Happy (belated) New Year! How is your New Year going so far? Mine is just fine. I had a really nice vacation which was entirely too short, and I’m trying to make up for it by spending my free time reading rather than getting back into practicing and all that sort of thing. I suppose I’m doing fine though—I don’t have quite as many college students as I did and no musical theater gigs at this time, so I have some extra time to read, and I find myself doing that the most.

After Christmas I went to Phoenix to visit Leslie, Peter, and Athena. We had a good time—lots of relaxing, eating cookies (I brought some), reading books (to Athena), playing games, visiting the Musical Instrument Museum, the Zoo, taking a hike, and eating Mexican food.

Louie met me there a few days later. He had been visiting family and I didn’t go along due to work.

Athena enjoyed taking pictures, but didn’t always enjoy getting her picture taken. We did a few “photo shoots” where she would mostly attempt odd poses, and I experimented with some of the settings on my iPhone 8 plus.

Louie brought her a ukulele, which we all had fun playing with when she allowed us to.

This was one of the few pictures I got with her holding the ukulele properly! I don’t know how I teach kids that age to play the violin. I really don’t. Athena is adorable, but she is the most stubborn person I know and insists on doing everything her way and in her own time (well, okay, she’s pretty much exactly like I am) and you have to really be creative in order to get her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. She is going to be a big sister soon, so that bossiness will come in really handy!

Anyway, after the holidays we came back to St Louis, where the weather was only about 5 degrees colder than it had been. I got back into my private teaching, Louie got into panicking over the upcoming semester, and we watched some netflix and hung out with the cats. We also went to see the Bad Plus at Jazz at the Bistro.

College classes started this week so it’s been entirely too much emailing and trying to schedule them. It occasionally feels like herding cats, but I’m feeling good about my spring schedule, now. I’ve done a few other kind of random but fun things: helped put together some music for a repeat of the play I did the other year, but this time I won’t be there (worked with the Shakespeare Festival on that one!) and I helped out a friend by doing a little improv for a song he is writing…I don’t know what I’m doing most of the with improvisation but I just do it and occasionally it seems like it sounds like something interesting. One of my goals this year was to continue to improve on it, and I think the only way to really do that is to, well, do it.

My band hosted an open mic at the Gaslight Theatre and had a guest didgeridoo player.

And it snowed, like a foot! It was beautiful, at first, and now the snow is still here and still people haven’t cleared their sidewalks, and it’s annoying.

I posted my kind of “new year’s resolutions” on facebook towards the end of the year and received lots of advice on how to set goals…

So far I haven’t failed at any of these things, and I’m already succeeding in a few areas. Woo hoo!

Okay, off to get my workout in, hit the grocery store, make a bechamel sauce for tomorrow’s lasagna, and teach a few students. Wednesday and Thursday this semester will be my easier days, and I’m grateful for that.