September is almost over, and I feel like it just started. I know I say this a lot, and everybody says that busy isn’t a good word, but oh my goodness this month has been busy.
My before school classes started last week, so I was waking up early and going to teach a bunch of 4th graders how to hold their violins. I have two new colleagues in my classes and they are both amazing! We have three new people total, and I’m sure the third is amazing as well–I just haven’t worked with them in the same way.
I also had a performance this past week with several evening rehearsals. It was a solo part in the premiere of a symphony written by a really nice cello player named Alexander Groesch. The performance went well, though I was relieved to have it behind me. It turns out that many of my colleagues turned down the solo part because they thought it was too hard. I tend to not shy away from difficult parts, and frankly, it wasn’t that bad, just a few tricky spots and some things that just needed to get into my ears. I may simply be a sucker for punishment though!
I had an extra busy week as well due to a few appointments: the doctor, the dentist, and the vet. In the future I will try to remember to space these things out into different weeks!
We went to Urbana last weekend to visit our friends Michael and Heather and to see some concerts/shows at the Ellnora Guitar Festival. It was a wonderful trip–we saw three concerts: Rodrigo y Gabriela, Sharon Isbin and the Pacifica Quartet, and the Ron Carter Trio, which ended up being minus the guitar player who couldn’t find a flight after his initial flight was canceled. We stayed over one night, and also got to enjoy meals at a few local restaurants. It was a lovely time and we loved the variety of musical experiences!
Sharon Isbin and some of the Pacifica QuartetRon Carter on bassSelfie with Sharon Isbin who was fantastic!
Last night we saw “Space: A Celestial Circus Show” which was put together by a wonderful colleague of mine, Abbie Steiling. She composed and played the music (with some other players as well) and it was a fun show with circus performers and pictures of Space by Abbie’s husband, Frederick. Some of the audience didn’t know how to behave in public (a woman in front of us actually had a video playing on her phone WITH SOUND for her young child! you could only hear it during very quiet parts, but WHAT?) but we still enjoyed the show.
So much purple!
Anyway, we have some Trader Joe’s croissants coming out of the toaster oven, so I’d better go. How is your September going?
I had a funny conversation the other day on a family zoom: I mentioned how I knew many of them read my blog but never commented, and my youngest sister says, what, you are still blogging, I thought you quit ages ago!
Which, I suppose in a way I did, and then I kept it up! So here we are. It’s the first week of the fall semester for me, in a way, but also the end of summer, and it’s UNBEARABLY HOT outside. The humidity is real.
I say in a way, because this week I started teaching my private students fall schedule, but next week I start with the college kids at Wash U. I’m working on that schedule. And then a few weeks later I start my other school job where I teach before school, and along the way gigs and concerts start ramping up, and before I know it my schedule is super crazy!
But things are well. The summer was fun and relaxing and I did many of the things I wanted to do. Many are still left to do, and I’m trying to prioritize that. I weirdly hurt my shoulder last week doing something–literally I don’t even know–so it’s been feeling gradually better. I tried to run a few times in the horrific humidity: one time unsuccessful due to the shoulder pain, but the second time more successfully.
We’ve done some fun things lately: Saturday night was especially fun. Louie and I walked over to a place called Joe’s Cafe and watched some friends perform with a group there. It was a lot of jazz/latin music, some improv, some written, and so much fun! I always plan things to do, and then right before usually wish I could just stay home and chill, but usually the things are way more fun than staying home would be, and this was an evening that will stick with me for longer! Ranya is one of the first friends I made when I moved to St Louis, and she is an awesome cello player, and Alyssa and Asako were the two violinists, and they both have different styles of playing and are both terrific at what they do. The rest of the band was good too, and the group kept us entertained the whole evening.
I’ve been making a point to get together with friends more often: the pandemic got me out of that habit, and I know that it is so easy to do nothing and it’s harder to get that inertia going, but so well worth it. In the past week I’ve gotten together several times with friends and every time it was so much fun and made me happier. Which was absolutely the intention, and hopefully it did the same for them! It’s also nice to chat with someone other than Louie: we spend a lot of time together, especially over the summer, and it’s always good to get together with others. It’s so easy to just hang out with the other person in your relationship, isn’t it? And then you work a ton, and then just want to watch TV and rinse, repeat.
Miles giving Louie a hug from behindMy windowsill plants
I’m looking forward to a wonderful semester. I know it will be pretty busy, but I am hoping to stay on top of things, have time for exercise and social activities and keep organized. I’ve mentioned I started using a paper planner again for day to day planning. I got into a planning podcast this summer which is by a blogger I’ve read for years (the SHUBox) and that made me want to try paper planning again. I’m using a 90 day planner by Savor Beauty, which is actually a little ridiculous, but I love the reflection pages, which are making me really think about what I want out of life. It’s so easy to get into the day by day of life and just let things happen rather than really considering what I want, and it’s been fun to work on that. I also enjoy having my goals for each day set out (for days when there is time aside from appointments) and then checking things off. I still of course use my google calendar for all things and My Music Staff for teaching lessons organization, but this is for the on the ground day to day stuff. We’ll see how it works during the hectic fall times!
Anyway, that’s all my boring stuff. I’ll end with a cartoon that I saw online that made me laugh.
We left off in Mueller State Park and then headed to Breckenridge. We were spending the night in Frisco before the conference started in Vail. When I originally planned this trip, we were going to head home after Mueller, but when Louie got invited to his conference, it magically worked out with just one extra night!
In grad school I was lucky enough to be able to spend two summers playing with the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado. It truly spoiled me for all other mountains, at least for awhile. I had also been back a few times to visit, but not in over a decade and never with Louie. I had wanted to stay overnight in Breck, but it was more than we wanted to pay (many of the places to stay seemed more geared towards longer stays, so they would have a reasonable night fee but a high cleaning fee which would make more sense if you were there for a week or something), and the places I found to reserve camping were already full by the time we needed to book. I did find some affordable places in Frisco, so I booked a night at the Snowshoe Motel (which when I just googled it now suggested I google “snowshoe motel death” and found that somebody was murdered there in 2014, but I digress, and it was a lovely motel, seriously). But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As always, we had an amazing drive to Breckenridge. The route from Mueller State Park to Breckenridge was all state roads and was beautiful. We went through Fairplay and over Hoosier Pass. We got to Breckenridge and had lunch at the Breckenridge Brewery where I had spent a lot of time in the past. It had changed, but also hadn’t changed, you know what I mean?
Then we found a place to park near the Riverwalk Center and walked around the town. It was a busy day and people were out and about, but I enjoyed looking to see what I recognized, and sharing the town with Louie. Breckenridge is surrounded by gorgeous mountains on all sides, and is really a special place. It’s also totally crowded and expensive, and full of tourists and traffic, but that’s to be expected in today’s world.
The Riverwalk Center is where the orchestra I was with performed. It used to be more of a tent structure and they’ve made it more permanent.I spent a summer looking at this view from the Tannhauser Condominiums on Main Street. They were still there!The Blue River!
After a few hours, we were ready to head to Frisco and check into our hotel. We got cleaned up and went to do some laundry in a nearby laundromat (ah, road trip troubles), which was easy enough. Frisco is a cute little mountain too as well, but less busy, and we were still early in the season, so it was surprisingly un-busy. We had dinner at the High Side Brewery (they had a BBQ truck too.)
The next morning we had the hotel breakfast and then checked out of the hotel and headed for a hike in Frisco. I found a loop called the Frisco Peninsula Loop which contained the Lakeshore, Perimeter and Buzzsaw Loops. I suppose it was really more of a biking loop, but we had a great time hiking and enjoying the views.
After the hike, we were pretty hungry and decided Mexican was in order. I remember having a pretty good lunch at a Tex-Mex place in Frisco in the past, but we found something better, a place called Cielo Oaxaca that I highly recommend! They had excellent mole sauce and everything was delicious.
Then we headed DOWN to Vail. it would be a relief to spend a night before 9000 feet, you know!
Louie had a conference in Vail at the Grand Hyatt, so we checked in there. It was a terrific room with a balcony, and it was wonderful to hang out in and relax. Since we spent 5 days there, I’ll just give you some general things we did and some highlights rather than a day-by-day.
The view from the room, not amazing but absolutely lovely
We ate at The George in downtown Vail twice: they had a terrific happy hour special on food and drinks and we loved the vibe. We also ate at La Cantina for dinner once and had breakfast at Two Arrows Coffee. We mostly had lunches and other breakfasts at the hotel, which was naturally quite overpriced but very convenient. The food in Vail was really pricey and though I’m sure there were many amazing restaurants there, Louie’s conference took up his time so we didn’t do an evening out with an expensive restaurant.
We were able to do a few hikes. We hiked the Strawberry Lane Trail, which was mostly just hiking up ski areas, but like we said, we don’t have ski areas to hike up and across in St Louis. We also hiked the Grouse Creek Loop in Minturn (we had to get the car out of the valet parking for this one), which was a lovely hike. We kept running into people who saw a moose, starting with a man at the beginning warning us that just up the trail a moose tried to attack his dog, which we warned other people about, but never saw a moose ourselves. We saw some moose tracks in the mud, and we even heard the story that evening at the banquet, about how some man had been attacked by a moose on the Grouse Creek Loop that morning (except we saw the man and it wasn’t him, it was his dog, and his dog was okay, they were just shaken up) so we really got to experience how rumors get started, but like I said, sadly no moose for us.
Louie’s poster for his poster sessionThere was a lot of snow still remaining!We visited the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens one evening.The closest we came to a mooseThe tent where they held the poster sessions at the conference.
Honestly, the hotel was nice, but it was a bit under construction, which was annoying. There was a path to walk to downtown Vail, but parts were diverted due to construction as well. The hotel did have a wonderful free shuttle to Lionshead and Vail Village, which ran quite often, and would also take you back. We took advantage of it several times, and often ended up walking back in the evening as the weather was lovely and we wanted to get exercise (and it was downhill slightly, hah.) I loved our time in Vail, but finally it was time to go home!
We visited with friends in Denver en route, just for lunch, and then drove most of the way across Kansas. I won’t bother mentioning where we stayed overnight, but we didn’t care for it, but we got up early and finished the drive the next day and we were glad to be home!
I hope you enjoyed reading these blog recaps of our trip. I’m sorry it took me so long to get through, but perhaps that just increased the excitement? Please leave a comment if you are reading, I love hearing from readers 🙂
July has been a whirlwind. Mostly good stuff, with a small amount of COVID in it (mild illness, on a whim took a test and tested positive, but a few days later tested negative again).
I played the whole season with the Gateway Festival Orchestra this year, and it was a lot. It was fun to play so much orchestral music, but man I did not want to wake up on some of the Saturday mornings for rehearsal, haha. I also had some other random gigs: weddings and concerts, including some viola stuff.
I taught a bunch of students, and I have four more days of summer teaching left. I enjoyed having some students for just the summer, and I have set up my fall schedule, mostly.
And we did a few things with friends, though we also had to cancel some things. The most picturesque thing was going to see the Chihuly Exhibition at the Botanical Gardens.
We sadly attended a goodbye party for two friends, Michael and Heather, who are moving a few hours away. It was a wonderful party, but a sad occasion, though we are very happy for them!
We didn’t accomplish as much at the old house as we originally thought we would, but we have done a bunch of stuff at the new house. One thing we’ve been waiting on is putting stuff on the walls, but we did a little more of that this month too.
I read a ton of books this month. Highlights included Demon Copperfield by Barbara Kingsolver, Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld and Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson.
I’ve got a lot to do this morning too, so I’ll leave you with that picture of Muriel and Miles sharing a hammock.
I’m sorry I haven’t been adding more recaps of my trip earlier…isn’t that how it goes? Rest assure I have notes and such and I hope to get a recap done soon. But life has been busy with plenty of activities!
When we got back, I went straight into summer teaching. It was a lot of fun getting back to it after several weeks off. In addition to teaching, we went to several operas at Opera Theatre (with the Young Friends dinner, the best deal for opera ever, dinner and drinks, plus your ticket, for about $50. )
At the opera
We also went out for my official birthday dinner at Bowood, and I got a facial at STL Skin and Body, where I hadn’t been in over a year. It improved my skin immensely!
Then my sister Leslie and her kids came to visit, so I took another week off teaching to hang out with them. We spent our first morning at the City Museum crawling all over the place. The next day we went to the Arch–the kids had loved seeing it and when they learned you could go up it, they requested to do that.
On top of the Arch!
We went to Circus Flora one night. Everybody loved the trained dogs and the tightrope walkers the most, I think. My nephew kept going on about the little chihuahua and how he thought it was amazing and how cute they were.
My niece got into sweeping and ended up sweeping my house, dusting with various dusters, and leafblowing the front with a new Ryobi leaf blower (battery powered) that Louie had gotten recently. I want to clarify that I did not request that she cleaned the house, though I may have gotten the ball rolling by once asking her to help sweep something off the kitchen floor during dinner prep. I’ll tell you, the front steps never looked better, and I need them to come back and clean up more.
The kids sweeping the front sidewalks.
We had a wonderful time visiting and hanging out, and they enjoyed exploring our new house.
We have some sticks to deal with in the back.
And then after they left, we were sad, and exhausted. We went to another opera that night, which ended with a real life proposal onstage.
The woman in white was the female lead in Treemonisha and her boyfriend surprised her with an onstage proposal. She said yes!
And then yesterday Louie and I went to the .zack theater in midtown to see the Amazing Acrocats. It was great, and much what you might expect from a cat circus. Basically sometimes the cats did the tricks they were supposed to and otherwise they did cat things. It was a lot of fun and we would highly recommend it if you have a chance. They are going to Denver next and then later to Minneapolis and Chicago.
We ended the weekend with a barbecue with Louie’s colleagues and some Succession watching (we are working through the latest season.) It was a busy but fun week!
Looking ahead, I am getting “back to normal” this week with lots of teaching and a few gigs. After that my sister Carrie visits over the holiday and we have a few plans for that as well, but I am not taking the week off, just having some time off due to the 4th of July falling on a Tuesday. I know there is still plenty of summer left, but as it is almost July, I am worried it will go by too quickly for my taste! I remind myself I have 6 more weeks of teaching scheduled, which is quite a lot, so there is plenty of summer left.
I’ll take a short break from my trip recaps to tell you how I’m doing right now. (Don’t worry, I’ve been going through photos and figuring out what to write about, and I will likely do another post tomorrow.)
It’s been the first week of summer teaching and it’s been great. I absolutely adore teaching at home in my new home, and I’ve enjoyed seeing my students again. I have a few new ones, and a few only over the summer, so things have been fairly busy. I am much more relaxed with my teaching rules over the summer and students are only required to take a certain number, but many take more than the required number. It’s nice to spread people out more over the day as well, and I’ve managed to only schedule 4 days a week as well!
Today is my last teaching day of the week and I only have a few hours. Then I have a relaxing afternoon (plus grocery shopping) and Louie and I are going out tonight for dinner to celebrate my birthday, which was last week. I told him it was okay to count the trip as my birthday celebrations but he disagreed. We also went to see the opera Susannah last night, and enjoyed a “Young Friends” buffet beforehand. We are just pushing the boundary of Young Friends, but I assure you we are still young for the opera!
I went for a run yesterday: I decided to get back into running so I have started a beginning running training plan through Runkeeper. It gives you 3 a week–I had meant to start on Monday but woke up with a headache so I pushed it back. My knee is doing mostly okay but my hip was hurting last night, but I think not bad enough to skip my planned run tomorrow. It really is mostly walking anyway, so I think I can listen to my body and do what works. I’m not sure if I also hurt my hip when I hurt my knee about a month ago, but I think it’s related. It’s nothing too bad though.
The weather has so far been warm but not humid so it’s been incredibly pleasant here. I will be grateful while I can! The cats were glad to see us when we returned: we had people stopping by often but it’s not the same as constant companionship. Muriel wasn’t so sure about violin however, and I think she would be happy never to hear the instrument again (sorry Muriel, not going to happen!). Miles is growing slightly less shy, and the students get to see a bit more of him, at least from a distant.
I feel like there isn’t too much to do here, which is somewhat true, if you ignore that we still need to finish decorating the house here, probably some yard work as well, but more importantly, there’s the other house. But it’s important to have down time and try to strike a balance, and the other house is a longer term project. We will likely go over there on Sunday and do some work.
So that’s me right now! How is your summer going? Do you have a lighter work schedule or keep doing the same?
