We did a lot last weekend! This made up for the previous weekend when we pretty much bailed on all the concerts we could have seen and instead just ate good food and did stuff around the house.

Okay, the last week has been quite eventful. Did I take a lot of pictures (am I even a real blogger?)? Not really. But: we went out to a lovely dinner at Esca, a new restaurant here by Ben Poremba, who was the man behind one of my favorite (and currently closed) restaurants, Olio. Esca did NOT disappoint. We shared a variety of dishes including the branzino and the fire roasted beets and everything was delicious and better than we would have expected. If you can get a reservation and have the budget for it, I recommend that you go. We are already planning our next trip.

Friday night we went over the “old house” to do some work and discovered that the basement had flooded due to a clogged drain somehow. Louie got out the snake and worked on the drain in the backyard for 15-20 minutes (it was not fun) and finally got it unclogged. The sound of rushing water was glorious and then we had a bit of clean up to do. It was an unpleasant way to spend the evening so we consoled ourselves afterwards at the nearby Mexican restaurant, with tacos and margaritas.

Saturday I worked quite a bit and we went to a movie by the Italian Film Festival with a friend. It was a comedy and I really loved it! I laughed quite a bit, but not as hard as a trio of Italian women who were sitting near us.

Sunday we did something quite unusual: we saw a concert in a bunker. We went to the Tyson Research Center in West County and watched/listened to a concert of improvisation inside a bunker. Evidently there are dozens of bunkers that were originally used to store ammunition during WW2 but now are empty and some graduate students we allowed to use them for projects. One student put this concert together, with piano, violin, bass, and other things such as some accordion, foot stomping, humming, and more. The violinist was Marina from my sister Carrie’s quartet The Rhythm Method, so I was glad to meet her. Louie and I enjoyed the experience.

Later that day I played on a concert with the St Louis Chamber Soloists: unfortunately nobody seemed to get any photos of that.

Then the week began again in earnest, but it’s so near the end. In one month I am done teaching for the spring and we are heading out for our first summer trip (visiting a variety of family members in NY and PA) and then summer work begins after that. The year is just flying by, as always.

What else have I been up to lately? Teaching and practicing, of course, getting ready for some students to perform this weekend at the Music Club Federation Spring Festival (playing piano with one, this is not a good idea, but it was the best idea at the time), continuing to plan things for our upcoming travel, reading some books, watching tv, going on long walks listening to a variety of podcasts, doing a little cooking, trying to keep up on everything around the house (we are low on milk), and looking forward to another weekend of activities. This weekend I’m busy with the festival and proctoring theory exams, but we are going to the symphony one night and probably working at the old house another day and maybe going to the Thurteen Festival, but it might depend on how busy Louie is. He’s got one more week of classes after today and he is BUSY BUSY with it. There are more things to do than time to do them, that includes fun things that we want to do as well as not as fun things that we need to do, and it’s always a choice!

Here’s a photo my mom posted of the dome house in spring. Spring is here, both in St Louis and in South Carolina. Summer is probably here soon too.

And here’s what the cats have been up to.

Miles has been getting friendlier in his middle age. The students are shocked and always tell me things like “Miles was just sitting there and he let me pet him twice before running away”. It’s so fun to hear!