Today is my brother’s birthday—Happy Birthday Jesse!  He is currently in China for the summer. 

Monday night I was under the impression it was July 10th, and I thought China was 12 hours ahead, so I dashed off a quick HB email to him.  A little bit later I realized it was actually July 9th and I was early, so I sent a quick "oh, hai, I messed up but HB anyway" email.  Oh well, better early than late, right?  Anyway, Jesse responded and mentioned that he reads my blog there too, but can only see the text, not the pictures.  I suppose he doesn’t mind—he’s really only missing out on a bunch of cat pictures and the occasional bloodied or bruised leg or foot. 

I don’t see Jesse very often, but of course he was at my wedding.  However, I barely got a chance to talk to him—I thought I would have more time the next day but I didn’t realize he was leaving early.  Oops.  Hopefully at Leslie’s wedding I’ll have more time. 

Now I’ll post some pictures of Jesse, and he won’t be able to see them.  *evil laugh*

Mom and Jesse

 

Jesse, Mom, Dad, me, Chris, Leslie, Carrie. 

Carrie, Jesse at our rehearsal dinner the night before…

Oh, and here we were.  I’m guessing Christmas 1980, since it seems to be pre-Leslie.  We used to be natural blondes.

How was your weekend?  Mine was wonderful.  I was hard at work packing up my house, oh, and I spent Saturday at the pool.  Friday was a fun night as well, had some fun with the girls and hit up every restaurant and bar on Maryland Plaza in the Central West End.  (This is only a slight exaggeration.  I think we went to five different places before I really had to get home.)

But Saturday was for lounging by the pool.  Don’t judge.  You know I usually work hard.  (Okay, you don’t know that, but I swear I do.  Usually.  On occasion?  At least between birth and oh, 23 or so.)

Firstly, I had to take this picture or you wouldn’t know that I was at a pool.  Those are my legs.  And my feet.  If you look closely you can see the blister on my right foot from the day before.  Note to self:  don’t wear new shoes for hours when you plan to walk or stand a lot.

Oh, and before I really talk about the pool, let’s talk about various self-inflicted wounds that I have happening. Friday night I bumped into a glass table and cut my knee.

Do you see?  I was wearing shorts, I promise.  (It was over 105 degrees, shorts are perfectly acceptable going out clothing.)  This really stung, especially in the chlorine.  I like to think that the pool water helped clean it out.

This one is a little harder to see, but those are bruises on my knees from burpees.

Is that any better?  Yes, I know they aren’t dark bruises, but STILL they exist, and they hurt.

One last thing is that there is a lovely bruise next to my pinky toe on my right foot (same right foot with blister) from dropping a jar of peanut butter on it earlier in the week.  To sum it up:  I’m a disaster area.  It’s a miracle I’m still alive.

Okay, I promised to talk about the pool.  I went with my friend Jen to the Cheshire Inn.  They have a pool you can use if you spend $20 on food and drinks.  If you plan on lunch and a couple of drinks this is not a problem.  (Honestly, I feel uncomfortable telling you all that, because I don’t want it to get overcrowded.  So don’t tell everybody you know, okay?)

 

I made Jen take this picture for the blog.  I am not sure why I was making a maniacal face.  Perhaps to distract you from my stomach?

The Cheshire Inn is near the really large Amoco sign.  This is an actual thing.  If you say that in St Louis, people really know what you are talking about.

Self Portrait. 

You have to get there early to claim the good chairs.   We had planned to arrive by 10:30 am.  I was exhausted when I woke up Saturday morning, and I was worried it would be too hot to go to the pool.  As in, I texted Jen whining that I thought I might be too tired and too hot to…lie around by a pool. Yeah.  These are not actual problems.  We decided to man up and go, since we’d been planning it for weeks (I am not usually that free on Saturdays.)

Lunch!  Chicken salad and fruit.  I’m not a huge fan of the green melon (honeydew, I believe it is called), but the berries and pineapple warmed my heart.

All in all it was a wonderful day. 

Saturday night I met some friends at Pi, my favorite pizza place in all of the world.  I made them order a deep dish because I am obsessed with it.  Then I was asleep by 11:30 I think. 

Sunday morning Jen and I "ran" Forest Park.  Even though it was approximately 20 degrees cooler than it has been…it was STILL too hot to really run.  The last couple miles were primarily walking as I thought I was going to pass out.  Lesson learned:  90 degrees is still hot, and I am stupid for not carrying water.

Sunday afternoon I packed a bunch of boxes, and then Sunday night I finally finished watching True Blood season two and started on season three.

I’m not sure why I felt like sharing all of this with you all, but hey, super exciting stuff, right?

And now it’s Monday.  Busy week ahead of packing and getting ready to move, as well as my last week of teaching until mid-August.  What are you up to?  HOW IS YOUR DAY SO FAR?

We bought this onesie for Benjamin in Miami Beach.  Looks good on him!

I think that’s how the song goes?

Honestly though, I wouldn’t.  But my dad did, in the past 12 months.

Here he is, returned from his 10,000th mile for the year.

Last fall he biked from my hometown (and his home) in Clinton, South Carolina to Phoenix, Arizona, with a side trip to St Louis, Missouri.  Since then he’s been continuing to bike, day trips, weekend trips and longer.  Once he realized he could hit 10,000 miles for the year he made that a goal.  I asked if he would be trying for another 10,000 this year and he said no.

That’s my dad.  I don’t think he’s trying to be an inspiration to anyone, but look.  He’s 65 years old.  What’s your excuse?  I’m going to go for a run now.

I never told you guys about the photo shoot I did the other week for Chamber Project St Louis.  I needed to get a good headshot that will be going on their website for the upcoming season.  Brandon Krepel was the photographer and he was a lot of fun to work with, plus the photos look great. 

The founding members had done their photo shoots a few summers ago, and we wanted ours (my friend and colleague Valentina was there also) to be in a similar style and background.  The previous ones had been in front of a brick wall, so we met in the Demun neighborhood where there was a lovely brick wall on the side of a building.  So there we are, out on the street on a Sunday afternoon with violins and cellos, and a photographer and his wife holding the white light thingy they always hold up—people walking by must have thought we were either famous or crazy!

Looking fierce, right?

 

Photo shoots are funny.  Or at least Brandon was.  Or I just never take anything seriously.

This was both Chris and Brandon’s favorite.

This is my favorite, and the one I chose for the website.  Brandon is going to fix it up a bit and make me look younger (or something.)  Anyway, all photos in this post are from Brandon Krepel Photography in case you didn’t figure that out already.

Famous, right?

After my oatmeal post the other night, I received this delightful picture in my email inbox the following morning.

I have learned that passive aggressive blogging is truly the way to get your friends to do stuff for you.

This morning we learned that the best part of living in St Louis is that your friends sometimes just realize they are driving through on their way somewhere else (i.e. from the East Coast to Colorado) and think to themselves, I wonder if Hannah and Chris are free.  The answer, for our old friend Jeff P (friend of ours from college), of course we are!  We got to have brunch with him and then he was on his way, but promised to come back in July and stay a few days.  The best part of seeing old friends (aside from feeling young again) is when it feels like no time has passed.  We were making inside jokes and talking about Mahler symphonies as if we were still in Cleveland together.  (I still remember when Jeff was concerned that I was dating Chris, because he thought he was kind of a jerk.  Then he got to know him better and they ended up being best friends.)

I didn’t take a picture of Jeff, but did take a picture of my breakfast burrito.  I only managed to eat half of this because it was huge.