Louie and I had a wonderful vacation in the Smokies and Asheville. I had every intention of starting a post about it today, but I’m a little more crunched for time than I’d thought. I promise I won’t wait too long!

One sad thing is that we had to cut our trip short by one day. Well, that’s not what was sad. The sad thing is that my dad’s brother, my uncle Sam died and I wanted to get home so that I could get to his services which were in my Dad’s hometown in Ohio. It was nice to see my family though. I got to see my grandmother again, and my parents, sister and niece, loads of aunts, uncles, and cousins, even if it was a very short visit and for a very difficult reason. Leslie and I were able to play for the service which I find is a nice distraction and something nice to be able to do.

Then I had to hurry back home to get to work, and I feel like I’ve been working nonstop. I haven’t though, I’m just not quite on “work mode” yet. I had a few new students last week, which was fun. I had a full week of private teaching, but I haven’t started up at the colleges yet. We also had a few house guests, and of course, THE ECLIPSE, which was on Monday. We got about 45 seconds of totality, and it was really neat. I kind of wish I had known more what to expect and maybe I could have appreciated it more. Mostly I was just terrified of messing up and being permanently blinded, and that was about as far as I’d gotten.

I felt like the eclipse really signified the end of summer. Now it’s time to buckle down for the busiest fall semester I’ve had since moving to St Louis. Performances highlights will include playing Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires with the Metropolitan Orchestra of St Louis, playing Tchaik 5 with the Illinois Symphony (decided I missed playing full orchestra music and I needed to remedy that, so I’m playing a few concerts with the Illinois Symphony this season), and playing the King and I in the pit at the Fox Theatre. The quartet is slow getting off the ground this year, and I think that’s okay…we had a few busy years and a lot of the things we’ve done either don’t want to book the same thing each year OR have shut down for various reasons, and I think we just got tired of pushing. We have some irons in the fire and some concerts booked for the spring and somewhat oddly, next summer.

So that’s pretty much it for now. I need to get back to practicing, and then a wedding, and then I’m tired and want to stay in and relax tonight. Last night my brother-in-law stopped through on his way home to Arizona and we went to Union Loafers for pizza (yum) and the night before another out of town friend was here, and we went to Polite Society. Next weekend April is in town visiting (woo-hoo!) and I have a million weddings too…fall is here, at least schedule-wise, and my bank account is getting happier again.

How’s your August been going?

As you know, my work schedule is quite irregular. Some weeks I only have my students and get to have a “regular” schedule, but other weeks I have extra rehearsals and concerts which makes for a very busy week. A good skill to have is the ability to look ahead and figure out what needs to be done ahead, and also to figure out what can be done ahead to help out when work will be too busy to do anything. Since the past two weeks have been very light weeks, I’ve been working on a variety of projects to prepare for the fall. I’ve been updating my syllabi for the courses I teach, I’ve prepared new “interview” forms and questionnaires for new and returning students.

The key to being busy and getting stuff done is organization! I told Louie I feel like it doesn’t come easy to me, and he thought that was funny, because I am always working on being organized and trying new things, and I have loads of binders and notebooks, but the truth is that I still feel like so many other teachers are more organized and I can learn so much from them!

In any case, I’m also doing lots of practice, running (the heat, my god, the heat!) and relaxing. July has been a low income month, but it’s been easy and relaxing, at least. So often I’ll have busy times where I also don’t make much money, so I’d prefer this! I started a project on Instagram with the hashtag 100daysofpractice where I post a video of my practice each day. I didn’t come up with the idea, in fact, I think Hillary Hahn might have, and my friend Ingrid is doing it…in any case, I won’t have 100 days in a row because of vacation, but as I said on my first post, life isn’t perfect and if I don’t do the project because of that, then I’m already failing. Follow me there—I’m “hannahviolin.”

Other fun stuff: Some Blue Apron meals—we’ve been getting it about once a month since we started, so I believe this is our 3rd or 4th time.

My food photography is not good, plus it’s dark by the time I eat…in any case, this was delicious: Crispy Catfish & Plum Sauce.

And then Sweet Corn & Pepper Empanadas with Charred Sugar Snap Peas and Radishes. The radishes were amazing and I enjoyed making my own empanadas. It’s something we often share as an appetizer at Mission Taco, but it was nice to have homemade (and likely healthier) ones.  That recipe came with a side of lime yogurt for drizzling, but I wasn’t sure for which part of the meal, so we put it on everything. Sometimes you feel like Blue Apron makes you do a lot of sauces and garnishes and sometimes they are easy enough and delicious (in this case) and other times it’s a lot of effort for little. But overall, still liking the service, and we have one more meal to make from this shipment.

The next few days are quite busy with some extra performances and rehearsals. I’m really looking forward to playing Carousel with Union Avenue Opera! And soon…vacation for real…we are going to the Smoky Mountains and Asheville. If you have any suggestions let me know! I have a lot of great ideas and a bunch of stuff already planned, but any more suggestions are welcome.

Back to practicing!