All posts by hannahviolin

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

Monday Musings and Happy Eclipse Day!

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I have to say, I have not been great about taking pictures. Me: I have some time to blog right now, let me look at my pictures from the past few days. Hmm. There’s nothing there!

Maybe later today I can get some crescents.

The weekend ended up being a relaxing weekend. We had a few things we were going to go see, but ended up just chilling out at home more and getting some things done around the house. I really needed that, because I have been feeling burnt out and ready for the semester to end, and I think this weekend gave me the energy I need. (Hahahah not really but I will make it through!)

We saw the total eclipse in 2017 in our backyard and it was a neat experience, but I didn’t think driving anywhere to see another one was necessary and Louie agreed with me, until yesterday when he panicked and worried he was missing out and so he made arrangements to tag along with a friend to see it but I’d already made too many plans for the day to switch (was worried about getting back for some students but particularly an evening rehearsal.) Truthfully I was annoyed at Louie because we had talked about it before, but I am happy to do things on my terms and let him enjoy it with his friend, and who knows, maybe I’ll have sun and they won’t! I will either go to my backyard or walk over to the park or to the university campus.

I feel like there are two camps, the “oh, yeah, we had that in 2017 it was cool” and the “oh my god you can’t miss the eclipse, nothing but a total eclipse is worth it and you are a total loser if you don’t take the day off work!”. I fell into the first one, and while I’m sure seeing it again would be cool, I also wanted to just see at home or close to home and experience whatever was happening here. I’m also happy Louie is getting his experience, though I will keep trying to get him to be a BIT more of a planner.

Things I remember from 2017: the way the bugs started “singing” and the birds got quiet and the streetlights came out, and then the birds starting singing like it was morning. I also remember being in my own backyard with some friends and how neat that was. Life is full of choices!

Are you getting the eclipse where you are? Have you seen a solar eclipse before?

Other things going on: we are hosting our movie club tomorrow night. We watch the movie ahead of time and get together to discuss it, just like you would in a book club. This month’s movie was Poor Things, which I enjoyed but also have very mixed feelings on. I also already finished my book club book for the month: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, and I would recommend it. I finished The Hunter by Tana French last night and enjoyed that as well. I am still stuck on how much I loved In the Woods and will never quite get over that and enjoy another book of hers the same, however.

We also have a reservation this week to eat at a new restaurant by Ben Poremba, Esca. One of my favorite restaurants was Olio, which recently closed, and hopefully this will fill the hole a little bit. There’s a good restaurant scene here, but there’s also always a lot of places that close. I guess it’s the way of it, but sometimes it feels like a game of whack-a-mole: a new place opens somewhere, but another one closes leaving an empty building in its place. But with all of us doing so much shopping on the internet and grocery shopping at huge supermarkets, what can fill up all of these little storefront and restaurants? This is something I ponder as I walk down Delmar in the Loop (local readers will know what I mean at least). On the east side, things are hopping and growing more than ever, but the west side there there are dozens of empty restaurants and storefronts. It seems like, at least in St Louis, that new and “hot” places open but leave other places empty, and we just keep switching around where the happening place is, rather than growing overall. It’s a bit sad!

But I hope to have a fabulous meal, and by then it’ll practically be the weekend again. My goal for this week: take some pictures!

So, again, tell me: have you seen an eclipse before? Are you in the “path of totality” this year?

Random thoughts

April Showers, starting strong

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Last night was the first time I was at the “new” house when the tornado sirens went off. Louie was still at work so I headed to the basement alone. Luckily the storms passed by us without trouble.

I thought I should write something, because I’m a blogger, and that’s what bloggers do, but truthfully, there’s not much going on. I have abandoned (for now?) many of my fun goals from the beginning of the year (cooking, crafting, baking, etc) in order to either read, scroll (bad!), or simply to spend time researching travel on the internet. I guess planning trips is actually considered a hobby, so I shall embrace it. We have a trip to New York and Pennsylvania planned in addition to our “big” trip of going to Sweden and Finland. Now, I’m still flossing and doing my DuoLingo, so I haven’t abandoned my goals entirely, but the year is as usual knocking me on my behind and I feel like I am just keeping my head above water.

The Lamb Cake Louie’s mom made for Easter

We’ve been working on the old house a bit, getting it ready to do something with, but this is easier said (well, not terribly easy to say either) than done. Louie is still torn on what he wants to do and we get a lot of rude and disparaging comments from people around us (hey, we actually did live there for a long time, so cut it out) about the house. It’s amazing how rude people can be, knowing or unknowingly, and how much unsolicited advice they like to give. Do you feel like people are constantly telling you what to do with your life as if you are a complete idiot? I hate to think we are special.

I do find that when I have larger chunks of time free, I don’t want to do anything except read a book. Some days I simply embrace this, other days I wonder, is this a sign of burnout? It’s not that I’m not getting things done, because I am, but I’m not getting things done beyond the things that really do need to get done. Summer is approximately 6 weeks away, and probably if I just get done what needs to be done between now and then we are fine. If I get anything extra done, wonderful. I have managed to get rid of a few things on the Buy Nothing Group, but I’ve been annoyed by some of the people there for not picking up and leading me on about it. I need to be stricter about timelines, I think.

Arches National Park and the Gateway Arch had a funny trade for April Fools Day

Book wise I’ve been reading the Mistborn books lately, in the fantasy genre. A colleague recommended them and I thought it would be a nice change. I go back and forth on how much I am enjoying them but my latest one has been a lot of fun. I am also looking forward to Tana French’s new novel which I just got from my library. My book club read Anxious People last month and I also started watching it on Netflix. TV wise we watched the Gentlemen (okay) and Beef (good, but ridiculous) lately. We are hosting Movie Club next week and still need to watch the movie (Poor Things) so we will probably do that later this week or over the weekend.

Once I get writing I realize I have likely been more productive than I think: sometimes I feel like I need to be constantly DOING rather than allowing myself time to rest, is this capitalism or a personal problem? It’s not to say that I don’t rest, because I absolutely do, but that I also have so many things that I need and want to do. This week, thankfully, is a little easier than some: a few students are gone and I don’t have anything extra going on during the week. We even got this morning off from school, which was amazing.

How’s your April going so far? Did you get any damage from the storms/did you experience any storms yesterday or last night?

Random thoughts

Last Day of Break

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My title is a bit of an exaggeration as I’ve been working plenty, but this morning was my last day of Spring Break at my early morning job. I believe there are 26 more days of getting up early, starting tomorrow. This post will be interspersed with pictures of the cats, taken by our lovely cat sitter while we were gone.

This month has been a challenge! We had a nice break and a good time visiting with my parents in Tennessee, but otherwise it’s been a lot. You’d think Spring Break would have allowed for some catchup but it went by too quickly and there was too much to do. I’ve had a lot of frustration with trying to give things away on the Buy Nothing group and so I’ll probably just have to do a large donation elsewhere. I did get my taxes mostly done, which is always a big thing, and I’m still mostly up to date on all my teaching responsibilities and paperwork. I’m waiting for festival dates and times still so I can hire the pianist, which is also always a stressful thing. But I can choose NOT to be stressed about it, and say, there will be somebody. (deep breathes)

The end of the school year is near though! And summer is upon us soon, and I’m so looking forward to it. We are trying to work out a trip to visit various family members in NYC and Philly and it has been a challenge, but I’m sure we will get an itinerary worked out eventually. It’s starting to feel like herding cats. Except minus the cute and cuddly part!

Summer work will include three shows at the Muny, I’m excited to say! Plus I’m sure weddings and lots of teaching, as always.

But there is plenty to do before then, and it’s always a balance between looking forward to things and wishing away time, right? I have fallen down on the job of getting anything done other than getting through the days, and maybe that’s okay. We did go to a show at Jazz St Louis Thursday night, but didn’t manage to get ourselves to the Great Artists Series concert last night due to a variety of factors…I think the series is terrific, but maybe there are too many concerts all in a row. Or I was just having a bad weekend.

I’ve got a lot going on this week, with services to play on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for various churches. Most are places I play every year, which is always nice (I feel old saying that, ha!). Anyway, it’ll be a good week, hopefully.

Is this a typical thing to say in Finland?

How is your March going? Does it feel like it just started but yet, it is almost over? What a time to be alive!

Travel

Quick Trip to Chattanooga and Nashville

Since we didn’t get to see my parents on Thanksgiving (thanks COVID!) we wanted to try to get together over Spring Break. We met in the middle in Chattanooga.

We rented a lovely Airbnb. I didn’t get any pictures but it was this one and it was very nice, just like you would expect from the pictures. It was easy to find and easy to get around from it.

The first night after we arrived we went to walk around downtown. This wasn’t actually the best idea, but it wasn’t the worst either. We may have picked a less interesting area to walk through, and we got to say hello to a variety of homeless people. We worked up an appetite but nothing we saw appealed, so Louie found a place to drive to, and we enjoyed it. It was called Sluggo’s and served all vegan food. We ate on the balcony and it was a lovely night.

We all sat on the couch and started watching Killers of the Flower Moon after that. It is the world’s longest movie, so we watched a little more than half before turning in for the night.

The next day the weather was nice and sunny so we opted for more outdoor activities. We got tickets for the Incline Railway and headed out. One thing to note about Chattanooga is that all the places you go require you to pay for parking. I used the Parkmobile app since I use it here and it was already set up for our car and everything. It was a little annoying to get to a large parking lot where we paid for tickets and to have to pay again for parking, but thankfully it was only a few dollars. But I digress.

The Incline Railroad goes up the mountain about a mile. It is at an incline, some places more than others. When you get on you are leaning back a little bit but at the top it is much steeper.

We enjoyed the ride up and there is a lot to see at the top: there are two different viewing platforms, a place to see the machinery and some museum like signs, and of course a gift shop. You can’t leave the little station though, even though you can see some nice grassy areas, you can’t get to them.

After we rode back down we were hungry, so we looked on google and there was a restaurant right nearby with high ratings, so we headed out. The Purple Daisy Picnic Cafe was a hit with us, and we would recommend it. I ordered the Rainbow Sandwich because it seemed unique, and it was! I enjoyed it, though I’m not sure that putting chicken salad, cucumber salad, and pimento cheese salad today is better than eating either one of those things separately.

It may look large here in the picture, but it was just slightly smaller than a normal slice of bread, since they cut the crusts off. It was perfect though.

After lunch we had considered going to Ruby Falls, another tourist place, but we decided to just drive around instead. We drove up Lookout Mountain and stopped a few places to walk around and take looks: one place was a college with a lovely grounds and some nice views, and another just on the side of the road. We also stopped at a NPS site called Craven’s House which was part of a Civil War battle at one time.

We stopped by the old Chattanooga Choo Choo building where Louie and I had stayed some time ago –it had been completely changed and was now restaurants and a boutique hotel out back.

Still had the train though!

After a few hours of sightseeing, we were all ready to go back to relax at home for a bit.

We refreshed and then headed out to dinner. My dad loves german food so he found a place called the Brew Haus. It was a nice place to have dinner and had a terrific soft pretzel! We shared that and then each had our individual meals as well. We ended up participating in a little bit of trivia at the place as well, which was a new experience for my parents. After dinner we realized we were right by the Walnut Street Pedestrian bridge, so we walked up over the river a bit and enjoyed the start of the sunset.

After dinner we went back and finished the movie (Killers of the Flower Moon) from the night before. It was good, though it definitely could had been shorter.

The next morning after breakfast my parents headed home. It was raining and they were worried about the drive. It was great to see them and very enjoyable to spend a few days together! Louie and I had decided to stop in Nashville on our way home, so we didn’t head out yet as we didn’t have our hotel there until later. We visited the Museum of Towing and Recovery.

The museum covered the history of the tow truck, which was invented in Chattanooga. It was really interesting–both from an engineering standpoint for Louie and for me: I enjoy seeing old cars and such. One of the tow trucks you were allowed to get into, so we did. I am unsure why it is so small!

After that it was lunchtime, so we got some tacos at Taqueria Jalisco Ania and then coffee at nearby Velo Roasters. We headed to Nashville after that.

We made a quick stop at Stones River National Battlefield en route, but didn’t stay long: we saw the movie and museum, but their bathrooms weren’t functioning and you had to use porta potties and this made me grumpy. We decided just to go to the hotel at this point, so we checked in and relaxed a bit. We stayed at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel, which we stayed at before: nice location not too far from downtown (an easy lyft) but it was a little run down and in need of some updating. It was fine though, and I don’t regret it. We had dinner at Husk: we’d eaten at the two other Husk restaurants (in Savannah and Charleston) and figured to go for the trifecta. It was delicious.

Trout with grits–not a super photogenic picture, but my mouth is still watering.

After dinner we walked down to Broadway to check out the scene. It was a mass of humanity! We walked a bit, and then popped into a bar and got beers and listened to a bar play some music, including Freebird, which one guy tipped them $100 to play.

We decided we’d had enough of crowds then and headed a few blocks away, where the streets completely empty out (like, where does everybody even come from?) and enjoyed more music at a bar called “Loser’s” before calling it a night. I get tired early due to years of teaching early morning classes, so we didn’t make it much past 11.

The view of downtown from the hotel window, very nice!

The next morning we packed up and headed out for brunch at Audrey’s. We ate, took a short walk around to move a bit before getting in the car, and then we hit the road for home. It was a lovely but short trip, and I’m so glad we did it!

A mural near the restaurant.

Random thoughts

Almost Spring Break

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Spring Break isn’t really a thing that adults have, but I sort of have one. This coming week the college is off and the following week the before-school school is off and so I get some days off (with some finagling of my private students and careful guardianship of my days and having to say no to things.) Anyway, so I’m really looking forward to having some downtime and doing a little trip which I’ll tell you about later.

We’ve been pretty busy here, though not overwhelming. I was going to take a local audition here but it got canceled so I’ve been a little lazy with practicing outside of being ready for various gigs (one of which takes up quite a bit of today.) I had been having some buzzing on my violin since…all winter?…and I found a time to take it in. It turns out there was a small crack and then some open seams, and at one point my luthier sent this picture.

But I have it back now and it is sounding much better!

I say we are busy, but it’s really just normal stuff lately. We did see a concert last Sunday night as part of the Great Artists Series at Wash U–Tafelmusik, which was really terrific. I have to say, the GAS has been pretty intense this year: 5 concerts in 3 months I think. But it’s all been really high quality and terrific stuff and I’m glad we are subscribers.

Friday night we went out to dinner at Lily’s, our favorite family owned mexican restaurant, and inadvertently just beat the rush: evidently they’ve been swamped all month due to a social media post. Which is great for them but less great for us, haha. After that we needed to watch a movie for the film club we belong to, so we watched All of Us Strangers, which was very thought provoking though we both had trouble keeping our eyes open.

Yesterday we went out for a late morning walk and ended up deciding to get brunch at Winslow’s which is a nice 30 minute walk from here. I had a gig after that downtown at the Hyatt, and snapped this nice picture of the Arch.

It’s just on the other side of the highway.

After the gig we went to see the Arianna String Quartet play with the Kyo-Shin-An Arts at the Touhill Theater at UMSL. I really enjoyed the concert! We came home and watched an episode of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (which we started a few nights ago, it is not great, and might actually be terrible, but it’s entertaining enough) and then went to bed early to prepare for the time change, haha.

My neighbors’ tree looks so pretty out the window of my teaching studio.

I’m deep in planning mode right now, trying to work out the summer plans. We have a big trip planned in the late summer and a small trip in May. We plan to visit my sister’s family in Chautauqua at some point, and I have some interesting work things that I’ll find out about for sure next week. I don’t know if it seems early or late for you at this point: do you have your summer travel plans set or does it seem way too early? I find people are in one mind or the other, but I got asked to play a concert in February 2025 the other day, so it’s just how my schedule operates. This job requires advance planning and so many details!

Miles has been using this one part of the cat tree that he never did before. It’s always exciting when they do something new! I wonder how they decide these things. Wouldn’t it be amazing to be a cat for a day, or an hour, just to learn how they think?

Goals

In like a lion?

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Can you believe it is March already?? I feel like February flew by, but that’s because it was a short and busy month, I suppose. And the weather has been so crazy, warm, snowstorm, warm, cold, warm, etc. Let’s see what March does with the weather!

It ended up being a little longer than I thought since my last blog. I have really been trying to post at least once a week, and we are a little past that, so I have more to share with you.

I got my Mom’s Storyworth book yesterday: last year we gave her a subscription to Storyworth, and if you have a parent or grandparent who likes to write and enjoys looking back on their life, this is a fantastic thing! If they don’t like to write, you will likely have less success. Mom enjoyed writing stories, editing them, and adding pictures all year long. You use the questions Storyworth recommends or add your own, and people can read it along the way as well (if you want them too.) We have really enjoyed reading the stories all year long and I’m thrilled to have this tangible book to look at whenever I want.

Since we left off with my last blog post, Louie and I have gone to a number of events. One of our favorites was seeing the play Moby Dick at the Repertory Theater of St Louis. Neither of us has read Moby Dick, so we hoped that it was still a good idea to see the play. We weren’t wrong! We had great seats (cheaper than opera for sure) and really enjoyed the entire production. The actors climbed all over the set, way up high sometimes, and there were cool effects with flowing cloth to represent the water. There was a time near the end when there was a tidal wave and two of the actors ran up parallel aisles bringing a giant cloth over our entire audience section and it was very effective! Every time we go to see a play we want to see more, but it’s somehow harder to fit into our schedules than concerts are. I think I feel like spending the money for concerts is work related, which is just silly, because I don’t need to worry about that all the time.

The set at the beginning of the show.

We also went to see Brahms X Radiohead at the St Louis Symphony, which was a mashup of Brahms Symphony no. 1 and Radiohead’s Ok Computer. It was definitely an interesting idea, and while I’m not sure whether I liked it, I’m glad we went.

The cats have been enjoying the sun. They also love when the radiators are hot. With the weather being warmer, there tends to be more sun but less hot radiators, so they probably don’t quite understand what is going on. Life continues nonetheless.

Sometimes Muriel looks very cute. Other times she hisses at my students when they come in!

I’ve been doing the usual teaching with a few extra concerts dotted in recently. The quartet played for a Lent concert, I played for a choir concert and at a church. This weekend is gig free, but tomorrow afternoon is Festival of Strings at my school job, which means an afternoon spent tuning violins and violas, wrangling cats, I mean 4th graders, and watching a whole bunch of kids play together, which is always fun to see!

Yesterday I went to the Art Museum’s Art in Bloom event with my friend Manuela. I had not been before and didn’t know what to expect: it was a bunch of different flower arrangements placed around the museum. Each one was inspired by a different piece of art. We had a good time trying to get pictures and see how the flowers and the original artwork coordinated.

It was pretty crowded there, and we were there Friday morning. I suspect today will be even busier.

And then last night we went to a wine dinner at the Whittemore House. It was “women in wine” and all the wine makers were women as well, which was a lovely change. We had a nice meal, learned a bit, and enjoyed the company of our friends. (That sounds weird, but it was a wine dinner, so I need to write more formally.)

Since it’s the end of the month I should also report on some of my yearly goals.

February goals, revisited: I decided not to worry about the baking challenge this month: I didn’t have much time but also didn’t want to make a fancy dessert for just Louie and I and just wasn’t feeling inspired. I also decided not to make marmalade this year but make a note for next year. We didn’t get a hike in but got quite a few long walks. We had a dinner party and I had several lunches with friends. I continued to floss and do my Duolingo every day, got some good workouts in and ate relatively well. (I could do better with those last two.)

We attended Film Club and I attended Book Club and enjoyed both of those. I think my attitude stayed PRETTY good as far as FOMO and I have also started sharing my thoughts with friends more which has also helped (funny how getting out of your own head helps so much, hmm?) We also made progress towards our summer vacation plans.

March goals: Keep up the personal goals: good diet, exercise, hiking, lunches with friends, flossing, duolingo, book and movie clubs.

Enjoy a lovely trip to Chattanooga with my parents and Louie. Have a relaxing few days of Spring Break.

Get my taxes done. Spend at least a few hours dealing with the boxes in the garage and do some yard work as well. Stay on top of all my paperwork and admin/emails, etc.

I may do some baking: perhaps, either the month’s baking challenge or a loaf of whole wheat bread.

Well, there you have it. March looks like it should be a nice month?