Why it’s best not to gloat

January 13, 2013 hannahviolin 6 Comments

Yesterday morning my friend Sarah was complaining of being so “cold” in Phoenix. I often give her a hard time about this, because “cold” to her is usually about 60 degrees and I find when I visit she is always wearing significantly more clothing than I am.

Then I went to check the weather. When you go to Weather.com the most recent cities you have looked at show up at the top. After seeing the results I made a little picture for her…and for the world…

That’s right, I have mad “Paint” skills.

But then later I checked back and…

Things got even worse from there but I had stuff to do so I couldn’t spend all my time making pictures on the computer! I had to take pictures of the cat!

I could spend hours photographing this magnificent creature. (I mean, I do.)

If you look closely you can see my gross black toenail(s). (She resembles a potato here I think. Or is potatoe?)

And then I had to go to work later. I saw this in one of the pieces we played.

And I had to make my friend take pictures of my tiny diet coke! (You know how I am about diet coke.)

Today—better go get some stuff done before we “have” to see:

How’s your weekend so far? How’s the weather?

(current weather…)

Cat

Birthdays and Cats

January 11, 2013 hannahviolin 13 Comments

Yesterday was Chris’s birthday. We went to the Schlafly Tap Room to meet up with some friends and have some beers.

I wanted to get a picture of Chris.

Me, recreating his pose. I think I succeeded and indeed, made it even creepier. Anyway, it was a low key night and we enjoyed ourselves.

Before we left the house…

This happened.

The cat loves lying on her back and she looks completely ridiculous when she does so.

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This part of her personality hasn’t changed since she was a wee little kitty, though luckily my furniture has been slightly upgraded.

I was reading Runner’s World Magazine (I’m not sure why I am still a subscriber but it sometimes seems exceedingly difficult to stop getting magazines) and found this interesting tidbit:

Mike (my trainer) and I often have discussions about my hearing. He is a low-talker, we are often in a room with lots of ambient noise and I often have to ask him to repeat himself. He claims none of his other clients have that problem. I don’t know.

Maybe I am a little hard of hearing, or maybe his other clients don’t want to make a big deal about the fact that he should talk louder. When I showed him that, he thought it was one of the most ridiculous “facts” ever and asked where I get this stuff? (Which implied that I am a constant fount of bad studies and incorrect information…?)

Sometimes it’s hard to know how to end a post. I shouldn’t just end every post with a picture of my cat judging you or giving you a sad look, should I? Did you know that “sad cat” is one of the number one searches for my blog?

Travel

Traveling the world

January 10, 2013 hannahviolin 2 Comments

My parents have always emphasized the importance of getting out there and seeing the world. I grew up in South Carolina, but my grandparents lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania and we were often driving up to visit. Along the way we’d stop in Virginia or other places to visit other family members, or we’d go to Philadelphia or New York City with our family in Pennsylvania.

We also spent a lot of time exploring our home state of South Carolina. We’d drive to the beach for a weekend, or to nearby historical or ecological places of interest like Chimney Rock, Cowpens, or the Riverbanks Zoo for a day trip or a weekend camping trip. In the summer we’d take longer trips, to the Grand Canyon, or to California and Banff, or to the Great Lakes. I learned that there was a whole world out there and it was important to explore it and learn as much as you could about it.

As a family of five or six (the sixth came later), the best way to see the world was to drive there. If we stayed overnight somewhere, we generally camped. We’d load up the car with the tent, sleeping bags, suitcases, camp stove, bug spray, water bottles, and bags of books, and off we’d go. My mother would encourage us to keep journals on the longer trips (some of which are still CLASSIC reading when we visit—I’d say my early journals were the precursors to this blog, in fact, I was perhaps the first Healthy Living Blogger as I’d generally document every meal!).

As I grew older I continued traveling though often the reasons were different. I’d travel for music festivals, to Colorado, to Europe, to small towns in Ohio. I’d travel to visit Chris in Miami, Cleveland, and San Diego. I’d travel for auditions for orchestras—to Houston, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh.

And sometimes I’d get to travel for fun. One of my favorite relaxing vacations is going on cruises (like for our honeymoon, and the summer before that, and Chris recently suggested we might want a cruise this summer). There’s just something about being somewhere warm, eating a ton and lying around drinking pina coladas to your heart’s content. Though going to Paris was amazing as well—tons of sightseeing and walking around, yet still eating a ton and drinking wine to our heart’s content. (You see a theme here, right? This is why I’m fat…)

If you read my blog regularly you probably notice I do tend to get to travel a lot. I’ve got another trip to Phoenix coming up soon, and we just got back from Chicago. After that I actually don’t have anything planned until the summer though. Summer plans so far definitely include a trip to Long Island for my sister-in-law’s wedding and possibly another wedding or two.

We’ve also tossed out the possibility of a cruise (There’s a great guide in the New York Times about cruising)—I’d love to do an Alaskan cruise out of Seattle, because that would be all-new to us– or you could visit a “sleeper city” like St Louis for fairly cheap (I love that Phoenix is also on that list!) If you are ready to book your vacation you can go here for airfare, hotels, and rental cars. There are also more articles about various destinations. I love reading about the travel possibilities and dreaming about my next trip…almost as much as I enjoy taking the trip! (I also love writing about it later and reliving the experience while looking at my pictures. To me this is all part of the travel experience.)

Where do you want to go?

Cat, Running

Do you like to run when you are sick?

January 9, 2013 hannahviolin 8 Comments

Today’s post is about being sick, running, and my cat.

Yesterday was my first day back to my gym this year. I’d thought it might be busier but I think it was in fact, emptier than usual. Then again it was 9 am on a Tuesday. It was lower body workout day with Mike (my trainer), so we did front squats, rear squats, one legged squats (which I remember being a disaster in the past but worked just fine), and kettlebell swings. It seems like that wasn’t that much stuff but we were doing a lot of sets of each thing.

(See that red mark—that’s from New Year’s Eve when I cut my foot on my own shoe! Thanks to Leslie for the purple Toms, which are not slippers, they are actually shoes.)

Stuff we talked about at the gym yesterday:

He said, oh, you have that half marathon coming up, have you been doing any running? I just looked at him.

We also discussed getting food poisoning as a diet method. He had food poisoning or a stomach bug (who knows, we are not doctors) the other week and lost ten pounds in one day (so he says). He was proud that he hadn’t gained all of that back. We decided that perhaps getting the stomach flu right after the holidays was the perfect timing, at least for him. (He had said before that he lost ten pounds leading up to Christmas so he could overindulge.) I can’t decide if I hate him for being able to lose ten pounds in the blink of an eye or if he’s my disordered fitness inspiration.

I told him I was excited that was going to live longer (according to the most recent study) because I was overweight. He said, looking incredulous, who said you were overweight? I said, um, BMI charts. He got really angry then at BMI charts and starting muttering under his breath about this, and then said, well, I’m probably overweight too according to the BMI charts. We high-fived for living longer. (We do a fair amount of high-fiving at the gym.)

(This is from a tote bag Leslie gave me for being her matron of honor.)

So when you are sick, do you like to work out? I hate it. It makes me feel like crap and I am of the opinion that when I’m sick I should take it easy and rest so I can get better as fast as possible. But then the internet says if it’s in your head you can workout, in your chest, stay home (I often think of it as “in your head” aka you aren’t actually sick you just think you are). My current cold is in my head (with perhaps some stomach issues as well which I won’t discuss here and have the potential to change the outcome of this discussion) so that means I should run.

(And foam roll. I got out of the habit whilst we were in Chicago and I can feel the difference.)

A friend suggested, if you are sick enough that you don’t feel guilty skipping your workout then it’s okay to skip. Otherwise, suck it up.

All of this to say: I canceled going to lunch with a friend so I could sleep a little longer and still get my run in before I go to teach. I can’t figure out if that is dedication or really messed up priorities.

Chicago, Travel

Visiting Chicago in Winter

January 8, 2013 hannahviolin 4 Comments

I didn’t start loving Chicago until I moved to St Louis. It seems like everybody here loves taking trips to Chicago more than anything else. It’s easy to get to and there’s plenty to see and do and EAT. It’s cold in the winter, sure, but it’s cold here too.

I’ve mentioned quite a bit of our trip already, so I just wanted to wrap it up and give a shout out to the restaurants we loved and to our hotel. Namely, Blackbird and the Publican, and the Hotel James. (Or James Hotel? I guess it’s just “The James.”)

We chose Blackbird for our anniversary dinner. (This was our first wedding anniversary so we were pretty psyched!) We checked into the hotel in the early afternoon and then took naps. I was woken up by one of the hotel staff delivering a bottle of champagne and chocolates with raspberries for us, free of charge!

(I can’t say enough nice things about the hotel, actually. We loved it there.) It was great sipping on champagne while getting dressed up.

What to order? We decided on the sweetbreads and the scallops, and then I had the duck breast and Chris had the elk loin.

It was all really delicious. I can’t decide if the duck or elk was my favorite.

We decided not to order the $150 tea and instead had just regular old french press coffee.

With cheesecake with sweet potato ice cream. It was a wonderful meal and a wonderful day!

We could have eaten at a world class restaurant for every meal, but we wanted to be lazy and spontaneous to some extent, so we only planned one other “fancy” meal. I had been to the Publican before but Chris hadn’t.

(I wore my best gray sweater.)

It was super dark in the restaurant and I detest taking flash photos in restaurants. Not even because of the quality, but because it makes you look like a fool.

This deserved one though. Short Ribs, Korean BBQ style, so juicy and delicious, with peanuts and cole slaw and it was just amazing. We also had a charcuterie plate, potatoes, and swiss chard. For dessert we had “Rice Pudding Creme Brulee” which was phenomenal as well.

Other notable things we did in Chicago:

We went up the John Hancock Building to the Signature Room and had a drink while enjoying the scenery.

We went to see “Second City’s Guide to the Opera,” with Patrick Stewart and Renee Fleming. The show was hilarious and highly entertaining! Plus our friend John was playing violin.

We went to a restaurant called Heaven on Seven that had a wall of hot sauce!

And we tried to perfect the couple self portrait.

How’d we do? Chris has gotten a lot of compliments on his fantastic beard.

Weddings

Parasols, purses, and personalization

January 7, 2013 hannahviolin Leave a comment

I can’t wait for the professional photos from my sister Leslie’s wedding. After all, that can’t be the best picture of the two of us, can it?

Anyway, today’s post is about three things that I think fit together pretty well. Parasols, purses, and personalization. Nice alliteration, right?

It hasn’t quite been three months since her wedding, but it feels like such a long time. There are so many details I’ve forgotten and I can’t wait to see them again. The parasols, the earrings, the jewelry, the inside of her dress where the seamstress made a little label with her initials and date (I think?). (One could have just used a label maker, like from the 80s..)

Have I told you guys about the parasols? When we went to the Japanese garden the day after her bachelorette party the sun seemed really bright (go figure!) and we realized that we wouldn’t be able to wear sunglasses because we wouldn’t want them in the pictures nor would we want the lines on our noses from them! What to do?

The aforementioned sunglasses which could not be worn at the wedding, by aforementioned pool.

So when we saw parasols for sale in the gift shop for $10 each we couldn’t pass them up. We thought they’d be practical plus would look awesome in photographs.

That’s the sort of thing I’m really looking forward to from her wedding photos, and what I really loved in mine and in life—all those crazy details. Obviously I’m also looking forward to the bigger picture pictures too, like the first look, the after wedding pictures of the happy couple at the garden, family photos, but I just LOVE the details and the personalization.

Here’s the purse from my wedding.

Inside there is a lovely label.

I gave one to Leslie as well for being my maid of honor.

Well, Leslie thought they would be perfect for her wedding too (especially since we barely used them) but her colors was different. The purple flower was removable so I asked the original vendor to make new ones.

Unfortunately on the first try the color was wrong, so I had to try again.

At the bottom of this picture you can see a bit of the final flower. It’s a lot pinker.

I absolutely loved that the purses were personalized. Of course that meant for Leslie’s wedding I was carrying a purse that said “Bride” on the inside, but I certainly didn’t mind. I also love that her wedding dress has a little label in it (not that she would forgot for what occasion she wore the dress, but STILL. And I should have gotten a picture of it from her before writing this post…)

My mom emailed me one! Thanks Mom 🙂

Basically, I love the idea of personalized stuff. I don’t know why I don’t do it more often.

(All the big brands like to do labels, so why not ourselves? Why advertise for Gap or some other store when we could advertise for ourselves, or our blogs! Or at least find your stuff at the Laundromat, right?)

If I weren’t afraid of ironing I could get iron on labels online and really put my mark on my things. That site also has pretty cool looking woven name labels that I bet would work well for gifts. I see that you can not only label your clothes, linens, that sort of thing (with your name, a date, perhaps even an inspirational quote) you can label stuff like golf clubs and perhaps electronics and books.

Honestly, sometimes (unlike blogging) labeling and personalizing things isn’t JUST about narcissism, getting attention, or remembering special moments, it’s practical in case you leave something somewhere—if I’d had my favorite water bottle labeled the day I left it at the gym then maybe I would have gotten it back.

(If not for the label inside, the personalized hanger would help us know this was Leslie’s wedding dress!)

And I’ll mention the parasols again—after we purchased two similar looking parasols, we realized there were slight differences. Leslie picked out the one she liked best (bride’s prerogative) and if we had been able to label them, we wouldn’t have kept having to figure out which one that was again! And that brings this blog post full circle. In a nutshell, labeling and personalization saves time and money, and if I had run with a parasol all summer long I wouldn’t have had such horrific tan lines to begin with!

HANNAHVIOLIN

Why it’s best not to gloat

Birthdays and Cats

Traveling the world

Do you like to run when you are sick?

Visiting Chicago in Winter

Parasols, purses, and personalization

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.

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thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.