I’ve been on a kick this week of pickling things. I’ve pickled red onion and a green radish/carrot combination (got a green radish in the CSA so that was fun). I’ve also been eating the jam I made the other week, (not this exact recipe but from a cookbook, same recipe but smaller scale) and wow is it good!

There’s been exciting things happening. My dad stopped by for a surprise overnight visit last week en route to Yellowstone National Park. It was good to see him, albeit briefly. He’s doing a fun but a little scary sounding trip, driving out west to see some of these places in the winter. Evidently you can’t go into the park, but you can take a snow bus tour.

My band raised $600 at a concert to benefit two charities related to helping those affected by the Bushfires in Australia—one is a group in Australia and the other is a local group working to combat climate change which is the big issue causing fires and other natural disasters. $600 may seem like small potatoes, but we were pleased with it.

Since I last talked with you, we have gone to a Jazz at the Bistro show, a St Louis Symphony Concert (a fantastic rendition of Beethoven Ninth Symphony), a Zafira Quartet show (some friends of mine), and saw Aaron Diehl play at Wash U. We’ve had dinner at Indo (quite good, though we probably spent too much), dinner at La Catrina (newish Mexican place nearby), made a few more breadmaker loaves of jam, made homemade granola, visited the Arch, and probably a bunch more things, but mostly, taught students.

Oh, and we had a wonderful Perseid Quartet concert last weekend. I keep feeling like, ugh, too many things to do and then I just have a great time. I suppose I always enjoy the after-concert glow! I keep waffling between whether I want to try to do a solo recital (well, with piano) next year, or not commit yet. I don’t want to go downhill with my playing—I want to continue to challenge myself and improve.

So life is busy, but not without time for a few fun things. We’ve also been watching The Crown and I’ve been reading a few good books. And exercising, mostly indoor stuff lately as the weather has been pretty crappy outside. I definitely feel like I’m into the swing of the semester, and back into the “getting things done” part of the semester—it’s hard to get adjusted, but once I do I’m good at planning out my week to accomplish what I need to, mostly. There’s a lot of to-do lists, and scheduling a lot of things for Tuesday and Wednesday, which are my freer days. This weekend I don’t have too much going on, so I’m looking forward to a bit of relaxation and maybe even a day to sleep in, not that I can do that much these years. They don’t tell you (well, I think they do but I wasn’t listening) that when you get into your 40’s you don’t sleep like you used to.  In case you are reading this and you are younger: you’ll wake up more, and your feet will hurt at first when you walk to the bathroom. You will be glad to sleep past 8, and you’ll be glad when you don’t remember waking up too many times. Or at least, that’s how I feel. Maybe I should transition into blogging about how it feels being in your 40’s without having kids…most of the time you learn how people with kids feel and they always blame their kids for things (not sleeping being the main one I’m thinking of) that might also be just a natural part of aging.

I’m off topic though. Today’s topic is really “how to pickle.” Did I mention I bought a mandoline slicer (with a thumb saver part as well) to slice things to pickle? I was using it to slice the carrots and radish, but Louie took over because he really enjoyed it. It made great slices and I think we’ll use it more in the future!

That’s is for now as I need to get going on my day. How was your weekend?