The holiday season is upon on us, and if retailers and the media are to be believed we need to go and show our love for our friends and family by buying them tons of stuff! And also buying stuff for ourselves, because surely we don’t have enough!

But I live in a house full of stuff. Too much stuff, in fact, that I can’t figure out where to put it…stuff to give away, stuff to use, stuff that I want to hang onto “just in case”…I don’t need more stuff. And I realized the other day I’m in a (I guess!) “lucky” situation in that I don’t have to buy stuff for anybody else either! I mean, sure, I’d like to get some gifts for my parents and boyfriend just because I don’t want them to think I don’t care, but I don’t have a long list of people I “need” to buy for, because the people I spend time with and care the most about don’t care about stuff either. Or we DO but we buy what we need when we need it, or when we can afford it, and manage to do without the rest. It’s kind of nice, and refreshing, and makes me feel good. I won’t deny that I love a random surprise gift, to know that somebody thought of me (I love gifts from students!) but it isn’t that important. Or maybe we are all in the same boat? I doubt it, because I don’t care about the new iPhone, or getting a new car, or what brand of anything I’m wearing or carrying, or really what people think of me if most of my wardrobe is cheap clothes from Target, and my impression is certainly that a whole lot of people care about those things!

But I digress.

The holiday season is a busy time. Especially for we musicians, who tend to work our butts off providing all kinds of holiday cheer for you fine people. You’re welcome. It’s fun though. I don’t want a Christmas without cheesy Christmas music, do you? (Don’t answer that.) This season for me is dedicated to the show I’m doing on electric violin—we were, in fact, on TV Friday morning. There’s video, and here’s the link. Check it out! Don’t laugh 😉

I think, for a classically trained Suzuki kid who really can’t dance, I do pretty okay rocking out, playing by ear, by memory, and with others. I don’t know what the next step with my electric violin will be, if anything, but it’s been an adventure. A tiring adventure to be sure, but it’s been different.

Sometimes I get crabby. I know last week I put up a few posts that made people think I was feeling down. I don’t know—maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. A friend in the band suggested that we need to take what makes us happy and focus on that, to “find your joy” in your life and daily activities.

Today my joy is a bunch of things. Watching my cat play with a stuffed shrimp toy (omg, this sort of thing truly cracks me up!). Going for a run in the fairly mild weather we’re having. Wearing a bright red sweater. Texting with Leslie. Trying to decide what adorable thing to buy my niece for Christmas (not out of obligation but because I want to!) Planning some Christmas baking (cinnamon rolls, shortbread cookies). Looking forward to cuddling on the couch later and watching Dr Who (I have become absolutely obsessed with the show…). It’s easy to get overwhelmed with life and focus on negative things (student loans! tiny retirement accounts! too much junk/the house is dirty! too busy!) and harder to focus on positive things, but it’s important to keep working on my mindset.

In the meantime, here are some photos that my friend April took at our performance on Friday night. It was a fun show! And as a side note, I think it’s okay to be crabby occasionally 🙂

This is one of those weeks where I look at the calendar and think I must be crazy. April and I are throwing a “cookie exchange party” Friday and I’m planning my part of it. That includes baking cookies at some point, though I have a good recipe picked out! And making a cheese ball, and something else too probably. My quartet is playing for a composition class tomorrow, I’m getting my CD’s on Wednesday from Jen (woo hoo!) and the band has three shows this week. There’s only about two more weeks of teaching though (really, two weeks and part of a day) though those are five day weeks. Louie finishes up in two weeks too, and we’ve both been really busy and stressed out, and I’m SO looking forward to him being done with the semester so he can relax too.

One last thing, in this random post of everything…really a brain dump I guess…does anybody have any good book recommendations? I’m in the middle of a few non fiction right now but would love to find a great fiction book (or series.) Nothing too sci-fi or dystopian please.

So I realized after getting a few comments on my post yesterday that I might have come across a little bit sadder than I actually felt. But I SO appreciate it. It’s easy to forget that everybody goes through the same things! And part of trying to improve as a teacher, musician, and person is recognizing weaknesses…if we all thought we were perfect already we’d just get lazy, right?

I’m enjoying listening to some music lately. My quartet is learning Borodin’s Quartet no. 2 and I’m working on the Ravel and Franck Violin Sonatas with Jen and I’m really taking this morning to listen (and last night after I blogged) and learn from greater musicians than myself. I love how much music there is out there in the world, and that as I grow older I continue to learn new things. I started thinking about how much more of a performing life I have ahead of me (hopefully!) and how much more great music I hope to learn and perform.

Oh! So my band might be on Fox 2 news this Friday morning. It’s not completed confirmed yet but looks promising. I’ll probably tweet about it… (@hannahviolin) but you should check it out! I’d say set your VCR’s…

And this Friday we are playing in St Peter’s—not too far from home.

Speaking of! Do you young people know that people used to record shows on VCR? I was reading another blog recently that was about how Gilmore Girls is now available on Netflix, and how she was so excited because she hadn’t been able to watch them all because when you used to miss an episode, you couldn’t go online to watch it. Why no, you couldn’t, but if you were a true fan of a show you’d program your VCR to watch it. I used to live with my sister Leslie and we got really quite good about setting things up. It was especially entertaining with the antenna—you had to make sure the antenna was tuned to get good reception from the channel you wanted to record. It was harder if there were two shows on different channels and then you’d have to pick a way to set the antenna to get both channels decently. Life was hard back then! I realize there was also a time before programmable VCR’s but then you just had to rearrange your schedule around television shows or hope for reruns (which happened, and helped one out. It also helped that most shows you could miss one or two and be just fine…you didn’t-and still don’t!—have to watch them all in a row.)

(gratuitous kitty picture)

But honestly guys. Thanks for your kind comments on my feelings post. I didn’t even know people were still reading 🙂

I hear there is freezing rain outside. I’m warm inside, doing laundry, but really just drinking coffee and debating how bad my lower back feels/icy sidewalks/should I go for a run today or postpone until tomorrow.

Oh, and violin practice. I miss playing the violin! That is, classically. I didn’t bring it with me last week to Philly (taking running shoes I didn’t use wasted enough space) so it’s been quite awhile since I played other than the band stuff on Saturday, which isn’t quite the same (and isn’t as challenging as anything else I’m working on.) Louie’s dad (also a musician) was asking me Friday if I’d be practicing when I got home (I think Louie gives him the idea that I am a serious musician)…I guess Monday is close enough, right?

Oh, and there isn’t a way to “drive on ice” unless you mean slowly and allowing a ton of time to slow down. I saw somebody posting on facebook how nobody knows how to drive on ice. I don’t want to have to get on a soap box here, but during the many years I lived in Cleveland I learned the best way to drive in inclement weather is slowly and allowing room between you and the next car so that when you inevitably hit a patch of ice, maybe you won’t hit them. But here it seems people get upset if traffic slows down for bad weather, so I’m totally confused, and I’m sure that folks here know better 😉 I’m also sure that mostly what one reads on facebook is simply the opinion of the loudest people, not the majority opinion. I have to assume that at least.

Let’s see. No post is complete without a cat picture…or at least I get angry comments when I leave them out. And in my last post, yes, I meant I hadn’t seen the movie Rocky.

Yesterday was the first snow of the season, unless you count flurries…the band was in Marion, Illinois doing our first show and luckily the drive home was easy enough. I want some pictures or video of the show to share with you, but I don’t have anything good right now. Suffice it to say that I rocked out.

Other than this fabulous shot of us messing around in the dressing room pre-show.

Oh, and this selfie from sound check. Yes, we as a band have to set up all the lights and everything. The advantages of playing acoustic instruments and not having lighting to distract the audience abound in untold ways!

And nothing says rock like a floral sweater. You’re welcome 🙂

Today the Illumine Ensemble had our second (last for now) show of Fractured Fairy Tales. Here’s a link to a video clip—Friday’s show was great fun and today’s was nice though the crowd was small. We could blame the snow but I think we didn’t have enough marketing either. It’s a tough show to market, because it’s sort of geared towards kids, but then aspects of it might be better for adults…but it was a fun show and I think with some tweaking we can really make it one way or the other. (Tweaking, not twerking. Please don’t get confused.)

Tonight we are checking out a new Mexican Restaurant and seeing a movie at a film festival. I know, it’s cold and snowy and really I should hibernate, but it’ll be nice to have an evening to NOT work. Though an evening hibernating on the couch would be lovely too, but I’m determined to not become a potato.  Unless it’s a sweet potato, and then I’ll consider it.

Stay warm my friends! Sweaters, boots, snow, hot drinks…winter is here!

I’m not dressing up this year. I have in the past but I didn’t feel like making the effort this year to find a costume. Maybe all my creative juices have been sapped!

I had a great trip to Phoenix to visit my niece Athena. She’s a darling, must be the genes…

Why yes, I was wearing shorts. It was nearly 100 degrees in Phoenix. How people live there I don’t know.

We also got to see Cheyenne Jackson perform with the Phoenix Symphony. It was so not my cup of tea but I suppose it was different. The audience seemed to love it though. And we had a lot of good take-out from various places around Phoenix. They have great Mexican food there.

Since getting home it’s been business as usual—I have a few more concerts coming up that require rehearsals, plus new music with Jen (we are looking at a bunch of French Sonatas) and new music with the Quartet. Oh, and Jen and I are working on the details of producing a CD of our recital—we want to sell copies of it in order to raise money for a charity. I’ll tell you more about it later, but basically as a breast cancer survivor she wants to give back to those who helped her and as a friend of a breast cancer survivor I’m all for it. Currently I’m debating over how many memory slips/mistakes are acceptable on a live CD…I know I’m not perfect, and performing is one thing, but I’m trying to decide if I want everything on the CD.

This picture cracks me up. I look like I’m playing side-saddle or something..and while I WAS it was as part of a short demonstration of the opening chord of Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet. I was standing to talk and then sat down briefly to play the chord.

Side note: I currently have ANOTHER cold. I guess all the stress, traveling, and germy students are catching up to me. On the bright side, this year I won’t be getting the flu since I got my first flu shot ever a few weeks ago!

Target knows how to put on band-aids! That sucker stayed on through a run AND a shower. Another side-note: I haven’t quite gotten used to having health insurance that actually pays for things. I couldn’t believe my insurance covered the flu shot!

Plans for the weekend include hiking, maybe a bike ride, and lots of work around the house. This is the last weekend before my band tour really gets going and I want to take advantage. Of course, being sick is putting a damper on things but I’m trying to ignore it for now.

What are you doing for Halloween?