Food

Beef Stew

I’m making beef stew in my crockpot for tonight’s dinner.  I really love using the crockpot on days like today—you put the meal together in the morning when you have extra time, and then don’t worry about it until you get home, and then it’s ready to eat!  Ingredients include, but are not limited to:  stew meat, potatoes, carrots, and onions.  There is also a baguette on hand for dipping.  Can’t wait! (edited to add:  the stew ended up being really delicious!)

Today was a rough workout.  I ran 2 miles, worked out with Mike (heavy on the squats today) and then ran/walked 3 more.  I was working on speed so I walked at 3.8 for .2 miles then ran .3 miles for 6.5 to 7 mph.  Rough, rough, rough.  I imagine the people near me were super happy for my incredibly loud breathing (that’s VERY fast for me, just so you know).  But I feel like I got a great workout.  I will likely be unable to walk tomorrow.  Mike had me lifting heavier weights than usual—I said something whiny about that, and he said, “well you are getting married soon, it’s time to get serious!”  I cried.  But I’m sure it’s good for me and all that…

In case anybody was confused, I said in a previous post that we will set the date for our wedding in May.  What I meant was, in May we will be able to set the date—for a later time.  So if you started reserving your weekends in May for my wedding, go ahead and plan other things.  If you went ahead and bought a gift…well feel free to send that!  (Kidding…well, sort of…I have bought many wedding gifts over the years…it’s payback time, right?)

Random thoughts

President’s Day

I love being a teacher in the school system—you get wonderful holidays off!  I am only teaching my private students today. 

A few weeks ago Living Social ran a deal for a couples massage at Prolong Symmetry in Chesterfield (very near the St. Louis School of Music), and I thought that seemed like a nice Valentine’s Day gift, so I bought it.  Chris and I had the appointment today since I finally had a Monday off.  (Monday is always his day off.)  Wow!  It was fantastic.  I have had a few massages in the past but never a couples massage.  The only difference is that you are just in the same room with your “partner.”  Two tables, two massage therapists.  Great way to spend an afternoon off.  They offered us the same price if we come in again between now and the end of May and we may just take them up on that. 

Totally unrelated:

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra—generally regarded as one of the world’s best orchestras.  But as you may or may not know, has only FOUR women in the orchestra, and until about a decade ago, didn’t allow women at all.  Read this article about how we shouldn’t be okay with this (if in fact you are).  The author also mentions that the orchestra seems to have an unspoken ban on minorities as well.  Granted, the orchestra isn’t from our country, but certainly plays here enough.  Should we be protesting?  Writing angry letters or organizing pamphlet drops?  Thoughts?

(I have attended a concert of the VPO and it was one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever attended.  I think we as a people get used to certain things and stop being angry—we have to or we would go crazy.  I imagine the concert would have been even better if the orchestra were composed of the best musicians, not simply the best white male musicians.)

Random thoughts

Did I mention I was engaged?

First I told my family and close friends

omg

and then it became facebook official

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I received dozens of congratulatory comments and some messages too!  Chris was a little slower to make it facebook official…

robyn

(from Chris’s page)

engaged

But then he made it facebook official too!

honeymoon

Probably not…I mean, not since LeBron left…

julia

Enough said!

bling

It’s been over a week now!  I still think my ring is pretty Smile and I still want to get married!

Performing

Live Music: Most Entertaining

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The first performance of Winter Opera’s “La Traviata” was last night.  Overall it went very well, I think.  The performance was sold out which is always fantastic. 

There was something very funny (and potentially disastrous) that happened that I wanted to share with you.

Since the opera is sung in Italian, the company uses supertitles on a screen above the stage to translate the words for the audience.   This way the audience knows what is going on without having to understand Italian.  There is a set up involving a computer and a sort of slide projection system.  Last night this was all in a slightly different place than during the dress rehearsal, and there were several cords going under my chair. 

I tend to move a bit when playing.  Particularly I tend to shuffle my feet, especially when I get emotionally invested in what I am playing.  Since I am concertmaster, I move even more than I might ordinarily.  At one point during the beginning of the opera, I shuffled my foot (my foot wearing a high-heeled shoe) forwards and caught a bunch of cords by accident.  I was alarmed at first, but didn’t think anything of it when our stand lights didn’t go out.  However, shortly thereafter I realized my stand partner Kyle had a look of alarm on his face and kept looking at the woman doing the supertitles.  She didn’t notice anything, but Kyle had noticed that I had accidentally knocked out the cord running from the computer to the projector, thus knocking out the supertitles. 

But the show must go on!  Kyle crawled under my chair while I was playing and saved the day by plugging the cord back in.  This was no easy task in that I was really quite in the way, but I needed to keep playing since the two of us were the first violin section.

Kyle spent much of the intermission convincing them to tape down the cords—I still had to be a little careful but I cannot properly lead an orchestra and play my part well while worrying about knocking something over.  But that’s opera for you—always something strange happening, and yet it usually pulls together beautifully.  I may have to consider a different shoe choice for tomorrow’s performance. (Sunday, 3 pm, St Louis Women’s Club)

Teaching

Mumbo Jumbo

This whole week has been full of gorgeous, beautiful, 60 and 70 degree days.  And yet, have I managed to run outside?  No.  In fact, I’ve barely managed to run at all, due to my schedule, a bit of laziness, and a stomachache one day.  Hopefully tomorrow I can get outside!

So what have I been up to?  It’s been almost one week since I got engaged—the week has flown by!

I’ve done quite a bit of wedding research already, and have determined that very little can actually be decided at this point.  We need to wait until Chris finishes a few auditions before deciding when to get married…probably in May we can set the date.  I’d love to get married here in St. Louis, but if we were to end up moving, then there wouldn’t be any point.  We’ve also realized we do want a nice wedding with lots of family and friends there to celebrate with us.  Other than that, I don’t really know.

I made an account with theknot.com and they gave me a “handy” checklist of items I need to do.  For instance, right now I should be doing the following:

That’s not even all the tasks on the checklist that I should be doing right NOW, just some of them.  Should I be putting a wedding announcement in my hometown paper?  Getting engagement photos taken?  I am definitely “envisioning” my wedding dress though, I do love a good dress-shopping occasion.  I am beginning to realize that wedding planning can be a full time job—even though I am a wedding vendor myself, I don’t think I realized quite how much CAN go into wedding planning.

I love planning things.  Before the cruise last summer I spent weeks planning our excursions and researching the various options, printed out an elaborate itinerary with each day planned out with what to wear and bring and where to meet tours.  It was great!  I really enjoyed the process.  I want to plan my wedding in the same way.  The different would likely be that it is all in one day and involves many more people, both in the planning stages and of course at the event.  I want to consider simply what Chris and I want but need to take other people into account as well.

Okay, enough wedding mumbo-jumbo:  What else has been going on?

I finished Ed Kreitman’s new book, Teaching with an Open Heart.  Wow!  It’s a great book.  Really inspiring and beautifully written.  I can’t say that I agree with all the new age energy talk, but do love so many of his teaching ideas.  I have never seen him teach at an institute and I should change that. Not this summer though—I may go to Kansas to do Book Five with Susan Kempter but nothing else.  I know her course would be great, and the Kansas Institute pricing is really quite reasonable.

I taught a bunch of students, as usual.  Some of the students are doing just great, and a few have Solo and Ensemble competition coming up in a little over a week.  Some are disappointing me in their lack of practice and focus…I keep trying to inspire them, but sometimes it just gets too exhausting.  I know every teacher has thousands of inspirational ideas to get students to practice, but sometimes I just feel like giving up—how hard do I really have to work for each student?  I’m talking about students who are old enough to know they need to practice in order to get better and just don’t.  Why do I have to make all the effort and get absolutely nothing back?  This is why I am making some changes next school year…I am tired of making all this effort for very little return.  I can definitely relate to school teachers—you can’t make a child learn.  And yet you are made to feel incredibly guilty or like a failure when the child doesn’t learn, when perhaps the failing ISN’T on your end.  And maybe it’s not a failing of the child either, but the circumstances.  Just a little vent Smile

This weekend I am playing La Traviata with Winter Opera St. Louis.  I’m also teaching a group class at the St. Louis School of Music tomorrow afternoon, and I’m planning to run 8 miles, plus my spinning class on Sunday.  I am excited that Monday is a school holiday, particularly as I work through the weekend.  I think it’ll be a fun weekend though—Chris has off work Saturday night so we might go out to dinner.

Oh, and fun fact:  the owner of Franco, where we went after we got engaged, also works out at my gym with a trainer.  Mike evidently talked to him about that earlier in the week, and I saw him today, but was shy and didn’t talk to him.  Perhaps I shall work up the nerve another time.

What are your weekend plans?

Cat

Keeping my feet warm

I had a long day of teaching today, though I did have a couple no-shows and a few kids sick.  I finally sat down on the couch and put up my feet and turned on last week’s “Parenthood.”  And what landed on my foot pillow?

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As you can see she barely fits in the frame. (Ignore the mess in the back room!)

(Aww, you know I love my cat!)

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I could NOT get her to turn around and look at me!  Somebody was mad at all the violin playing today, I guess.

Brief follow-up to a couple previous issues:  The snow and ice all melted.  And my wrist is feeling better…not 100 percent, but improving. 

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.