as nature-y. We might head back someday to check it out further.

After that little jaunt, we went to the symphony that night and saw an all-Prokofiev concert. It was great, particularly one part in Alexander Nevsky where the choir was absolutely screaming at us in Russian (they put their hands up by their mouths and everything.) The concert was a little long though, and I was exhausted…am I the only one who things that concerts should be on average two hours long and max 2:15, and this one was over 2 1/2 hours. Or they should start earlier, or something. I know I sound old—I feel old and tired! A funny thing at the concert was at the beginning when an elderly woman sitting in front of us turned around to yell at either Louie or the woman on his other side for kicking her chair.

We booked a weekend trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas with another couple in May, and I’m excited. Between Branson, Eureka Springs, and then the mega road trip this summer it will be a fun travel year! I find that I’m mostly enjoying reading and planning travel lately, as I’m a bit unmotivated and worn down by music and life generally. I don’t know if this is a midlife crisis (mid-career certainly—I realized I’m basically at the halfway point if I plan to retire around 62), or what, but like I’ve been blogging about, I’m tired. I probably need to seek out a few more new things to mix it up, but I’m okay just coasting right now.

And we are supposed to get more “winter weather” this evening. Hopefully this doesn’t keep people away from our quartet concert at the Sheldon. (Probably it will…ugh.)