I keep forgetting to mention this, so I wanted to make a very special post about it.  Not really.  It’s Thursday morning, I got up earlier than I needed to, so I’m blogging.  It’s my hobby 🙂

Are you a healthy living blogger in St Louis?  Then join us for a meet up at 1 pm on September 25 at Pi on the Delmar Loop.  The meet up is organized by Real Fit Mama and so far only 4 of us are down for it.  I don’t necessarily consider myself a healthy living blogger per se—and maybe you don’t either.  No matter.  Go here and let Real Fit Mama know if you are planning to come!

If that doesn’t spell healthy living, why then I just don’t know what does!  It certainly makes my stomach rumble for that delicious cornmeal based crust…the first time I ate it I almost cried with happiness.  Oh wait.  I do that almost every time!

Okay, gotta do some minor preparations for my father’s visit.  He’s getting into St Louis around noon, evidently, and I am in no way prepared for a houseguest.  I am under a great deal of stress right now and just barely keeping it together.  Everything I am going through was as a result of choices and decisions I made, but knowing that doesn’t make it easier.

I love this picture.

Hi all.

Remember tomorrow is our concert “Folk Freedom” for Chamber Project St Louis.  We had the last dress rehearsal tonight and it’s going to be fantastic.

“FOLK FREEDOM”
Thursday, September 8 2011, 7:30pm
The Chapel: A sanctuary for the arts
$12/4 Click HERE to purchase tickets online

Saturday, September 10, 8:00pm
The Tavern of Fine Arts
suggested contribution: 10$
gratitude contribution: 20$ – includes food and drink gift

Evidently my father is 25 miles south of St Louis right now.  He should be here by lunch tomorrow.  He’s been riding his bike from South Carolina, by himself, for the past two weeks and one day.  That’s a bike he’s pedaling, just FYI, not something motorized.  (I’ve gotten a lot of questions.)

I’m exhausted.  That dress rehearsal took everything I had.  And I didn’t have a whole lot to begin with.

The symphony starts up again tomorrow.  Fall is truly here.

I said fall, not fail!  Meh.  Same thing.

(I’m sorry.  This may be the worst blog post ever.  Come to our concert if you live in St Louis, you’ll love it!  Plus you can meet my dad.)

Doing this one Wordless Wednesday style, even though it’s Tuesday:

Somehow during my workout with Mike yesterday we got on the subject of career goals.  He was talking about his, and suddenly asked me what mine were.  I paused and said, Hmm…I guess I don’t have any.

It’s not entirely true.  But as I said it I realized perhaps that was my problem.  I don’t have a goal to be in the SLSO.  Maybe I should but I’m just too darned practical at this point.  I guess I’d like to be on the sub list but I’m just so tired of the disappointment…though that’s why I’ve given myself so much free time, so I can {hypothetically} practice more.  Teaching wise I would like more students, and I’d love to have more advanced students, but that’s not really a goal so much as something that will happen with time if I stop moving and stay in one place.  I am happy just making an impact on my students and making them smile and feel like they can do something on the violin that they couldn’t do before they came in.  And I’m already doing that with my students.

Then I said to Mike, "I’d like to write a book."

Interesting.  Maybe I should work on that.

Thought I’d pop in here with a quick reminder about what you should be doing NEXT WEEKEND.  Yes, I know it’s almost Labor Day weekend (or is already for some of you lazy butts) but NEXT WEEKEND is more important and better.  No, I’m not talking about the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (though I told Chris I had a very special blog post planned, he said, you better not, and I told him now I did out of spite) but I am talking about the first concerts of the year with Chamber Project St Louis.  The first concerts where I am a core member of the group rather than a guest.  (Though the updated photos are not on the website yet.  Here are the founding members!  Laura, Dana, Adrianne, and Jen.  You may recognize everybody from when we were on television in January.)

“FOLK FREEDOM”
Thursday, September 8 2011, 7:30pm
The Chapel: A sanctuary for the arts
$12/4 Click HERE to purchase tickets online

Saturday, September 10, 8:00pm
The Tavern of Fine Arts
suggested contribution: 10$
gratitude contribution: 20$ – includes food and drink gift

Both concerts are the same program so you only NEED to come to one, though, as a student of mine said, haven’t you ever seen a movie twice?  (Yes, in fact, I’ve seen Titanic eleven times in the theater and countless times on video and dvd.)  Seriously though, you only need to come once and I’ll be your best friend forever.  Or not.  Whichever you prefer, actually.

My father may be there as well—if you aren’t a regular reader I will tell you that he is biking here ALL BY HIMSELF from South Carolina.  You can follow his progress on twitter @jerrydfrey.  (You can follow me on twitter @hannahviolin but it’s far less impressive.  Well, impressive in a different way, i.e. how can one person tweet so often yet say so little?  The answer: lots of free time.  Mike suggested I spend that free time running more or perhaps combing my hair or simply staring at myself in the mirror.  But I digress.)

You can follow Chamber Project St Louis on twitter as well @cpstl, like them on facebook, or like me, hannahviolin, on facebook.  Okay!  Enough with the social media, right?  Should I mention that I am “helping” CPSTL start a blog?  It will be launching very soon.

I’m off to teach now, followed by some girl time tonight with some of my friends.  I’ll leave you with a picture of an envelope I got today.  I have been asked many times if I am taking Chris’s last name (answer, not entirely sure, leaning towards not).  However, this was the first piece of mail I received that had my “married” name on it and I have to admit I found it both upsetting and hilarious.  Chris told me to get over it.  Which is FUNNY because he isn’t willing to take MY name.

I can’t!  It’s too much of the “a” sound.  It makes me cringe.  Sorry, Chris, nothing personal!  I think Chris Frey is a far better option.

This is one of those posts where I spill out random thoughts and then rather than edit or proofread, I’ll spend an equal amount of time searching for mildly related pictures or possibly totally random cat pictures.  It’s part of the “life” portion of my blog header.  It’s also one of my favorite sort of blog posts to write!

I was a talkative child.  My mother would always yell at me, “don’t contradict me!” I would argue that I wasn’t contradicting her, I was simply correcting her.

Yes.  I am aware it’s the same thing.  But I always thought if I just explained what I meant, it would make sense.

I’m a last word sort of person.  It’s not that I necessarily HAVE to have the last word.  It’s that I simply do often have the last word.  I think fast, I read faster, and I talk fast.  And a lot.  Sorry about that.  Occasionally I think I’m probably a little hypomanic.  (I’m really not productive enough though.)

My trouble is knowing when to let go.  I’m a little bit intense for most people, on occasion.  It waxes and wanes.  I’m fully aware of my shortcomings.  It’s just that changing myself isn’t something I can do easily.  And not that I should.  I’ve done pretty well so far in my life, so I’m not that worried.  Just spitballing here.

If you have a text conversation with me, I’ll probably write the last text.  Because I’ll always have something else to say.  Though I work really hard to not do that, sometimes.  I know it can be annoying.

I think people put up with me because I’m really quite funny.  I’m sure I have other good qualities too.  I like to think I’m a nice person and a good friend.  Or at least maybe I’m really adorable?

My biggest problem with teaching is talking too much.  I also forget sometimes that my students can’t change gears as quickly as I can (in fact, no one really can!  I can go from laughing hysterically to completely serious in about 1 second.) and they {likely} think I’m a little weird.  I’m cool with that.  My favorite teachers growing up were a little bit weird.

I think it helps me with music.  I’ve been listening (Suzuki style!) to all the music for next week’s Chamber Project St Louis concerts.  (9/8 at 7:30 at the Chapel, 9/10 at 7:30 at the Tavern of Fine Arts, please come!) I am really excited to play all the music and there is just so much emotion involved!  I love playing really emotional pieces.  I am not a terribly emotional person in my day to day life, but I really pour it into my music.

A few months ago I gave myself a facebook timeout.  I took over a week off from facebook.  I did it, I went over the week without checking facebook.  Which was GREAT.  Except then I started using twitter more.  And now I only use facebook occasionally (still more than most people, but trust me, less than I used to) but I’ve become obsessed with twitter!!  So…is this a bad thing?  Do I need to go twitter-free?  Do I need a social media timeout? I am tracking my dad’s progress via twitter so I don’t want to go twitter-free, but I could cut back.  I could also cut back on text messaging.  I don’t want to cut back on blogging though!

And on that note, have a wonderful weekend!  What is most annoying about you?  How can you change this? (I’m kidding, don’t do that.)