We did a lot last weekend! This made up for the previous weekend when we pretty much bailed on all the concerts we could have seen and instead just ate good food and did stuff around the house.

Okay, the last week has been quite eventful. Did I take a lot of pictures (am I even a real blogger?)? Not really. But: we went out to a lovely dinner at Esca, a new restaurant here by Ben Poremba, who was the man behind one of my favorite (and currently closed) restaurants, Olio. Esca did NOT disappoint. We shared a variety of dishes including the branzino and the fire roasted beets and everything was delicious and better than we would have expected. If you can get a reservation and have the budget for it, I recommend that you go. We are already planning our next trip.

Friday night we went over the “old house” to do some work and discovered that the basement had flooded due to a clogged drain somehow. Louie got out the snake and worked on the drain in the backyard for 15-20 minutes (it was not fun) and finally got it unclogged. The sound of rushing water was glorious and then we had a bit of clean up to do. It was an unpleasant way to spend the evening so we consoled ourselves afterwards at the nearby Mexican restaurant, with tacos and margaritas.

Saturday I worked quite a bit and we went to a movie by the Italian Film Festival with a friend. It was a comedy and I really loved it! I laughed quite a bit, but not as hard as a trio of Italian women who were sitting near us.

Sunday we did something quite unusual: we saw a concert in a bunker. We went to the Tyson Research Center in West County and watched/listened to a concert of improvisation inside a bunker. Evidently there are dozens of bunkers that were originally used to store ammunition during WW2 but now are empty and some graduate students we allowed to use them for projects. One student put this concert together, with piano, violin, bass, and other things such as some accordion, foot stomping, humming, and more. The violinist was Marina from my sister Carrie’s quartet The Rhythm Method, so I was glad to meet her. Louie and I enjoyed the experience.

Later that day I played on a concert with the St Louis Chamber Soloists: unfortunately nobody seemed to get any photos of that.

Then the week began again in earnest, but it’s so near the end. In one month I am done teaching for the spring and we are heading out for our first summer trip (visiting a variety of family members in NY and PA) and then summer work begins after that. The year is just flying by, as always.

What else have I been up to lately? Teaching and practicing, of course, getting ready for some students to perform this weekend at the Music Club Federation Spring Festival (playing piano with one, this is not a good idea, but it was the best idea at the time), continuing to plan things for our upcoming travel, reading some books, watching tv, going on long walks listening to a variety of podcasts, doing a little cooking, trying to keep up on everything around the house (we are low on milk), and looking forward to another weekend of activities. This weekend I’m busy with the festival and proctoring theory exams, but we are going to the symphony one night and probably working at the old house another day and maybe going to the Thurteen Festival, but it might depend on how busy Louie is. He’s got one more week of classes after today and he is BUSY BUSY with it. There are more things to do than time to do them, that includes fun things that we want to do as well as not as fun things that we need to do, and it’s always a choice!

Here’s a photo my mom posted of the dome house in spring. Spring is here, both in St Louis and in South Carolina. Summer is probably here soon too.

And here’s what the cats have been up to.

Miles has been getting friendlier in his middle age. The students are shocked and always tell me things like “Miles was just sitting there and he let me pet him twice before running away”. It’s so fun to hear!

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?

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.

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.

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?

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!

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?

I almost titled this Monday Musings, but then I remembered it was Tuesday! I didn’t have my school class yesterday because of Presidents Day so it sort of felt like a Monday today.

We attended the Doos Trio concert last night at Washington University and it was fantastic! Here is the description from the website: Three masters and old friends join together in a new collaboration. Kayhan Kalhor, Wu Man, and Sandeep Das are established soloists in their individual traditions. Their new trio highlights the ancient traditions of Iran, China and India in a 21st century program. Three-time GRAMMY nominee Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh, who through his many musical collaborations has been instrumental in popularizing Persian music in the West. Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer giving her lute-like instrument a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. A Guggenheim Fellow and GRAMMY-winning musician, Sandeep Das is one of the leading tabla virtuosos in the world today. Since his debut concert at the age of 17 with legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar, Das has built a prolific international reputation spanning over three decades.

Things that I loved: how much FUN the musicians were having playing together (AND it sounded great), and how interesting it was to watch Kayhan Kalhor play the kamancheh, which seems like a precursor to the violin. I just really loved the concert, and wanted to get up on stage and improvise with them. It seemed they had some things that were set (endings for sure) and other things that were improvised, and that is exactly the sort of thing I was teaching in Creative Ability Development before scheduling got the best of us. I think so much of jazz improvisation has more rules than I want to deal with and I prefer improvising in a more free way and just having fun with it. This doesn’t mean that an auditorium of people will enjoy listening to me improvise, but the fun of it is the same. So much of music should be more focused on how fun it is to PLAY and not so worried about the audience and what the audience thinks. We tell kids not to worry about what other people think, and then we tell them they have to perform in certain ways so the audience likes it, and that certainly seems like a mixed message!

I made bread in my bread machine on Sunday. I rarely do this, and yet the bread is always so delicious. In this case, the bread was also really tall: I made a “large” loaf, forgetting that usually I prefer the “medium” size as it is not quite so tall.

Muriel was being adorable in my chair here. I took a series of photos as she kept changing position.

She was trying to set a trap with her belly, but I don’t think petting her was a wise move at the time.

After Friday’s snowstorm, the weather yesterday and today seems quite lovely. Most of the snow is gone, though not all, and I took my coat off this morning while running errands. February is always a crazy month with the weather.

Louie has come around and decided he does like the look of the fake plants in the sunroom. I find this is often the case with him: he is hesitant to trust my ideas with decorated, but then once I set it up (after convincing him to just let me try things out) he tends to come around. This gives me the thought that I have a good eye for decorating, which may not be true, but I do know what I like to look at. I’m considering some other decorating changes and trying to decide whether to just pull the trigger or wait longer and keep looking around (likely).

How’s your week going? Do you have snow on the ground where you live?