Random thoughts, Teaching

Rainy Fall Weather

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If you read my last blog post, you know where I’ve been. Working! Work life balance? Not me! Well, a few issues:

First: too many students. I mean, they are great. I have some wonderful students. But seriously, there are too many. I do nothing but teach. Wake up, teach, lunch, teach, teach, dinner, lie in fetal position, repeat. It’s probably too much. Some days I count my money, other days I read, occasionally I practice and head to gigs, or play baroque violin. I did that last weekend, which cut into my teaching and was a nice break. It also rained, finally (we really needed it) and now it’s still raining–I’m not sure if we need it any more, but the rain keeps coming.

Now all the students are sick, so I’ve gotten a short break (hopefully nothing serious!) and I thought, hey let’s do a quick blog and tell people I’m still alive! Probem number two. My laptop computer battery is dying, so it really doesn’t function as a laptop anymore. So that means when I want to use my laptop I need to have it plugged it, if I want to use it for more than 5-10 minutes. Louie can get a new battery and change it for me, or I can get a new laptop, and I’m trying to decide which I want to do. Until then, I am avoiding all computer work at all and just using my phone and iPad to answer emails which means I have not been doing that as much. Because of problem one (remember, two many students), when I’m not teaching I haven’t felt like doing anything else, so that means my email inbox is a bit overwhelming, and it’s been hard to stay up on it.

So things are slipping. Laundry piles up. Washer to dryer, I do that. Dryer to basket, slow. Basket to fold, slow. Other household chores, slow. Car needs gas, avoid driving. We need food, eat less, use pantry. Find other clothes to wear.

We did get the roof fixed. It was (fingers crossed) an easy fix according to one company. Hopefully they were correct, who knows. I am not an expert. If they were wrong, we will find out later. We need to get some trees trimmed and I am slowly working on bids for that. I got some vaccines. Each week there are more appointments, doctors, dentist, eye doctor, hair. Always more things to do! Adulting never ends. Bills, checks to sign, insurance to renew, contractors to call. Emails to answer, student inquiries. Louie power washed the deck and restained it. It looks great, I would never think to do it! We thought we had a squirrel in the attic, it was just mice.

Halloween: candy to buy (check!). Food.

Books to read. Friends, what is that? Friends you see at work! Musicians, we are so lucky, we do what we love AND we work with our friends, isn’t it great? I think to myself, my career has many seasons, and I’m in a busy one. How long can I keep this up…but then I think, what if Louie loses his job, that’s our health insurance. He won’t, he is very needed, currently enrollment is up in his department, his class sizes have doubled. And if he did, well, he’d get another. Or I would find something. Or we would figure it out, we have savings. It’s fine. I could relax. But who would teach all these students?

Augustin Hadelich on Saturday night. We went to see the Symphony in their new, remodeled hall. They spent a ton of money on the renovations.

Miles has decided he only sits on the softest of the softest of seats. Here he is sitting on a furry white pillow on a soft orange chair.

Last week on Monday I bought a pumpkin at Schnucks (the local grocery store.) It was on sale for $3.99 and I thought it would be a nice fall decor. By Thursday morning the squirrels had started eating it. By Saturday morning they had knocked it off. I put it back once. They knocked it off again. I gave up. But other neighbors have pumpkins as decorations, why can’t we??? I guess our squirrels are particularly vicious?

They ate into the middle and then started on the other side. Hope you enjoy your Halloween treat, squirrels.

With fall weather comes radiant heat and kitty cuddles.

Louie went to a workshop at Carleton College in Minnesota and sent me this picture of a pond there. They were deep into fall.

Another Minnesota picture. Our fall may be less dramatic since we had such hot weather so late, I guess we will see if the rain ever stops? I don’t really know how weather works.

Okay, so it’s been busy, I’ve been overwhelmed, but I’ve read, I’m going to book club tonight. We went to the symphony, we have gone to Jazz, we went to our neighborhood’s Oktoberfest celebration. This week we are going to a movie, and passing out candy for Halloween, and going to a party at a neighbor’s house (maybe). November has slightly less craziness for me: in the past month I’ve played 8 weddings and 4 performances with requisite rehearsals and practicing, plus a short recording session, which is probably why I feel so AHHH. And this weekend is another performance, though technically in November, and also another wedding. So yeah. Craziness. Plus teaching, which I’ve missed a few here and there but mostly keeping at it. I might be a little insane, but just as a rich person can always find somebody richer, a musician can always find somebody busier.

And the truth about teaching is: the more I do it, the better I get. EXCEPT when I’m too tired. So, there’s a curve, when it gets worse. But also it gets better. That curve changes day to day and week to week, but it’s interesting. The more people I see, the more patterns I’ll notice, even though I KNOW things, I’ll really know them. It’s hard to explain. But also teaching less means I’m refreshed and can be more present for each student.

Sigh. How is your month? Are you dressing up for Halloween?

Teaching

Still summer

Perhaps you were hoping for another Vermont story, but not today.

What’s been going on in my day to day life? Well, the usual, for the most part. Teaching ENTIRELY too many students. This is my most crazy year yet, I have 13 students at the college and a whole bunch at home. I did the math at the beginning of the semester and came up with something like 32-33 actual hours of teaching, which is entirely too many, considering how much other work I do and how much work outside of teaching I do. Things to keep in mind for the future. But hey, we are already something like 5 weeks in, so basically 1/3 of the way through and I’m still breathing!

I had a nice weekend. Friday I finished work at 4 (4!!) and then got to relax a bit before we went out to dinner. After dinner Louie and I came back and watched several episodes of Mr. Robot, our current show. It’s a pretty good one, with four seasons, and I’m told by the internet that they whole show wraps up very well by the end, so that will be very satisfying I imagine. Saturday I got to relax in the morning and then played two weddings. It was another exciting evening of dinner and tv (I know, I know, the late 40’s are just TOO exciting, I know.)

Sunday we went for a bike ride on the Katy Trail with Louie’s brother Julian–we biked from Defiance to Augusta and back, about 16 miles, and then had pizza at the Good News Brewery Company before heading back. It was entirely too hot though, what is with the 85 or more degree weather? We had such lovely fall weather in late August, and now in late September we are having heat…I would love to trade back, is it too late for that?

Louie spent a lot of the weekend figuring out the internet, the wifi had been acting up so he was trying a new router and redoing some things. I did a bunch of laundry. We both had zoom calls with family: mine just to catch up (everybody but my youngest sister attended–she was in Germany and the time zone didn’t seem to work out?) and his to plan a trip in mid-December.

Annoying homeowner things: we realized our roof was leaking, which is probably tornado related, luckily we did manage to get some roofer appointments in the next few weeks for estimates. We have a slate roof, which limits the companies we can use, but they are beyond busy, which means that they may come for an estimate but when they will do the work is anybody’s guess. We are hoping it is a small repair, obviously.

I am distracting myself from the world by planning vacations, haha. We are thinking about next summer already, getting ideas (Japan is what we are thinking, Louie’s idea and after doing a little research, I’m super onboard). And I’m going on a solo trip in December while Louie is teaching a course over winter break. Well, solo but with a small group. I’m taking a trip to Morocco with a small group tour, so I’ve been spending time reading up on Morocco and learning about it. I have wanted to go for several years and last year while he was teaching and I was hanging out at home for nearly two weeks after Christmas doing nothing, I thought, next year I’m doing something on my own. So we talked and I decided to do this on my own. I’m excited! It’s getting closer now, and I have my plane ticket and final payment is soon.

I’ve never done anything quite like this, though I’ve done plenty of music camps and stuff like that where I’ve shown up somewhere I didn’t know anyone before, so I’m not too worried about that, but never to a foreign county, haha. If you’ve been to Morocco and have any tips or suggestions, let me know! I’ve done a lot of research, and I will be on a set tour, but obviously personal suggestions are still good. One thing I’m pretty unsure of is how to pack for the weather: it seems like it’ll be cold in some places and not cold in others, and I’m worried about that. Layers, I guess, as they say. Plenty to worry about, lucky me! You wouldn’t want to run out of things to worry about, would you?

Other things we’ve done recently here: we went to see a play at the St Louis Repertory Theatre, the Cottage. It was very funny and very well done, terrific acting, some wonderful physical comedy, and we just really loved it. We saw the Arianna Quartet perform at UMSL–they had a new second violinist and she blended quite well. They did the Ravel Quartet which is one of my favorites, so I was quite excited that I was free to attend. And we went to see Andrea Gonzalez Caballero play a Guitar Concert at COCA, which is within walking distance of us. She played a terrific program of Spanish favorites one afternoon, and it was absolutely delightful. We ran into friends at both concerts of course, as the classical music scene is small and we know everybody, haha.

I will leave you with this one photo of the cats, Muriel and Miles. They spent most of one morning sleeping on a pair of Louie’s shorts he had left on the bed.

New England, Travel

New England Road Trip Part 2: Heading to Vermont

Though our Road Trip really started in Chautauqua, the numbering should start here.

Day 1: Bennington, Vermont

After leaving Chautauqua we headed for the New York Turnpike headed East. One thing to note: since we are from Missouri where nothing is a toll road, we decided to get a transponder to use for the toll roads in the east. I discovered that Illinois has a system you can use called I-pass which also works with EZ pass so I signed up for that and loaded money and they sent me a sticker for the car. I decided to use the Illinois system since we live near Illinois and I thought it might come in handy in the future for possible driving in Illinois as well, but if you are headed east, you should definitely look into something, because there are a lot of toll roads and there are no booths.

But truthfully, we don’t know if our pass worked in New York, and to this day, we still don’t know. More on that later, but anyway. We drove for a few hours to our first stop, the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, New York, which is a newer park.

The google directions were a little confusing, so I would recommend actually not using them and probably using directions from the actual site or the NPS app, but that’s what we used, so first we actually ended up at the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, which is part of the park, but just a closed building.

And another home which Tubman lived in at a later point in her life.

But then we found a better address and found the Visitor’s Center, where there was a friendly cat who lived nearby, so Louie immediately made a new friend.

The park consists of a few places: the home we saw first, which is being restored, and then the visitor’s center and the church next door, which is the church where Tubman went and then was where her funeral was held. It was interesting because the church was just in a residential neighborhood so you parked on a street–it made me wonder how the neighbors felt about all of this! But it probably made their property values better, so hopefully they like that. Or maybe they dislike the traffic.

It was also interesting to see how the parks come into being, meaning, how the parks service takes a place and restores it. The church was in the process of being restored to how it looked before, because it was a little rundown and they want it to look as it was when Tubman went there. And the house she lived in–we peeked inside and could see that it was being restored, and somebody had been redoing the walls, but with NEW plaster and lathe, which, if you know anything about construction, is not how modern construction is done, but IS how old construction is done. So that was quite fascinating.

The rangers onsite were friendly and full of information, as you would expect, even as they were telling us much of the restoration was stalled due to lack of funding–just as the park was founded as a park, they lost funding due to the current administration.

Then we went to the nearby cemetery to see Tubman’s final resting stop.

I have to confess, before this trip I hadn’t been into cemeteries and seeing where people were buried, but somehow this trip I started thinking about how it was kind of fascinating to think about: right here, right under here is where this person might actually BE. Though truthfully they probably aren’t really there and have probably shifted further away over the years, but there is still something to think about it that in the past I hadn’t thought about that much. That their physical bones are there, that they really existed. I don’t know why, but that never interested me before and then it suddenly did.

We were hungry after this so we found a Thai restaurant nearby with a high rating, called Spoon and Fork, so we had a quick lunch there and then kept driving.

We had about 3 1/2 more hours to drive, but once we got off the interstate highway, the drive became more interesting and more scenic. We didn’t enter Vermont until very close to Bennington, though! Once you get to Vermont, there aren’t any billboards, did you know? That’s a state law, evidently.

Our goal for the first night was Bennington, Vermont, and we got there around dinner time. It looked like a really cute New England town, exactly what you might daydream about if you had seen a commercial for a generic New England town. We checked into the Catamount Motel, which was the cheapest highly rated motel I could find, and it was perfect.

We decided to set off on foot for the rest of the evening, so we walked to the downtown area for dinner, and enjoyed food at the Madison Brewing Company.

A Catamount!

A Moose!

We shared a tasting at the Madison Brewing Company and had some good food as well. After dinner we took a walk around the town, which was older than we were used to things being in the US.

And then we had another drink at the Harvest Brewery company before bed.

Day 2: Driving Route 100 to White River Junction, Vermont

We had coffee and muffins in downtown Bennington and did a quick drive by of the Bennington Monument and Robert Frost’s Grave before heading out of town.

We had a little trouble finding Frost’s grave because we entered the cemetery from the wrong entrance. One entrance had terrific signage and it would have been easy but we used the wrong sign. It was a beautiful cemetery either way, and a beautiful morning. The grass was wet and dewy, and the air was cool and crisp. It felt like fall and it was only August 2.

We got in the car and headed towards Wilmington Vermont, where we planned to find Route 100 and drive north on it. It was a scenic route and we planned to drive it and stop where the wind took us. We also had an app called “guide along” we would listen to that might make suggestions. We stopped in Wilmington for a coffee and stroll as well, and ended up buying a beautiful wooden cheese board (small cutting board, basically).

It was probably mid morning by the time we actually got onto Route 100, but whatever. We figured we only had a few actual hours of driving (maybe 3? it was hard to actually figure it out because the route we were planning was not the best/most direct route, but instead the most scenic, so the map would always try to reroute us).

We saw a farmer’s market and stopped, got a loaf of bread and petted some goats.

And we saw our first covered bridge!

This was the longest one in Vermont: you could not drive through it but you could walk across it.

After the bridge we went on a bike ride in Jamaica State Park–we’d brought the bikes so we wanted to make sure to use them!

Back in the car after that and on the road–we came to a screeching halt and turned into a shop called “Grandma Miller’s pie shop.” I said, well I had a Grandma Miller but she didn’t really make pies!

I can never turn down something with rhubarb or strawberry rhubarb though, yum!

Our next big stop was the Vermont Country Store. You guys. You know the place that sends the catalogs, right? And we thought, oh this will be a big tourist trap, and while, yes, it was, it was ALSO a really nice store, well curated, well set up, nicely organized, with good space, and it was a lovely shopping experience. We had a nice time, bought maple syrup, etc. Definitely worth a stop, and then afterwards we had maple cremees which are basically Vermont’s soft service ice cream in a maple flavor, a must try when you are in Vermont.

(You actually go in the back though)

I forget where we took this picture, but it was fun.

Another big stop we made was at the Calvin Coolidge State Historical Site. We visited near closing time so we decided to skip the indoor exhibits and just visit the outdoor exhibits and the cheese factory (FREE CHEESE SAMPLES, and we also bought cheese), and really enjoyed that. It was basically an open air museum, which Louie and I have discovered is one of our favorite kinds of museums.

We got to see where Calvin Coolidge was born, where he lived growing up (basically the same place) and where he was when he was Vice President and then President William Harding died in office, and Coolidge had to take the oath of office and become President of the US–all basically within a few houses of each other. And then we drove a short distance to see where he was buried.

A fairly unassuming grave.

After that, we headed to our hotel for the night, that was a bit of a diversion from Route 100. I found that to get a nice hotel for a decent price we needed to divert, so we headed east to White River Junction to stay at Hotel Coolidge (perhaps fitting?) which was a historic hotel there. We checked into our room and then ate at a nearby restaurant called Tuckerbox which served Turkish food.

We enjoyed the food but had a little snafu with the prices: this was a bit ridiculous: the menus we ordered from had different prices on them that what we were charged (and what were on the website) and then the server said, well, our prices went up and not all the menus reflected the changes, and showed us that some of the menus had the newer prices. Which was like, ummm, okayyyyyy. But it was nearly impossible to prove that OUR menus had had lower prices and honestly, what, you should also believe us, and so we had to pay higher prices that what we thought when we ordered (and again, also higher than what they publish on their website) so we can’t in good conscience recommend the restaurant, because that is really shady. In my opinion. And really put a damper on what was otherwise a perfectly lovely day and evening.

After dinner we took a walk and the weather was lovely, and the town was pretty cute, there were a lot of train tracks and a river and we were really near New Hampshire as well. The Hotel was “historic” which meant that the hallways were big and the hotel was big with a giant bathroom that seem like how did it get added in and you weren’t sure what was going on, but it was nice, and I would recommend it. There was a dedicated parking lot behind the building, sort of inside the block as well, and a Keurig coffee maker in the lobby with free coffee for hotel customers.

That’s where I will end this blog post. Next time, we will continue up Route 100 to Stowe, Vermont, for more cheese and some apple cider, and maybe bears, but maybe not bears.

Chautauqua, New England, Travel

Chautauqua Summers (Part 1 of New England Road Trip)

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The only way to get through writing about summer vacation is through. Or maybe to use Chat GPT, but nobody wants that. (Or do you?)

I don’t know why it’s hard to sit down and write sometime. I want to read blog recaps of my vacation. I want to have blog recaps of my vacation. I want you to read about my vacation. But, sitting down and writing about my vacation, it feels exhausting. Probably because I’m not on that vacation anymore, I’m back working, and working is exhausting.

In fact, simply existing in this country, this world, this is exhausting. I should stop checking the news, but I find it hard. BUT.

So at the end of July, Louie and I set out on our road trip. The plan: approximately one week visiting Leslie and family in Chautauqua as we love to do in the summer and then a camping road trip through Vermont, New Hampshire, and up into Maine towards Acadia, the final destination, and then turning back and driving two days to return to St Louis.

Easy peasy, if you like driving and mosquitoes. Which we do. Except the mosquitoes.

Any good road trip starts the day before with packing. I should do a blog post on packing for a camping trip, because we have it down to a science, if by science I mean, we have a list, and then we throw everything in the car and spend the next two weeks arguing over how we packed the car and disagreeing over where everything should go, and continually losing things and finding them again. And at some point, we will try to reorganize and decide that we have done a much better job than before but really it’s only because at that point half the clothes are in the dirty laundry bag and most of the food has been eaten…but that’s not important right now.

So we loaded up and added the bikes on the back, since this was also a trip with bikes. And we hit the road by 9 am, which was the plan.

We always drive in one day to Chautauqua, which says it will take 10 hours to get there and always takes much longer, so we end up stopping for dinner near Cleveland at a Mexican restaurant right off the highway. We’ve done this for the past few years and enjoy it.

And then we made it to Chautauqua! It was late, so Luca (my nephew) was already asleep but everyone else was still up.

The next few days don’t need a day by day, so I’ll just do highlights:

Pontoon boat ride: (Or “tonpoon” as Luca said later)

We rented a Pontoon boat for an afternoon on Chautauqua Lake. It was fun to ride around and then stop, drop anchor, and do some swimming.

We attended the weekly “Sunday party” and I saw an old classmate that I hadn’t seen in over a decade, which was fun. We attended several concerts and got to see Athena in something called Air Band as well.

Louie enjoyed a Louie IPA.

We went out to dinner at Pine Junction, which is a nice place to enjoy an outdoor meal, and on the way home saw some cows on the road.

It was a fun week. Weather wise, it started out really hot and humid, which you feel there because there is no A/C. By the end it had cooled off a little. It was great to see the kids, and I definitely felt a bit sad leaving, especially because I wished I had spent a little more time with Luca: he had camp all day and then went to bed early, so I felt like I got more time with Athena and less time with him, and the last night we went to a concert with her but left him…but it was still great to see everybody! We’ll have to get out to Phoenix this year somehow.

The kids and Peter (my BIL) were heading home for the summer since school was starting up pretty soon after we left, so it was the end for them, so it was bittersweet goodbyes all around. We loaded up the car and headed east to Vermont…

Random thoughts

Hump Day already!

I was listening to a podcast the other day about back to school and checking off things on to do lists, and the host suggesting finding things to do that were fun as well, because that wasn’t fun, and I thought, what, checking things off IS fun! I guess I’m weird like that.

I was listening to another podcast (I listen to a lot of podcasts! especially while walking, exercising, and driving places) where somebody said they really enjoy paying bills makes them feel responsible and they enjoy that and I thought me too! I love when I do my bank stuff, it’s very enjoyable to do my accounting and add money to my accounts and move money around and figure out how much I have where and then put it where it needs to go and stuff like that. It’s quite fun!

Is that weird? I often enjoy these weird adulting things. Other adulting things I dislike, especially things involving phone calls.

But anyway. It’s the first week “back to school”. So far I’ve taught 17 lessons and I have an unknown number left to teach. Unknown partly because I’m not going to count and partly because there are a few variables such as: still scheduling students at the college. Still waiting to figure out the last couple of students. It’s been a busy week, but nothing too insane because it’s just teaching right now…this weekend I only have two little concerts in the evening, and then Monday is Labor Day which is off. After that, things really get heated up, and then the semester is in FULL SWING.

Weather wise, things are amazing right now. We are deep into false fall and it is terrific. I’ve been taking walks practically every day and it is just glorious. If we had weather like this all the time people from the coasts would be climbing over themselves to move here rather than pretending we didn’t exist (and after experiencing their interstate traffic, no thank you, please stay where you are, coastal people). But it is terrific while it lasts, and I am appreciative. I hope it lasts through the next weekend. Louie and I took advantage over the weekend and had a lovely bike ride on the Katy Trail and got pizza afterwards at the Good News Brewing Company.

We are hoping to get another bike ride in this weekend. We did a ton of biking on our recent trip so we are trying to keep up the biking. It’s hard to get out too much during the week but right now the weekend’s are doable, and with this false fall weather (it’s sort of a joke, but not really, we know fall isn’t really here yet) and gig season not being in full swing yet, we have to take advantage while we can.

Have a good rest of the week, readers!

Deep Thoughts

The School Year Beckons

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We just got back from another fabulous road trip. Truthfully, Louie and I hadn’t set out on a good camping road trip in a few years, so we were glad to do so in the past few weeks. We’d forgotten how to do a few things, but it came back pretty quickly. I’ll tell you more about it in detail, but in a nutshell, we spent about a week visting my sister Leslie and her family in Chautauqua, New York and then we spent time driving through Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, camping, hiking, getting bitten by mosquitoes, and buying maple syrup, before driving all the way home in two days.

So here I am, home again, sending out oodles of emails and trying to convince myself to finish folding laundry and get those last few things out of the car. Lessons start up again on Monday, and things are…mostly scheduled at home, and starting to get scheduled at the college. I have spent entirely too much time at the computer, but Muriel loves it because she sits by me, glad that I am home. Miles is less glad, because we turned the a/c down to a cooler temp and I think he prefers the hotter temperature. He does enjoy the pets I think, but less from me and much more from Louie.

It’s going to be a busy year, again, of course, as things always are. Each year starts full of promise though, right? It’s like the shiny school supplies, the new start, the freshness of the new semester beckons. We are rested, excited to begin. The weather promises to start cooling down and get nicer as the months go on, and we are getting into the fun holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are getting closer (but not TOO close.) And honestly, I had a terrific summer, and we were so lucky with the tornado missing our house, and other than hurting my ankle (did I mention that? I rolled my ankle in June pretty badly) it was a good summer…so many nice trips, the Alaska cruise, the girls trip to Wisconsin, a New England Road Trip, so many evenings free, so many lovely gigs that paid pretty well and some fun times with Louie and other friends. I feel like it was one of the better summers in a long time.

(Other than you know, the whole *waves arms around* world falling apart around us. But what can you do? We are determined to do what we CAN about that, while not letting it ruin our lives any more than it HAS to. We did notice that we saw no Canadian license plates while we were on our trip, even though I have read many places that usually Canadians like to drive over the border to vacation in New Hampshire and Maine. We did see a fair amount of Trump signs. Inflation was rampant. There were many places where I had checked prices and made notes in early summer as to what things would cost and the prices were already higher by mid-August. My dad suggested maybe I had written down the non-peak season prices, and maybe, I could have made that mistake once or twice, but I am pretty sure that I made notes of what they said prices would be for the summer, and they just raised prices. And that’s just one small thing, the thing we were told would be changed, the thing that we were told Americans cared about, that I’m not seeing anybody doing a damn thing about, but instead rounding up and torturing people of color and shipping them off to concentration camps instead. So, yeah, that puts a damper on things. )

But I’ll leave you with a few pictures of the cats, that our amazing cat sitter took and sent while I was gone.

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.