Category Archives: Cat

Cat

Cats and Workouts

February 8, 2013 hannahviolin 1 Comment

Like I’ve said before, my two favourite things! (What. I’ve been watching a lot of Downton Abbey, so favourite is correct, correct?)

Cats:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably heard that the newest Monopoly token is the cat, and the iron is NO MORE. My first thought was, who is buying Monopoly anymore? Doesn’t everybody already have a set that needs one?

I mean, we don’t own one because Chris and I are definitely not allowed to play Monopoly (there was an unfortunate incident in late 1999/early 2000 and since then we have banned ourselves)…but my parents have a game so if we siblings ever feel like we are getting along too well or starting to feel genuine affection for each other…we can always play a game.

Pro tip: try to be banker. If not, just bully your sisters into a variety of ridiculous trades by playing on their emotional attachment to the pink, purple and blue properties. (I’m looking at you, Jesse. Plus I know you had to be stealing from the bank, right? Surely we just weren’t that bad at the game?)

Workouts:

I’m BACK to the gym and it feels fantastic. For instance, yesterday was pull ups, dead lifts, shoulder press, rows, push ups, and something else that I don’t know the name for.

Running…I need to get my act together, but I can’t just yet. I’m prioritizing and the audition comes first. Everything else is secondary until after that. Plus I’m mad at running because it did this to me. I was thinking I was all hard core and awesome…but really I just feel pretty gross and I’m ashamed.

Not too ashamed to share here…but still. That belonged to a toe, you guys. YOU GUYS. I painted my toenails the day before I realized it needed to go. Don’t worry, I’m not posting any pictures of my toe, sans nail. If you really want one, ask, I’ll email you.

What else is new? I’ve got some giveaways happening here on the blog: slippers, a PDF book, and an entry for a Fitness event at Wash U. I’d recommend entering, it costs nothing…

P.S. I’m ridiculously sore and having trouble walking from the deadlifts yesterday. YES.

Cat, Random thoughts

Back to Work

January 29, 2013 hannahviolin 4 Comments

It occurred to me this afternoon that maybe I’ve had the flu this whole time. I wanted to practice this afternoon, but after about ten minutes of struggling, I realized I was UTTERLY EXHAUSTED and was missing shifts and really the whole exercise was pointless. So I listened to some recordings instead and lay on the couch and rested up for my Tuesday afternoon teaching.

I asked Chris if he thought I was just turning into a cat and he told me that despite how much he knows I want that, it was highly unlikely.

Nonetheless. I’m trying to convince myself that one week of not practicing is not going to entirely derail several previous great weeks of practicing, so this is just a minor setback. Flu or not flu, this was a nasty bit of something, and I’ve still got a bad cough. I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll have a bit more energy…or failing that, Thursday! It will be fine.

This is one of those blog posts where I just had a few things I wanted to say so I’m supplementing with cat pictures.

Have you guys seen Homeland? We’ve been watching it on-demand. We’re on the second season and it’s really good! I recommend you check it out if you haven’t seen it. Very well done and thought provoking, and I really like the haircut of the character played by Claire Danes. I think maybe I need more layers in my haircut next time?

My last haircut…what do you guys think?

Not the blonde—or should I do that too? It’d be very St. Louis 😉

Okay, really, not the blonde, but some more layers? My hair feels boring all of a sudden. This is how I think–we were watching some really intense scenes from Homeland and then I turned to Chris and said, Hey honey, how do you think I’d look with her haircut?

My husband thinks I’m a crazy person. I’m pretty sure of that. He also said, sure, why not?

Red pants, purple shoes? I wanted to wear purple shoes and I thought I saw somewhere that red and purple matched. I think I need a “fashion” page on the blog, don’t I?

We had some crazy “spring” storms today! I was happy to make it home from work safely tonight. There was a lot of rain and water on the ground, and various tornado watches and warnings all afternoon and evening. I guess it’s supposed to be cold again tomorrow. What a crazy winter we’ve had!

Cat, Running

What to do now?

January 23, 2013 hannahviolin 1 Comment

I’m home! It was a great “long weekend” in Phoenix and now it’s time to hit the ground running. Ideally. I’m trying to figure out how much work I can get done today before I teach (teaching work, mainly—there’s always stuff to be done outside of actual teaching and I was already behind) and I wanted to blog…and really I should just be practicing.

I got back to the gym this morning. It was nice to do something other than running (ha, as if I’ve really done much lately other than the half…) and I almost enjoyed doing squats. I was extra strong this morning though, which was awesome. I did several sets with 115 pounds which is a lot for me!

Cat time:

Nice to be home to this cat! Chris sent me that photo whilst I was gone.

Even though this one is pretty sweet, especially now that he’s settled down—he was a VERY feisty kitten!

The trick to instagramming a good cat picture is to figure out what setting is best. Albergo looks good on “Lo-Fi”, we determined.

The best part of marathon training: even though I am tired of running now,(arguably that has been going on for awhile) I still need to run, and the plan has 12 miles this weekend. I hope it’s really cold, like it was the other weekend! (I’d use my sarcastic font so you were clear, but generally everything I say is sarcastic.)

I like this picture from the race. I’m WALKING and still have that expression of great pain. Walking is hard, evidently.

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?

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.

Cat, Random thoughts

Cats and Chinese food

December 30, 2012 hannahviolin 2 Comments

Lots of bloggers like to do year-end recaps. 2012 has been a pretty eventful year for me, and I could probably write a really long post about it and include tons of wedding pictures. But maybe I’ve already written about myself enough? Perhaps I’ll be inspired.

But today I just want to share yesterday with you. I was active on social media (this is a shocker) and took a bunch of pictures, and you all know I enjoy re-sharing my pictures. (And I like doing journal-type entries the best, honestly. I don’t know if you find them interesting, but I enjoy writing them.)

The day started with a blogger meet up. I belong to a facebook group made up of bloggers from the St Louis area. I hadn’t made the past few meetings as they were on Friday nights and I work late and then usually am too tired to meet new people afterwards. This one was on a Saturday morning and involved coffee, so I was excited. It was kind of a meet up fail though, because it was just me and Lindsay.

I was going to the gym afterwards, and figured that gym clothes, ponytail, and no makeup were totally appropriate for a blogger meet up.

We had a great time chatting and drinking coffee at Deer Creek Coffee in Clayton. We discussed everything from the tax implications of blogging to whether or not our husbands like to eat leftovers. I was inspired by Lindsay’s energy and excitement about blogging and life in general!

Maybe my next blogger meet up will include more people?

Then it was time to hit the gym. I thought I felt fine but after I started working out I didn’t really. Mike had originally planned a circuit of 1 minute sprint, front squats, and kettlebell swings (we squeezed in an extra workout because of my trip next week) but I almost passed out after the second sprint so he revised the workout. (He actually asked if I wanted to go home and we could reschedule but I felt like I should soldier through.) Oops. I made it through the workout though, and I’m sure felt better for it! That is, it was probably a huge waste and I should have taken him up on his “rescheduling” offer but I felt like a loser. In retrospect I think he really wanted to go home as well since I was his last client, and he was drinking water just as fast as I was.

Nonetheless. Shower and then work time. Rarely is there a Saturday I don’t play a wedding and yesterday was no exception.

St Charles!

Gorgeous view of the…casino…

Me having fun with my timer camera app while waiting for a cue.

Leslie should appreciate my no ears hairstyle for the day.

After my gig, Chris and I decided to go out for Chinese food. Our favorite place to go in St Louis is Wei Hong Bakery and Restaurant. We discovered this place a few years ago and love it. It’s very casual and fairly inexpensive and always delicious. They say it’s pretty authentic too, but I have never been to China so I can’t vouch for that. Maybe I should take my brother there next time he’s in town!

I had hot and sour soup to start.

And then a seafood tofu casserole. They have this tofu that is called “egg tofu” on the menu—I suppose it has eggs in it (sorry Carrie and other vegans) but it is AMAZING. It has the consistency of a custard or flan, and I could probably eat it for every meal.

Naturally our meal ended with a fortune cookie.

Me, impatient? Never!

Anyway, the last thing we were doing was meeting some friends who recently got engaged (!!) at Sasha’s. But first I was lying on the couch watching TV and…

How could I go anywhere with this guy on my lap?

I decided to destroy her evening by flipping her over for a picture…

I wanted to get her belly in the picture, but my arms just aren’t that long! I probably should have gotten Chris to take the picture but I didn’t think ahead.