Come see me and my husband play with Chamber Project St Louis!

April 13, 2012  8:00pm

“Gods on the Ceiling”

The Chapel Venue

6238 Alexander Dr. 63105

www.chapelvenue.com

$12 includes concert and two drinks

purchase tickets online here or at the door

It should be a good concert!  Brahms Clarinet Quintet, Martinu Violin/Viola duo, and some other stuff too.  Follow the links there or email me for more information.  I hope to see you all there.  Seriously, Chris is a fantastic violist and puts the rest of us to shame—come for that reason alone.

(Am I transparently sucking up in the hopes that he’ll be nice to me at rehearsal?  Maybe… 😉 )

Performing the Martinu Duo with Laura, now I have to perform it with Chris since Laura is having a baby

It’s always interesting working with Chris—I feel like we musicians are more accustomed to working with our friends than people in other fields, and it’s a constant struggle to keep business and personal life separate.  Chris and I have strong personalities, are very competitive, and both tend to think we are right, so we do tend to clash a bit in rehearsals.  I also take his criticism more personally than from other people (though exceptions come to mind).  But in other ways we work really well together, since we (obviously) know each other so well (too well!) and understand each other’s facial expressions and body language more than other people do. 

Valentina and I are playing together again too—she is second from the right.

We haven’t had as many rehearsals YET as I’d want to, but they are all happening this week.  It should be a really awesome concert in the end, though this week is pretty busy and stressful…both with the concert and then the half marathon on Sunday.  (Goal:  don’t die.  I’m also hoping sheer adrenaline and willpower will carry me through under 2:30 since training sure isn’t.)

Me, pumped last year.  Didn’t really help.  But I have a whole extra year of running behind me now.

I posted something similar on my blog awhile back.  Last night I was hanging out with a friend and she referenced it.  She said it made her think—maybe I was just mean.  Then on the way home (I was driving, and she lives on the way) I missed her turn.  I said, oh, I was just going to my house.  She said, of course you were, because you only think of yourself.  And then we laughed and laughed.

One of my students yesterday asked if I followed the Cardinals.  Evidently he knows the new manager because he lives next door to one of the coaches.  I told him I did but was really a Braves fan.  He looked at me incredulously.  I said, yes, really.  And then he made fun of me.  I posted that on twitter, and got this response.

Yep. 

And that too.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice…wait, if I recall W said it best:

"There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again." —

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjmjqlOPd6A)

I decided to raid my family’s snapfish albums for a few more dome home pictures.  Here you are, enjoy!

You can see the cool triangle windows in this picture.

Carrie (a long time ago) sitting in her bedroom, which was my bedroom before.  You can see the wall triangles in a pentagon shape there.  Then my whole family in the dining room, good view of the shelves which are reverse triangle from the window.

{picture redacted by request of Carrie wearing an awesome vegetarian shirt}

Well, I know there are tons more pictures in print form, including albums with the work in progress, but not online or in digital form.  So that’s all you get for now, until we put all our prints online for me to share on the blog 😉

I missed blogging this week!  I was at home (that is to say, where I grew up) without regular wi-fi, and it just seemed easier to not worry about blogging at all, with the exception of a couple of posts from my phone.  At least we do have reliable cell coverage in Clinton—I recall many visits back in the earlier cell phone days where the sprint network did not seem to cover Clinton.

Clinton, South Carolina.  My hometown.  I moved there when I was a little girl with my family, and we lived in a lovely home near Presbyterian College.  After a couple of years my dad (who is evidently prone to long-term, grand idea type projects) decided to purchase some land on the outskirts of town on which he was going to build a dome house for us to live in.  This took awhile, as he also worked full time, but on his weekends and vacations he worked on the house.  About 10 years later we moved in. 

This is all just a naturally accepted part of life for me, and I sometimes forget that people aren’t used to living in dome houses.  So I figured I’d take a few pictures. 

Oh, one other note:  Either I looked pretty wretched all week (possible, due to the humidity) or my family just doesn’t take good pictures.  I also felt less comfortable making them take pictures of me than I do with Chris—with him, I just hand him the camera and he doesn’t argue, but my parents and sister seemed to think my insistence on a nice picture was a bit selfish and ridiculous of me.  I don’t know.  I just like to document things, and love looking back on pictures of…well…myself.  But there aren’t any pictures of me (or of oatmeal) in this post.  I apologize.

The front door.  The "round" factor comes from a bunch of triangles that are made into hexagons and pentagons. 

From the side.  I would have walked around the back, but it was pretty muddy from rain.  You can see the back porch, and the side door that was originally planned to lead to a wrap around porch.  You can also see the nice triangle window.  Basically there are three floors—a somewhat unfinished basement that includes an office and a bathroom, the main floor: with kitchen, living room, dining room (all connected), breakfast nook, and then also laundry room and master bedroom/bathroom, and the second floor: three small bedrooms and a bathroom.  We kids lived upstairs.  I forgot to take a picture, but the walls bend in on you—you have three walls, two flat and one rounded…oh, and no real ceiling.  One of the things that bothered me most growing up was the absolute utter lack of privacy.  The bathroom did have a ceiling though.

At the very top of the dome you see a little lookout room.  It’s called a cupola and it’s where bugs go to die.  It’s a small room that you can get to by a little ladder of sorts. 

Looking up to the second floor—see the space between the walls and the ceiling?  That’s what I’m talking about.

Inside of the dome.  All of the inside is that wood and you can see the triangles.  That’s a skylight to allow in light. 

And that’s all the pictures I took of the house this visit.  I hope you enjoyed your virtual tour of the house that my dad built ;)  Like I said, Dome sweet home.  Home sweet dome.

And we are done with our concert. Bach double with orchestra, check!

I’m rereading this one in hard copy. These days it is odd to read a real book rather than on my kindle. It’s so annoying turning pages by hand…

I bought a sandwich in St Louis for $8. That same sandwich costs $10 in Atlanta. Win! Or not.
They just paged somebody named Carrie Leslie.