1. Happy Anniversary to my sister and brother-in-law, Leslie and Peter! Today is their first wedding anniversary, hopefully the first of many, many, more. I’m really looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with them.

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2. I realized at about 12:30 today I hadn’t showered since Saturday morning. I know. Gross. I ran yesterday and then cleaned my house so I didn’t see a need to shower before, and then went right into “How I met your mother watching” followed by “True Blood” and just didn’t bother. This morning I ran again, and realized, wow. If it’s good for your hair to go a few days without shampooing, my hair should look really good right now!

(Oh, and no photos from this morning’s run, but rest assured it happened. I didn’t want to but I did and it felt great. So there.)

3.  I saw this picture on reddit the other day. It’s a photoshop, but still hilarious.

That’s the Cleveland Orchestra—my old teacher is the concertmaster and I can see he’s doing a great job following their yellow leader.

4. I made this recipe for Blue Cheese Stuffed Chicken the other night and I don’t think I mentioned it here. It’s delicious and I had it in the oven within about 15-20 minutes, so not too time consuming. I have made it several times before, and I don’t bother with the sauce—I tried it once but it wasn’t worth the effort and the chicken doesn’t need it. I served it with a salad of roasted vegetables loosely based on Natalie’s recipe here and definitely used her dressing. Yum!

5. I did play two weddings over the weekend but I had failed to properly charge my phone the night before (having cord issues—the plug doesn’t want to stay in) so I couldn’t take any pictures. I’m sorry to disappoint you if that’s your favorite part of my blog.

6. I’m finding myself trying to do more meal planning and want to try some soups or a stew or something, as the weather is changing. FASCINATING, right? Any good recipes to suggest for that sort of thing?

So one of the “post-audition” things I wanted to do (other than catch up on life and NOT practice Nutcracker Overture anymore) was to get back to fitness.

Last week I did two runs (well, run/walks, but that is good enough for now!) and a long bike ride. The weather has been wonderful and I’ve been enjoying getting back outside and sweating.

Obviously as a blogger, if I don’t photograph it it didn’t happen.

Post run.

View from the old Chain of Rocks bridge. You can see the St Louis skyline in the distance.

Requisite selfie with crooked bike helmet. Perhaps my head is actually just crooked? Yes, I wear those giant sunglasses for all of my fitness activities.

My bike.

The aforementioned bridge. How beautiful is the sky?

Instagrammed and zoomed in picture of the skyline. If you squint you can see the arch. “Peter, I can see your house from up here!”

This guy. I did not take her on any runs or bike rides. That should probably be remedied.

I’d thought if I went pigeon-toed I could get a thigh gap, but no such luck. I’m devastated.

Happy pre-run!

Lost, sad, and confused, post run.

But that post run haze led me to sign up for a Turkey Day 5k! I’m visiting Leslie over the holiday so we have decided to run the Lifetime Turkey Day 5k in Phoenix.  It’ll give us a little exercise before stuffing our faces, if nothing else.

I thought it would be fun and inspirational to have a medal display rack. I ordered this one the other week and put it up a few nights ago. I kind of love it, and the fact that it says “I run” will hopefully get me out the door more. I mean, really, it should say “I ran”, but I’d like it to be a true statement!

Other plans for this week: getting back to the gym and doing some squats and whatnot. Goal: three runs, one bike ride (which is really just more for fun than anything), and one gym workout.

How’s your fitness?

I guess that’s a sign of getting old.

There was biking. Biking is hard. We rode Grant’s Trail, which is 16 miles. Then I went home and ate everything I could find, some of which was at Taco Bell.

Saturday was wedding day as usual. This was at the City Museum.

Then there was practicing. Last night was the substitute audition for the symphony. I have to wait to hear, but if I get on the list that means if they need an extra for something (somebody sick or missing for another reason) they might call me.

I felt pretty good though. I hadn’t felt that good after an audition for awhile. I played my concerto and all five excerpts. After each excerpt (part of  a piece from the symphonic repertoire) I was terrified they would say “Thank you” but I kept getting to play. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or not. What was particularly funny was that everybody (minus one another) in the warm up area was at least ten years younger. I decided to use that to my advantage psychogically: I figured that meant I’d taken more auditions, practiced more, and knew more what was about to happen. I also felt really old, but eh. I’m okay with that.

I went to the Schlafly Tap Room with my friend April tonight. I started with beer cheese soup, followed by Mahi Mahi Tacos. The portions were pretty big, but now I have lunch for tomorrow!

Oh, and I shouldn’t forget to the mention the beer. Tasmanian IPA.

I guess we overstayed our welcome though, as when April came back from the bathroom she took this picture. Yes, it was before 10 pm.

Tomorrow is a busy day with quartet rehearsal and teaching. I’m looking forward to it. It’s nice to no longer have to practice the Nutcracker Overture. I have some fun projects ahead and I’m really looking forward to digging into some new repertoire. I’m also looking forward to getting back into working out (I took a hiatus due to the audition) and RUNNING. I promise, it’s actually going to happen this time 😉

How was your weekend?

Okay, dear readers, without further adieu, it’s time for more guest cats in honor of the greatest of all days of the week…CATURDAY!! Here are some reader submissions (you can email me your pictures and information at hannahviolin at gmail dot com to be included in the future!)

First up: from a reader and fellow blogger, Krista:

“This is Eleanor Roosevelt (Rosie).  She is 18 years old and still going strong.  She can tell time.  Every night at 10 pm she comes downstairs to tell me to go to bed.”

Such a pretty kitty! I love her focused eyes. Obviously she is counting the seconds in the day in order to keep track of time. It must be a hard life, but somebody’s gotta do it!

Next up from a reader, Melissa (and fellow violin teacher—I met Melissa a few summers ago doing my Suzuki Teacher Training in Kansas)…

“Sergei, a Siberian kitty, age 5
Shown with full mane kissing Ella, age 2″

“And with his lion cut for summer. He was not happy that first day.”

I wish my cat had long furry hair that I could cut into a lion cut. I love this look.

And one more:

From a reader, Nappie Dee. I love the description she wrote in her email so I am going to basically quote the whole thing! (and I freaking love this picture—I’m a sucker for a fat cat in a small suitcase or box.)

“This is Sushi – aka His Enormity, aka His Fatness. He is a ridiculously photogenic and extremely large, fat cat. We have a herd of four cats currently, down from five (or was it six?). Inspired by your project, we have recently instituted our own “Project Less Fat Cat” in our household.
Not sure how it’s going, because His Enormity does not seem any less hefty when hefted as of yet.

Also, with three other cats (of course they all have their various neuroses and eating disorders – we have one that is addicted to a specific brand of olive oil. No, really, it’s true), it’s difficult to be really super restrictive. Sigh.”

“Sushi is also the only cat in the household that does not run screaming for a kitty version of a bomb shelter whenever I break out the violin for practice.”

Did I tell you guys that the fatness hates violin too? It’s a hard life for her, honestly. Especially since (little known fact) her given name is Oistrakh—she is named after a famous violinist.

What’s funny to me is that all three of these readers play the violin, be it in an amateur or professional way. How many of you readers play the violin? Do I simply attract other violin-playing, cat-loving women to read my blog??

Anyway, THANKS A BUNCH for the awesome cat pictures. Let’s keep them coming, or it’ll be more fatness, more of the time. (That could be construed as a promise or a threat, depending.)

Local readers: don’t hate me. I’m not a St Louis Cardinals fan. In fact, I root against them in the playoffs. I realize this will make me a very unpopular local blogger, but the fact is: I am not from here.

I’m an Atlanta Braves fan. I grew up in the South, and in my region, everybody was a Braves fan. The 90’s were a great time, and everything else has been a crushing disappointment. I mean really, crushing. I can’t even watch anymore. When I do get interested and excited, I just get let down. (and I became a Braves fan in the 80’s…which were pretty disappointing as well but at least we had Dale Murphy.)

Cards fans: It’s great your team is winning. It seems like they win more often than not. Be happy, root for your team! But do you have to go on and on about how you are the best fans in baseball? Perhaps you are just the ones who haven’t felt loss as much as the rest of us? It’s easy to root for a winning team.

When I first lived in Cleveland the Indians had a couple of years of sold out games. And then they just kept losing and losing. I thought at the time, huh, fair weather fans. But as my team started losing and choking and doing poorly when they should be doing well…I realized it was so much more than that.

When baseball makes you happy generally, you want to watch. When baseball just makes you sad, you give up. You move forward in life. You pursue other interests, and you stop caring about a sport that features grown men in silly costumes.

There’s enough sadness in life, isn’t there?

All of this is me being overly dramatic, of course. If the Braves had done better in the playoffs, you can bet I’d continue to be secretly rooting for them. I don’t watch the games anymore, but I occasionally look sideways at the league rankings and hope to see them at the top.

I did do a little research on the Wikipedia to back up some of this. I think that we can all agree that Yankees fans deserve no sympathy ever, but after that, the team with the most World Series wins is the St Louis Cardinals.

So by all means root for your team. But don’t put everybody else down for what you perceive as them not rooting for their team.  Walk a mile in their shoes first.

Oh, here’s an interesting article my brother-in-law emailed to me the other day about the Atlanta Barves merchandise.

Edited to add: Saw this article today. Some language, but I appreciate the sentiment.

Dear readers:

Thank you for all reassuring me, both over the internet and in person, that you don’t think my blog is boring. I wasn’t seeking validation, (or was I, some would argue I suppose) but it was still delightful to receive it. That being said, I will still do my best to make my blog even more interesting. Interesting life equals interesting blog (combine with two parts of humor and bad writing).

I wrote a guest post on Meg’s blog about my trip to Paris. She made an error and said it was Kate’s post, but it was actually my post 🙂 Click over there and give it a read—it’s brand new content, never been published here!

I failed you all again though: no new guest Caturday post. I think I’ve learned that I need to write the post earlier in the week or it isn’t going to happen. I “promise” I’ll have one next Caturday. (Submissions are being gladly taken, just email me!)

Friday I went to get my nails done with my friend April—it was her birthday Saturday and she wanted an afternoon of fun.

The nail salon ladies definitely thought we were crazy.

I like my green nails!

I had a ton of gigs this weekend: three weddings and a church service.

A fair amount of time was spent in my car going from place to place.

I played a wedding at the zoo! I had never been, believe it or not. I keep talking with a friend about going but we haven’t made it yet. Soon I think.

Then it was April’s birthday party. One of her friends made homemade red velvet cupcakes for her.

(I like the cupcake stand.)

Dinner at Kim Ngan, a fairly new Vietnamese place on Grand Blvd. I love when I order something and the waitress looks at me skeptically and says, have you had that before? I often think it’s because I order the weird stuff (this had lots of seafood, including fishcakes which are awesome, but I think maybe most Americans don’t like it?). Anyway, the dish was fantastic—I forget what it was called but it was #30.

Oh, I saw this link on Facebook:  6 helpful reminders for the overwhelmed person. I thought it was interesting and helpful. This is a stressful week for me and I often react to stress like number 6 on the list.