Can you be addicted to Advil?

March 21, 2012 hannahviolin 3 Comments

First things first: Chamber Project St Louis Concert this weekend! I’m playing a movement of the Prokofiev Solo Sonata, the Martinu Duo for Violin and Viola, and Haydn’s London Trio no. 1. There’s some other pieces on the program as well, and it will be a wonderful show. Information below.

Dinner & Concert at The Wine Press
March 23, 5:00-9:30 pm
"Haydn meets Hendrix"
Enjoy a great meal followed by a great concert
Reservations required 314-298-9463 or
stlwinepress@gmail.com
$40 includes meal, wine and concert

Now for the regular blog content:

Ty Webb to Danny: "Do you take drugs, Danny?"

Danny: "Every day"

Ty: "Good. So, what’s the problem?"

(name that movie)

Chris and I were talking at dinner last night (that in itself is a shock, I mean, what, married people talking???) and I mentioned it occurred to me the other day that I had been taking Advil every day. I’ve always taken a fair amount of medicine for headaches, but then I started taking it for various running aches and pains plus violin pains…and suddenly you realize you’ve been taking 2 to 6 Advil a day (well, really, generic, but same idea) for as long as you can recall. Certainly for a couple of months. I’m worried I’m addicted to Advil! Is that possible? I mean, surely I can’t be in pain all the time, right? Plus, I’m guessing it can’t be GREAT for my body to take drugs every day…and it seems if I’m not used to taking it all the time, when I do take it it would be more effective, right? (disclaimer: am not a doctor)

So today I am going to try not to take any Advil. I feel like if I can go one day without it, then I’m okay. So far I’m okay. My legs and "glutes" hurt, but nothing I can’t handle. I will try to stay up on my caffeine and water consumption to fend off any headaches. My stress level is pretty high, but it is (hopefully) balanced out by the fact that I don’t have any teaching. In fact, I am going to the mall, and since it’s not Christmastime or the weekend, that is pretty unstressful (you know I hate crowds).

So, dear readers. I need your support in the upcoming 12 hours…wish me luck in my endeavour to become "drug-free."

Weather

Optimism

March 19, 2012 hannahviolin 2 Comments

I feel like this morning I was really turning into my mother. I needed a day off running, but ate an obscene amount of chips and salsa the night before, so I wanted to get some sort of exercise. But…the weather was just too pretty to go to the gym, so I decided a walk around the park was just the ticket. And I took my phone to take pictures of how beautiful it was.

This reminds me of a moment in my adolescence where my mother was trying to get me to do something…she said, “It’s such a nice day!” and I recall my response of “Every day is a nice day here” and in my head I definitely thought that was a bad thing.

But here I am as an adult (a married lady, no less!) enjoying a string of nice days, remarking on them with everybody I know and pass, and making efforts to go and GET MY WALK IN. And…take pictures for the blog.

I love these pink trees! I am not a plant person, I don’t know what they are (can somebody tell me in the comments?) but they are ubiquitous in the park and very pretty.

I started thinking about how when Chris and I move I want it to still be close enough that I can do all my short runs in the park.

Not quite as spring-like in this photo. I don’t know all the history of the park but I love all the little random (seeming) buildings. I imagine people back in the past wearing old fashioned clothing, riding horses, or perhaps talking on really giant cell phones enjoying a day much like today.

What sort of blogger would I be without a self portrait? Besides which, I wanted to show off my new sunglasses! I once said that I felt every outfit needed a touch of whimsy. Now I can wear black socks on sunny days.

Not sure why, but this tree made me think of Gondor.

This was much prettier in person. My camera skills are not the greatest 😉 And another gate…I love the random gates—did they used to have fences that continued? Because otherwise they really do seem like a waste.

The little castle at the side entrance of the park.

Another pink tree.

It was a lovely walk!

I passed a few people I knew, and got passed by random people—one a runner talking on the phone, another a man wearing sweatpants and a heavy coat running who yelled at me to keep my elbows up. I passed two woman sitting on a bench, one just sitting and her friend was on her side doing leg lifts. I see so many characters—is that because these are the sort of people who are off work on a Monday morning??

Anyway, I apologize to my readers for the maudlin-esque tone of my blog recently. I am feeling pretty good today and look forward to the week, so you can call off the men in white coats.

I hope it will be a more positive week and I feel like today is off to an awesome start. I’m off to rehearse the Martinu duo for this weekend’s Chamber Project St Louis concert at the Wine Press in the Central West End (tickets are $40 and include dinner), then I have just a little bit of teaching—many students are on spring break in addition to the school I teach at, so it’s a very light teaching week.

What are you up to this week?

Running

What a difference a day makes

March 18, 2012 hannahviolin 1 Comment

Did I ever show you these pictures?

This was my meal from Home Wine Kitchen last weekend. I took the picture because a) I’m a blogger and b) it looked like my meal was smiling at me. It was delicious: Arctic Char (try saying that three times fast…or once) with broccolini (no, spell-check, I do not wish to correct that to broccoli, it is different) and olives. I would eat it again, but probably won’t get the chance because they change their menu weekly. The restaurant was definitely an excellent choice—good food, good service, and nice ambiance. No, I’m not a restaurant reviewer so that’s all you get.

She would have enjoyed the fish as well. She’s sitting on a wicker laundry basket that was a wedding gift, one of the few we’ve started using yet. We need to do some work on the house but right now Chris is just too incredibly busy and stressed out to deal with it. Honestly, we just need a bigger place, and we’ll be looking for one come this summer.

Today: 8 mile run at Forest Park. It was good. I was tired, yes, and it was hot, but the run went decently, albeit slow. Today turned into a no-shirt day for me…I wasn’t planning on it, but it is just so much cooler to run without a shirt! Naturally my tan lines are reappearing more quickly than I would have thought possible (rare occasion I wish I were a guy and could truly run shirtless). I’ve decided I’m glad about that because (I’ve said this before) it makes me look more hard core. I don’t feel hard core so looking the part will have to do.

This is my spring break. Between now and a week from now, I will teach FIVE students. FIVE. Rather than five hours of students a day. I’m looking forward to relaxing a bit, practicing a ton, and catching up on stuff around the house (taxes, cleaning??). Then life gets pretty darned busy until June, so I’d better relax while I can.

Random thoughts

Hannah and her sisters

March 17, 2012 hannahviolin 1 Comment

I probably posted this before but tonight I’ve been doing a bit of interneting (while listening to the SLSO concert and waiting to go out with Chris and our friends Jon and Laura (in the home stretch before baby Ray-Ray comes!).

I will say that my sisters are like, almost the smartest people I know! After myself, of course. And maybe our brother?

We had a conversation on facebook the other night on one of Leslie’s status updates. If you are facebook friends with us you should check it out. Much like my conversations with my friend Sarah, rest assured that all comments are meaningful, thoughtful, and very likely are making fun of somebody or something from our past. It’s a lot of pressure to be funny all the time, but the pressure is well worth the pay off.

That’s how it started…

Comic gold, people. Or…maybe you had to be there? I appreciate how quick everybody’s responses were. Well done, girls and Carrie, well done!

I mean, really, it got so FUNNY on facebook…

Deep Thoughts, Running

Happy St Patrick’s Day

March 17, 2012 hannahviolin 4 Comments

I’m in a bit of a mood, and I’m just not going to go much into the horrific details of today’s St Patrick’s Day race. Suffice it to say that I am not good at learning lessons or learning from my mistakes, and I continually forget that I cannot do deadlifts in a workout and then run two days later. I can’t, I just can’t. My hamstrings just won’t cooperate. I tried. I ran as much as I could without wanting to die, but the up hills were the worst.

A promising start. I’d been worried about my ability to run since the day before when my hamstrings started being sore. I foam rolled, I stretched, I took copious amounts of Advil (well, that’s just par for the course, unrelated.). I woke up, ready to go, and had a wonderful outfit picked out—that is some serious green happening.

It was pretty foggy. And, I told Jen if she wanted to make that face for THE BLOG then that was her right. I felt that Steve and Jen failed at being remotely festive. I’m thinking of uninviting them to the 80’s 5k if that’s the best that can do. A themed race has two parts: one is running, the other is dressing awesome. I’m pretty disappointed in my friends on part 2. They kicked my butt on part 1, but like I said, two parts. I expect more in the future from everybody.

Why did Steve have a different colored tag? We’re assuming somebody made a mistake. While he is an excellent runner in his own right, he is probably not fast enough to be considered an elite runner. The orange tags were for the people who were starting in the very front and most likely to win. Steve decided to start back with the common folk anyway.

The Non-competitive start. And the Old Courthouse. It was really foggy!

Anyway, the race sucked. I was in so much pain, at one point I considered giving up and finding the short way home. That seemed really lame though, so I figured I’d finish. 58:34. I felt like I walked the whole damn race. Boo.

After the race I was super grumpy and nearly had a meltdown at Rue Lafayette (our first idea for brunch)—I had some trouble figuring out what was happening on the menu and was just really thirsty and wanted eggs. Luckily I have nice friends and then we made our way to Uncle Bill’s. I whined the whole way there too, and then we came up with the ever so most brilliant idea that maybe I should be doing my deadlifts earlier in the week, so they stop interfering with my runs. I wrote Mike a note to that effect in my food diary (right next to the bacon, sausage, one pancake and eggs entry) so I won’t be complaining again. See! I can learn!

(I just searched my blog for hamstrings and found way too many posts with me complaining how I couldn’t run because of my sore hamstrings, including the one where I had a mini breakdown and ended up yelling at Mike later for laughing at me for complaining. Oops. What’s especially funny is that that is the day I referenced in my previous post bragging about how awesome my recent deadlifts were… )