Some Things We've Done - 2024 Edition

By 2024, two things had happened: first, since I had long ago stopped blogging about my fun outings, I mostly stopped keeping the ticket stubs, Playbills, and other mementos that would allow me to recreate this information later.  Second, I did fewer fun things; work was a disaster, S and I were going out on the town less frequently, and there is just generally less to recollect.  Regardless, here we go ... 

2024

SLSO - The 2023-2024 season included classical music such as Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5, Brahms' Symphony No. 2, and Verdi's Requiem and Kyrie, plus popular shows like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Rhapsody in Blue.  One of my favorite shows of the season was called "Operatic Favorites," which included selections from L'Orfeo, The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, Manon Lescaut, Norma, La Gioconda, Mignon, Carmen, The Tales of Hoffman, and Orpheus in the Underworld.

Paintings by Jim Weidle - Mom came to visit in the spring of 2024, and we headed up to Fairfield, Iowa, for a show at the Icon. Mom has known Jim Weidle since college, and I have a lot of his work in my house (as does my whole family).  We saw his show, spent the day with him, toured around Fairfield, and generally had a good time.

And, I found a painting that I liked so much that I bought it when the show was over. The particular one I bought is no longer on his website, but it is in the "Bike" series.  It has a prominent spot in my living room and I still love it!

Wave: Ripple Effects - Also while Mom was in town, we went to the Matisse exhibit at SLAM, and it just so happened that they were hosting an art-inspired chamber music concert, which we also attended (along with P, of the Hamilton tickets). 

OTSL - the summer's opera season was a great one: Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Puccini's La Boheme, Handel's Julius Caesar, and Glass's Galileo Galilei. All good shows, but Galileo was the surprise hit! 

Our themed meals were for Barber and La Boheme.  For the former, we had spinach and chickpeas, salmorejo, and almond cake, plus Spanish wine.  For the latter, we had ratatouille, coq au vin (the all-around favorite!), and tarte tatin.  

Head of the Charles - C and I took our double to HOCR in Boston in October.  It was a really fun weekend - Boston in good weather is such a wonderful city! - even though our performance wasn't great.  I felt pretty good, but I think our fitness just wasn't where it needed to be, and we were heavily penalized for crossing the buoy line a couple of times.  Oh, well - we had a good time!

One of the non-regatta highlights was our brunch at the Boston Public Library.  Did you know they have a restaurant in there? (Two, actually!)  I didn't, but thankfully C did.  We four (C and his wife, plus S and me) ate at the Map Room Lounge.  The setting was fantastic, and the food was good too!  Definitely something to repeat. 

Ambassadors of Harmony - my sister-in-law and I, for our now-standard Christmas tradition, were treated by our mother-in-law to the AOH holiday show at UMSL.  This year's first-half theme was "Christmas in Space," plus we had the Vocal Spectrum halftime show, and the Christmas standards in the second half.  Lunch was at Maggiano's; I've been there a couple of times in the last couple of years, and each time I'm surprised by how good it is; better than your average Italian chain, for sure! 

Florida - S and I took an extended work-from-Florida holiday for Thanksgiving, which gave us lots of time with K, J, and mom.   

Cyprus - again finding ourselves nearing Christmas with no travel plans, S and I looked at a map, looked at flight prices, and decided to head to Cyprus for the holidays.  We didn't know much about it other than that it had Greek heritage and part of the island was taken over (and remains held) by Turkey, with the UN keeping the peace between the two.

Similar to our trip to Ireland in 2024, we rented a car and took ourselves on a driving tour.  We landed in Larnaca, then traveled to Pano Lefkara, Agros, Omodos, Paphos, Polis, Nicosia, Agia Napa, and back to Larnaca.  The Christmas markets were great fun (especially the one in Agros, where we rode on the tractor-pulled train through town - possibly slightly intoxicated, as it was meant for children), and the Christmas Eve dinner spread at the Elysium hotel was truly astonishing! 

As with Ireland, we both really loved Cyprus and this is definitely a trip worth repeating! 

Some Things We've Done - 2023 Edition

Three years into the after-times, and live had gotten pretty much back to normal.  Isn't is amazing how quickly that happened?  Here's what we did in....

2023

SLSO - another season wrapped up, and we had seen some great shows, including Holst's The Planets, Handel's Messiah, selections from Beethoven's Egmont, Jurassic Park, Elgar's Enigma Variations, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, The Princess Bride, and the Indigo Girls!

Act Two Theater - I had never heard of the Act Two Theater until a friend's brother was helping produce a performance of Sandy Toes & Salty Kisses that was being performed there.  I'll take any excuse to get together with my friend E; seeing her parents and supporting her brother were just bonuses!

Caribbean - we were invited to go sailing with a guy we had met in St. Lucia in the spring.  He had his boat in St. John and wanted to get it down to Trinidad.  We wanted to put our new sailing skills to use, so we joined him as far as St. Lucia, where his girlfriend then swapped out with us to finish the trip to Trinidad. 

Wicked - I had never seen or read Wicked until 2023, when some friends - appalled to discover the hole in my pop cultural education - invited me to go with them to see it performed at the Fox Theater.  It was a good show.  Though I generally enjoy musical theater, I don't find it life-changing in the way some people do.  Regardless, I had a lovely time and would see it again if it were offered.

OTSL - the season's opera selections included Susannah, Tosca (which was the very first opera I ever went to see with Grandpa), Treemonisha, and Cosi Fan Tutte.  

England and Scotland - our beloved St. Louis Cardinals had two games against the Chicago Cubs scheduled in London.  Our stalwart travelin' buddies, K and J, packed up and went with us on a stupendous trip to my favorite city!  

K's trip planning was in perhaps its finest form (with a bit of an assist from S and me), and we jammed three weeks' worth of activities into about a third of that time in London.  

Idaho - for our second annual "Christmas in July" trip, we repeated the western ranch experience, this time in Idaho.  S and I flew rather than drove, so we didn't have the interesting stops along the way.  We headed to Boise a day or two early to meet up with K and J (as per usual), but due to flight cancellations for them, S and I ended up riding scooters all over town on our own. 

Beeperball - later that summer, the Beep Baseball World Series took place in St. Louis.  S had discovered that this was a thing a few years before but, as with everything, it had been disrupted by COVID. We only saw a couple of games, but it was brilliant to watch.  Also free.  Bring your own lawn chairs, snacks, and beer, and feel free to stay all day.

Hamilton - my longtime second mom P got us tickets to Hamilton at the Fox Theater!  She's been a long-time season ticket holder, so we snagged some great seats.  It was the first time either of us had seen it live, and I really did enjoy it!  It wasn't the life-changing experience that some people had, but it is a darn good show.  I am glad, though, that I had prepped for the outing by watching it ahead of time (twice!), or I know I would have missed a lot of the lyrics. 

DC and Baltimore - my cousin K was getting married in Washington, DC in the fall of 2023.  I hadn't been back there since I had lived there nearly 20 years before, so we took the opportunity to go, see some family, and see the city.  K and Mom were there too.  We went to the Air and Space Museum, visited the Washington Monument, the WWII, Korean (my personal favorite, and sad memorials go), and Vietnam memorials, the Lincoln Memorial, and passed by the White House (though only along the side to avoid the crowds).  After K and Mom left, S and I ventured to Silver Spring to see the National Museum of Health and Medicine. We also managed to squeeze in a dinner with my dear friend M and her husband T, who have lived there since they both were in college.

Since we were both still working primarily remotely, S and I opted to head up to Baltimore for the following week.  We worked during most of the day, but also saw the sights.  We took in an Orioles game at the iconic Camden Yards, toured the USS Constellation, USS Torsk, and USCG Cutter 37, celebrated S's birthday with dinner at the Thames Street Oyster House, and smelled the bread being baked daily at the H&S Bakery in Fells Point. 

By the time the weekend rolled around, we were ready for TrawlerFest, which was the reason we had opted to stick around.  Since we had gotten our captain's licenses the year prior, we had been thinking about how and when we could put them to use.  We were falling a little short on good ideas, given that we live here in the Midwest and a long way from an ocean.  S had happened onto the idea of the Great Loop, a trip around the eastern half of the United States typically done in power boats.  So we decided to see what we could learn about the Great Loop and boats in general at TrawlerFest.  

I am not, it turns out, particularly keen on trawlers as anything other than commercial fishing boats.  But there were a few tugboats there and, boy, didn't they just steal my heart!  The one in particular that was tucked in with all the other boat show boats was cherry red and it looked just like an oversized bath toy.  It doesn't get much cuter than that!  

Phoenix - we had another Phoenix adventure for basically the entire month of November that year.  We headed out early in the month, were there through Thanksgiving, and returned to St. Louis early in December.  It was another driving trip, so we had lots of great stops along the way: Carlsbad Caverns National Park, White Sands National Park, Saguaro National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and the Titan Missile Museum.  It was a bit of a bummer of a trip for me, from a work perspective, but overall it was great fun to be with T and L for so long. We also had the pleasure of seeing Dad and D for thanksgiving, since they were coming down to visit E and family.  It was great!

Ambassadors of Harmony - my mother-in-law took me and my sister-in-law to the annual Ambassadors of Harmony holiday show, which is always a fun time. This year's first-half gambit was "The Great Christmas Caper," which involved such goofy elves as Sloopy, Slurpy, and Slushy.  We had lunch beforehand at La Bonne Bouchee.  A good time was had by all. 

Ireland - our last trip of the year was a bit of a last-minute jaunt to Ireland.  S had never been, and we hadn't made any plans for the Christmas holidays, so in early December we took a look at where we could get reasonably-priced flights.   We rented a car and took ourselves on an absolutely fantastic driving tour through Dublin, Kilbeggan, Galway, Inishnee, Westport, Derry/Londonderry, Armagh, Belfast, and back to Dublin - stopping in used bookstores and pubs along the way.  Absolutely would do this whole trip again!

Some Things We've Done - 2022 Edition

The years roll on!  Before we know it, we're into...

2022 

Sea of Cortez - A & L, longtime friends and mentors, needed a couple of extra bodies for a sailing trip out of La Paz, Mexico.  We didn't have much else going on, so off we went to explore the Sea of Cortez with them for a week, along with their longtime friend M, and A's nephew and nephew's girlfriend.  It was a bit of a motley crew, but we had a wonderful time.  S got to ride a whale shark, and it was the last time I got to spend quality time with A before his death in 2025.

SLSO - a new symphony season began in the fall of 2021. We saw loads of shows, including Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, a symphonic performance of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sibelius' En saga, op. 9, and loads of other gems.

Colorado - our annual ski trip was its usual success. Dad and D had to scoot on another adventure when we had a night or two left, so we took ourselves out on a super-great date night to the Office Spiritorium that we still talk about!

Florida - it had been a long time since we had visited K and J in Florida.  We had a springtime visit, which included seeing Pippin - a show I had never seen before! - performed by the Indian River State College theater department. 

Turks & Caicos - we certainly hadn't planned to spend the year traveling the world, but when S's best friend found round-trip tickets to Turks & Caicos for $200 per person, how could we not? It was truly silly that it was so cheap!  So we spent a week there with Z and L, touring, beaching, and generally getting away from it all.

OTSL - the annual summer opera season was back to its regular old self.  Shows were Harvey Milk (which was better than I expected), Awakenings, Carmen (a classic), and The Magic Flute.

Germany and Azerbaijan - since Morocco didn't work out, it turned out that our first big post-COVID trip was to see the Formula 1 race in Baku, Azerbaijan.  S had gotten very into F1 several years prior, and we were watching all the races (when they weren't cancelled).  The Baku race goes, in part, through the old town area.  "That looks cool," we thought; "we should go there."  S's friend J, also a huge F1 fan, was totally into the idea and scoped out an epic apartment in Baku right on the race course.

We bought the necessary t-shirts and were planning the trip.  It turned out that most of our airfare options took us through Germany, a place neither of us had been.  So we decided to tour there as well!  We flew into and out of Frankfurt, and spent two days each in Heidelberg (including its stunning Church of the Holy Spirit and castle), Baden-Baden (which included a trip to the famous Friedrichsbad Spa and Casino), Freiberg (whose gorgeous church bells were right outside our hotel room window, and where the Black Forest mountain biking was quite the uphill-downhill adventure), and Frankfurt (highlights including the Communication Museum and the bar at our hotel overlooking the city in the evening).

I haven't yet mentioned that our luggage was lost by United/Lufthansa on our way to Germany.  It hadn't been found in the eight days we were there, so we spent an unfortunate amount of time in each city we visited shopping for a new socks or clean underwear.  By the time we got back to Frankfurt, I was feeling very much like a bag lady with no actual suitcase, and we shortly had to get onto an airplane on the way to Azerbaijan.  So we stopped in at a luggage store and I bought a large, aluminum, rolling suitcase to hold all our new purchases.  (S also picked up an unnecessary but to this day quite useful Deuter duffel bag - which he liked so much that he has since bought another!)

We loved Germany.  It was clean and felt safe and the trains were (apparently surprisingly!?) on time.

Azerbaijan was another world.  We liked it too, but it was something entirely different!  It was one of few places we have been where they truly do not cater to English speakers.  Some folks may speak English, but it's certainly not a guarantee.  It's a Muslim country but -- at least in Baku; we didn't go elsewhere -- you see everything from women in full hijab to those in miniskirts and tube tops.  We went to the Azerbaijani National Carpet Museum, Maiden Tower, and the Daniz shopping mall (where we lived out our own F1 race on their indoor karting track).  Despite three attempts, we never were able to catch the Museum of Miniature Books when it was open.  I'll have to go back just for that, if nothing else!

Wyoming - Dad's parents both passed away in 2021, and that year we began a family tradition of taking a summer trip together in lieu of Christmas gifts.  2022 was our first year.  We went to a lodge in Wyoming, which was preceded by a visit on the part of S, K, J, and me to Grand Teton National Park for a few days.  This has, in the years since, proved to be a wonderful annual tradition.  S and I drove our campervan out and back so we had a few additional stops along the way (the Crazy Horse Memorial where we saw a performance of traditional hoop dancing, scenic drives through Custer State Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, Yellowstone, and others).  

Memphis - for S's birthday, we took a trip to Memphis for the weekend.  The weather was beautiful.  We visited the Fire Museum, saw the ducks at the Peabody, took in some live music, and got the still-frequently-used 1-gallon bucket from Silky O'Sullivan's on Beale Street.

Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site - I've been in St. Louis for a long time to have never been to White Haven, the common name of the U.S. Grant National Historic Site.  So when the Campbell House Museum, where I had been a longtime member, had a "Farm Table to Gilded Table" event with food and drink served at both places, I simply couldn't resist.  It was a wonderful event and a wonderful date night!

SCUBA Diving - S had spent a lot of time SCUBA diving when he lived in Florida.  I had never done it.  So one weekend, we hopped in the car and drove to Panama City, where he did a refresher course and I got my Open Water certification!  I had done all the online work ahead of time, but that stuff really doesn't sink in for me.  Once we got in the pool, though, it really started to make more sense. 

St. Lucia - S had always harbored (pun intended) a secret interest in sailing.  When he decided he wanted to get his captain's license, I figured that I might as well do it too.  So off we went to St. Lucia, where we could get not only licenses which were good in the U.S., but also the necessary certification to charter a boat in the Mediterranean, should we want to go there. 

St. Lucia was a strange place.  There were little restaurants and tucked-away places that were fantastic, but as a whole the people seemed largely annoyed that we were there.  They were a bit rude and put off by the fact that we might need anything, even the hotel staff!  It was an odd attitude.

But we left with shiny new licenses, so it was a success! 

Some Things We've Done - 2021 Edition

The recap continues:

2021 

Colorado - as 2020 rolled into 2021, we weren't about to forego our annual ski trip.  We had planned a three-day drive from here to there, but an incoming storm headed towards one of the passes we needed to cross inspired us to keep going on the second day.  We needed to get over the pass that night; if not, we either would be stuck on the east side for a few days at least or would have to head way south to get to warmer weather and lower elevation. It was pretty sketchy, but we made it!  And had a nice ski trip, to boot. 

King Lear - St. Louis has a popular summer Shakespeare program, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival.  It's always an outdoor production, so they were well-situated to handle the various COVID restrictions.  In 2021, the production was King Lear.

OTSL - After a cancelled season in 2020, OTSL returned in 2021 with outdoor performances.  Guests got a little gift bag which included a fan, a koozie, hand sanitizer, and bug spray.  K and E were here on the same weekend. It's been so long now, but my recollection is that they shortened the shows, so we saw both Gianni Schicchi and Highway 1, U.S.A. on the same night - but I could be wrong about this.  Regardless, we had a nice time and two show-inspired menus including ribollita, casseruola alla fiorentina, grits, and fried green tomatoes. 

California - for our first air travel in a long time, we headed out to the Central Valley for the wedding of my dear and long-time friend M.  It was an outdoor event at a local organic farm.  The celebration itself was lovely, and the food was fantastic!  A great time was had by all.

Lumberjack World Championships - the 2020 version of this, like everything else, had been cancelled.  But we had had so much fun in 2019 that we went back again once they reopened.  The beer was a little more expensive, but the show was every bit as fun.  There's also a great outdoor exhibitors' "hall" where you can learn all about the local area, buy axes, listen to the Pinery Boys, and stretch your legs a bit between events.

West Virginia - S organized an end-of-summer trip with a group of friends to the Gauley River National Recreation Area, were we were rafted the Gauley Marathon!  It was wild enough having white-water rafted a few times before, but there were a couple in our number who had never rafted before, and one who couldn't even swim!  Despite his initial astonishment, our guide was a good sport about it all and we had a wonderful time.  West Virginia, by the way, is beautiful.  Definitely a place I could spend some more time. 

Camping - for our anniversary in 2021, S and I went camping.  It was a short but wonderful trip to a relatively easy-to-get-to spot, but also a relatively unpopular spot, so I'm not going to say where.  WE had fantastic weather: pants and t-shirts during the day, crisp and cool at night.  We camped next to a babbling brook and slept like babies. 

On other weekends, but also in 2021, we took advantage of that post-COVID time when there was still a lot of working from home and flexibility to take long weekends.  We did a lot of fishing, took our canoe out a few times, and spent some good time outdoors. 

Colorado - Thanksgiving in 2021 was in Colorado, and it saw all three sisters and their spouses (and L!) in one place.  Plus E, her husband, and son were there as well.  Thanksgiving is, all in, probably the best holiday.  It's not my personal favorite, but I do love it, and I know other people love it too.  It seems to be the overall winner.  We took a day trip to Telluride to see what that had to offer, which included the gorgeous drive.  The autumn weather and leaves were a beautiful backdrop for some fun family photos, too!

Morocco Maine - We (mostly S) had planned an epic trip to Morocco for my birthday, a big hurrah now that everyone was traveling again.  It was going to be our first "big" trip in a long time, to somewhere that no one we knew had ever been.  So much to look forward to.  But just a couple of weeks before we were scheduled to leave, another round of COVID reared its ugly head, and Morocco shut its doors to travelers.  Americans who were there were flown home on planes chartered for just that purpose.  

So, since Morocco was off the table, we threw together a last-minute trip to Camden, Maine.  We booked every special they had that month at the Camden Harbour Inn, and stayed there with back-to-back Christmas and ski and New Year's and whatever-else-was-on-offer deals.  The food at their restaurant, Natalie's, was fantastic; the bartenders equally so.  Probably half the shops in town were closed for the off season, but the ones that were open were charming and made for a nice shopping experience.  Their local public library was having a big book sale when we were there, and I picked up a few good books - including one set in Morocco!  It was just barely below freezing; it was cold enough to snow on Christmas Day - something we really can't count on in St. Louis - but was warm enough that it was raining the day we went skiing at the Camden Snow Bowl.  But not so warm as to melt the ice which made our hike in Camden Hills State Park treacherous but fun!

It wasn't Morocco, but it was a great back-up vacation! 

Some Things We've Done - 2019 Edition

Do you remember back when I used to write a lot on this blog about the various places I went and things I did all over town?  I do too.

I'm not sure quite why I got away from doing that, but I did.  It was sometime in 2019 that it happened.  I know this, because I just found a big ol' pile of playbills, brochures, and other documentation of various activities!

So, here is a seven year recap of our fun times (though there is a noticeable gap, which I'm sure you all will understand).

2019

60th Annual Lumberjack World Championships - Hayward, Wisconsin, is home to the annual Lumberjack World Championships.  We've been twice, and it's been a blast both times.  Tickets and beer are inexpensive, the competition is fierce, and the nearby Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest provides ample camping opportunities (if you can handle the North Country mosquitoes).  After our first night in the forest, we got a very kind offer to camp in the parking lot of the now-closed Tiny's Diner, which made the next morning's breakfast quite convenient.  Tiny had an enormous collection of rubber ducks and related decor, and we've sent him several to add to his collection as we've traveled the country and the world since we first met him, including one from SLAM right here in town!

We can also recommend setting aside a whole afternoon to visit the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame and Museum (and make sure you go all to the way to the last outbuildings, which is where they have the old fishing boats and motors -- we got a bit shorted on time so had to speed through this part, unfortunately).  Same goes for the Sawyer County Historical Society; it's a great little museum jam-packed with local history, but hours are a bit limited, so plan ahead!

Our Anniversary - we spent a weekend in downtown St. Louis for our 2019 anniversary.  We spent the day participating in MetroQuest, which covered the downtown and Washington Avenue neighborhoods that year.  Dinner was at Hamilton's Urban Steak House & Bourbon Bar, which was hosting a special Maker's Mark five-course pairing dinner that evening.  I still have the menu!  Seared scallop, arugula and endive salad, roasted rack of lamb, Wagyu ribeye, and bananas foster.  We capped it off with a visit to The Gaslight Theater, where they were showing the play Fifty Words, which is -- not ideally, for an anniversary -- a play about a troubled marriage.  But it was well-acted and was also my introduction to the Gaslight!  We stayed at the Angad Arts hotel, whose rooftop bar/club sure was an experience!  Cool rooms, though.

Florida - our last big family get-together pre-COVID was a Thanksgiving celebration at K's house.  It was a great time! 

Phoenix - we busted out of the St. Louis winter with a holiday trip to see some family in the Phoenix area.  Hands down, the best moment of the trip came when S's step-mom saw me shopping online for leather duffel bags.  "I'm thinking about getting myself a Christmas gift," I explained.  She told me to hold my horses, disappeared into a back bedroom, and came back out with a box that had "Christmas gift?" scrawled on the side in permanent marker.  She opened it up and pulled out a leather duffel bag!  Apparently they had ended up with it somehow and neither of them wanted it, but they never bothered to return it, instead holding onto it for the right moment.  It was (and remains) perfect!

Return to SLSO -- Part Two

I used to write about each symphony I went to.  It's been a while since I've done that -- partially I got busy with life, partially symphony performances were interrupted by the pandemic.  I saw several virtual shows, which was convenient but lacked the all-encompassing nature of an in-person performance.  The latter started up again last season, and have continued into this season.  Due to other conflicts, my attendance so far this season has been lighter than normal, but I have tried to swap out my tickets when I've had a conflict to go to a different show.

Such was the situation this past weekend.  I had swapped some other tickets for the Saturday morning coffee show.  I like it's "countries of the world" motif.  When we arrived, we discovered that a Wynton Marsalis violin concerto, which had been written with his wife, Scottish violist Nicola Benedetti (of Italian heritage, obviously) in mind, was being postponed.  The reason was that Ms. Benedetti herself was supposed to be the featured violinist, but she had taken ill.  After the programming changes, here's what we saw and heard:

Claude Debussy, March econssaise sur un theme populaire (Scottish March on a Popular Theme) - complete with opening bagpiper!
Ernest Chausson, Poeme, op. 25 - inspired by a Russian love story
Maurice Ravel, Tzigane - inspired by Hungarian gypsies
Claude Debussy, Iberia from Images - seven years in the making after the composer spent one afternoon in Spain.
Maurice Ravel, La Valse - the composer set out to compose a waltz as an homage to Johann Strauss, but ended up with something both bigger and darker.

Both S and I liked every piece, which doesn't happen often, so I thought I'd share.  Maybe you can take yourself on a musical journey around the world!

So This is Christmas!

I know the holidays can be stressful, but as my slightly drunk co-worker opined as the holiday party, "it's fantastic because, just for a minute, everything stops."  Of course, everything up until that minute was complete insanity, but he's right.  Everything stops.  And it's really lovely when everything does.

In this year's crazy run-up to the holidays, I did manage to squeeze in a few of my holiday favorites.  I watched a couple of the classics, It's a Wonderful Life and Love Actually, plus my own personal Christmas classic, Little Women.  I added a couple slightly-less-classic but nevertheless well-known holiday films: Home Alone and Bad Santa.  And of course there was the terrible Amazon original Your Christmas or Mine?, which is destined to fade into oblivion (although it did have the perk of being set in England).

As an early birthday gift, my mother-in-law took me and her other D-I-L to lunch and to see the Ambassadors of Harmony's holiday show at UMSL.  We had a lovely day out before the bitterly cold weather set in.  I missed the SLSO show this year, but there's always next year!

We also got to visit with some family who were in town -- drinks with K&J at The Blue Duck, followed by dinner at Pizzeria da Gloria, which added J&T, M&K, and J to the party, making us a table of nine.  (When was the last time I ate a restaurant with nine people?  We're going back pre-pandemic here I think!)  And my mother-in-law is hosting her side of the family for their Christmas get-together this evening!

Art Along the Rivers

During a lovely, warm weekend in what S calls "the City" but was actually mostly still technically in the County, we stopped in at SLAM to take in the "Art Along the Rivers: A Bicentennial Celebration." Although really mostly it just ended up being me who saw it; S left to use the restroom and they wouldn't let him back in because I had his ticket.

It was really too bad, because it was a pretty great exhibit.  I especially loved some of the old maps and other memorabilia from the 1904 World's Fair, and of course there were the obligatory George Caleb Binghams, along with loads of other good stuff.

It's only open through January 9, so get there soon!

Return to SLSO -- Part One

I don't need to rehash all the reasons that the last 20 months have been rough for live performance. We, like many people, didn't go to a single live performance in 2020, and only started going sort of reluctantly in the latter half of 2021.

Throughout the pandemic, SLSO was very good about providing digital content and surveying subscribers to find out what they were looking for, both through the thick of lockdowns and upon preparing for the return to in-person performances. They are requiring both masks and proof of vaccination to attend shows for the time being, and also have much more if a build-your-own philosophy rather than a set concert series, which I love. This means my concern series can include some classical selections, but also movies and popular music.

So far, we've been to three shows. We took a Friday off work and went to a lovely but sparsely attended 10:30 a.m. performance comprised of the following pieces:

- Caroline Shaw, Entr'acte

- Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question

- Christopher Rouse, Rapture

- Sergei Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3

This performance was conducted by Stephan Deneve, and I love going to his shows because he does a little intro where he explains why he selected the pieces he did, what they mean, etc. In the first half, my favorite piece was Entr'acte. Rachmaninoff, who took up the entire second half, obviously is a classic. 

For our second show, with Stephan again conducting, his pairing was inspired by a desire to highlight the "new" and remind the listeners that what we consider classics were, at one time, premieres. The pieces were:

- Carlos Simon, Fate Now Conquers

- Edvard Grieg, Piano Concerto in A Minor, op. 16

- Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. 67

The Beethoven was, of course, phenomenal. The Grieg concerto was done in three movements, some of which I enjoyed more than others.  The Simon piece really was new - 2020 - and was tolerable because it was short.

We finished out this year's symphonies with a Bach spectacular:

- Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Sinfonia in C Major, H. 659, Wq. 182/3

- Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Cello Concerto in A Major, H. 439, Wq. 172

- Johann Sebastian Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat Major, BWV 1051

- Johann Sebastian Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F Major, BWV1046

It was a god show overall, but my favorite of the pieces was the Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, which was chock full of viola duets that were so fun to witness.

St. Louis Railway Routes

Can you believe St. Louis used to look like this?

Art and Music

We can't enjoy art or in public right now.  But I did get to take in a lot of it in the last several month which never made it onto my blog.  Here are a few wonderful things to reminisce about -- and look forward to next year!

SLSO
We had a wonderful symphony season.  We went to a hodgepodge of shows -- a collection we built for ourselves -- but it turned out that they were a really great collection.  Hope you can enjoy some of the title pieces as well!

Saint-Saens, Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78
Rachmaninoff, Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
Tchaikovsky, The Sleeping Beauty Suite, Op. 66
Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 19
Schubert, Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, D. 485
Ravel, Bolero

Our final show, Beethoven's Fourth Symphony, was cancelled due to the pandemic.

Art in Bloom
My favorite annual SLAM event is Art in Bloom, which happens late every winter, just when I'm completely ready for springtime and flowers.

It's funny how, over the years, you can see different trends in the flowers.  Like fashion, I guess.  This year, the designs tended towards more realistic representations, rather than some of the abstractions or color-matching of years past.  Here are a few of my favorites:

  

My big winner of the day was this:

It's hard to get more matchy-matchy than that!

Paintball!

You may not believe it -- I could hardly believe it myself -- but until a couple of weeks after our wedding, I had never been paintballing!  It was something I desperately wanted to do, so my dear friend M arranged the outing.  She brought us coffee and bundt cakes for breakfast, S and I provided a cooler full of beer, and it rained like the dickens near the end but we played anyway.  It was a total blast!

Can you pick me out of the crowd?

I had so much fun that I decided we needed to do it again, but unfortunately our first attempt at v2.0 was rescheduled due to freezing rain that I thought would make it no fun for anyone. We lucked out with a totally beautiful but quite muddy day on Saturday.  Another wonderful outing!

SLSO Show #5 and a Great Weekend

S and I had a great weekend a couple of weeks ago.  It finally felt like spring, and it happened to be our 6-month anniversary as well.  S told me he was picking me up at 11:00 on Friday from work, and off we went -- I wasn't sure where.

Turns out that the destination was the spa at the Four Seasons, where we had a lovely afternoon using the fitness center, getting massages, enjoying the jacuzzi, and reading our books.  We headed over to Planter's House for dinner, which is where he had our first date!  Since that time, they have expanded their food menu, so instead of only eating appetizers, we got a full meal!  S had the steak and frites -- I tried a couple of his fries, and they were delightfully covered in gravy.  I had the pork belly and white cheddar grits, which was so good I couldn't stop eating it even though I should have saved half for later.

Saturday was a busy day!  It started out with my trip to the Maplewood Coffee Crawl with some girlfriends.  While I did that, S got himself some breakfast and ran an errand or two.  He picked me up at the appointed time and then took me to my cousin A's bridal shower in Kirkwood.  He took that time to finish up the book he had been working on the previous day and do a bit of shopping.

Once the shower was over, we continued the shopping with trips to Global Foods and Alpine Shop -- two places we really like but don't visit very often because of their location.  We then took our first bike ride of the spring!  We rode from the Alpine Shop parking lot over to the Grant's Trail trailhead, and rode it to the end and back.  It was chilly starting out (it didn't get quite as warm on Wednesday as they predicted), but turned out to be a good temperature once we got moving.

We had a healthy dinner at Frida's -- the Frida's burger for S, and the falafel for me.  We finished up the long day at the Symphony.  The first piece was Paul Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which is probably most well-known from the segment in Fanntasia where Mickey Mouse brings the broom to life.  That piece, predictably, I loved.  Second was Edouard Lalo's Cello Concerto in D Major, which was a mixed bag.  I loved the first movement, found the second movement terribly sad, and was moderate on the third.  After intermission, the final piece was Cesar Franck's Symphony in D Minor.  I can't say much about this one because I slept through a lot of it.  Oops!

Sunday I had the chance to do some much overdue work in my garden.  I had mulched over all my beds with leaves in the fall, and hadn't had the time to clear them out yet.  Some of my poor plants were already poking up through them, desperately trying to find sunlight.  I hope I didn't do too much damage by leaving the leaves on for too long, but such is life, I suppose.  On the next nice day, I'll do my planting!

Friendship Brewing Company

Before the recent bouts of snow have made it really feel like winter, we had an unseasonably warm weekend, with temperatures creeping into the 60s.  S and I took that opportunity to get on our road bikes, for the first time in a long time.  We pedaled ourselves to Friendship Brewing Company.  We sat at the tables outside, had some beers, and ordered food from FBC's joint food venture, Benefits Bistro.

It was a delightful outing, and long overdue!  When spring comes, I think it'll become a regular adventure.

Even More Movies -- SLIFF!

S and I did such a good job going to SLIFF movies this year -- for the first half of the week anyway.  Then our collective illnesses got the better of us, and we called off our participation in the second half.  But, here's what we managed before we fell victim to the weather.  Get ready for another barrage of movie titles! (Links are either to trailers or full films, depending on what was available.)

Our first night:
Doc Shorts: Animated Lives: a collection of animated, character-driven shorts, including Bike Trip, Marfa, Lotte That Silhouette Girl, Story of Aishan, My Grandfather's Memory Book, Hoan Alone, Carlotta's Face, Maya Bdeg'a (Pelican Hill), and 5 Years After the War.

Intelligent Lives: a moving documentary about ensuring that people with developmental disabilities have the resources to live meaningful lives.

Mr. Connolly Has ALS: this was an unexpected treat, a short film at the beginning of Intelligent Lives.  It's the story of a high school principal's last year in that role after his diagnosis.  A very sweet story which provides a little bit of faith about kids these days.

I can't remember what we did for dinner this night -- probably just grabbed something in the Loop.

Our second night:
We started out with an early dinner at Yellowbelly, which was immensely filling and tasty.  I had either the fish sandwich or the burger, I can't remember now.  What I do remember is that it came with a mountain of fries.  My drink options were a bit limited, on account of my distaste for both tequila and mezcal, but I still managed to stumble my way through the drink menu on rum alone.

Inventing Tomorrow: this was a great documentary about some of the world's top kid scientists, their research, and their participation in ISEF (the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair).  The coolest thing that we learned from this movie is that there's a Public Day at ISEF, and one of these years, we are going to go!

My Name is Batlir: a goofy but sweet movie about a boy with an oversized head, and how he finally finds his place.

Narrative Shorts: Baring It All: stories about vulnerability, including Three Centimeters, Spring, Camgirl194, Tightly Wound, L'Amazone, Constellations, Barefoot, Denise, and Life After.

Our third night:
Stroop: a horrifying documentary about the war for rhino horns in Africa, and an investigation into the eventual use of the rhino ivory.

Dinner was at Mission Taco Joint in the Loop, because we both love street tacos!

My Big Gay Italian Wedding: a comedic coming out story featuring a very unhappy Italian father.

Our fourth night:
Heaven Will Wait: a story about two girls drawn to radical Islam, and the different directions that their lives go based on the choices they make.

Dinner was at Vito's, which was disappointing.  People love the place, but I've never understood why.  I'm pretty sure the only reason it's still in business is because it's so close to SLU, so they have a built-in audience.

Narrative Shorts: Comedy: these should have been just what they sound like.  They were disappointingly not funny, and the venue (the Stage at KDHX was awful; we ended up standing through the whole show).  We missed a couple of the shorts -- we were late because we couldn't get our bill at Vito's, and left early because I was not feeling well and my feet were killing me.  12:58 P.M., My Son NN, Writer's Workshop, We Know Where You Live, It Should Be Easy, Sac de Merde, Driving Ms. Saudi, Gina, Life Partner, Medusa, One., Jessica Jessica, Boob Sweat.
The ones we didn't see: Il Etait Une Fois Mon Prince Viendra, I Will Not Write Unless I Am Swaddled in Furs, Floovy, and A General Audition.

And after that, S and I both got really sick, so no more movies for us.

Pizza Tour: Peel Wood Fired Pizza

Peel Wood Fired Pizza, which has long had a location in Edwardsville, Illinois, recently opened a shop in Clayton.  I've been a few times, and have very much enjoyed it.  Here is a quick rundown of some of the predictable (and not so predictable) things I like about the Clayton location:

- The pizza is good: a California/Neapolitan style.  Also good is the goat cheese gratin (pizza in another form)
- Well-designed bathrooms, including floor-to-ceiling doors and trough sinks
- The bar is enormous
- Even when it's reasonably crowded, it's not super noisy (This is huge! When did it become the hip thing for restaurants to be noisy?  For whom is that enjoyable?)
- Their take-away pizza boxes are compostable

So, if you're around Clayton, or Edwardsville, or O'Fallon, give it a try.

Fritanga and Gateway Cup

One very hot Friday evening not too long ago, S and I had a wonderful St. Louis outing.  It started with dinner at Fritanga, a Nicaraguan restaurant down on Jefferson.

It was, as I mentioned, toasty.  Probably because I had been sitting in a freezing cold office building all day, though, for the short walk from the car to the restaurant, the temperature felt nice.  Consequently, I made the erroneous decision to sit outside.  And it wasn't actually so much the heat that was annoying, because we had cold drinks (a Nicarita for me, beer for S), but it was the mosquitoes.  Nevertheless, we very much enjoyed our food.  I went the app route -- chicharron de pollo and empanadas.  S had the canoa de maduro with pork, and we shared the queso frito.  One thing Nicaraguan food is not, at least when served in the US, is light.

We decided to make ourselves feel better about our unhealthy dinner choices by going to watch other people race bikes.  The heat was even worse standing out on the pavement of Lafayette Square, but at least every time the riders came around, we got a nice breeze.  And it's always a thrill to see a crit!

Flora Borealis

When Mom was in town back in late July, we made plans to head to Flora Borealis down at Missouri Botanical Gardens.

The four of us -- mom, P, me, and S -- started out at O'Connell's Pub for dinner in advance of the walk through the park.  I hadn't been to O'Connell's in a while, and I don't think I had ever sat on the restaurant side of the establishment.  I'm not sure I want to be there again.

Worst of all, the service was terrible.  S eventually went to the bar to order our drinks because we couldn't find our server.  Second worst (only because if the drinks had been timely he probably wouldn't have minded so much), we were at one of the center tables, which are hobbit sized and S couldn't fit his knees underneath it!  He had to eat the whole meal awkwardly attempting to straddle one whole side of the table and leaning way forward in order to reach his food.  And yes, the server finally did show up so we could order food.  I got a burger (because I feel like you have to) and onion rings.  They were fine -- bar food -- but certainly nothing to write home about.  Maybe they were having an off day, but I'm not going to make a point to go back.

Then, on to the Gardens!  In a nutshell, my review of the show is mixed.

It started out with a very strange and preachy lecture about the fragility of the Earth directed at us through the voice of a nymph? elf lady? I'm not sure? via speakers placed around the rose garden.  I feel like everyone there already appreciates the gardens, and by extension, the Earth, and that was pretty unnecessary.  They did pump the whole rose garden full of some kine of (certainly environmentally-friendly) smoke, and had an overhead light show the whole time the nymph lady was talking.  That was sort of neat.

There were lots of sections of the sidewalk through the garden that were lighted in interesting ways, but not all that different than the Christmas show, except for the color choices.  The two coolest parts, I thought, were this one tree that they used as a backdrop for a light show, and Henry Shaw's house.  That show again had the elfin voiceover, but they did such a great job using the house as a projection screen that you could pretty easily ignore it.

So, it was neat.  There were some amazing light displays, but for $25 per head (and in keeping with the theme of the outing), I wouldn't make it a point to go back.

We did see this super cool truck in the parking lot, though.

Amos Lee

I have many, many long-overdue posts.  Apologies for the lack of timeliness (which also usually means my posts will be shorter and less descriptive, because my memory is not excellent), but I didn't want these things to go un-remarked-upon!

First, many thanks to K for taking me to see Amos Lee!  He was playing in St. Louis at Powell Symphony Hall the weekend after K's operas (here and here), so we had even more fun and culture packed into such a short time!

We tried to have dinner beforehand at The Dark Room, but we didn't have a reservation and they were all booked up.  Instead we went to Lucha for some Mexican apps and cocktails.  Tasty -- and they have pre-concert drink specials!

It started out as a solo show, with Amos demonstrating his humor, love of storytelling, and folksy music on stage all by himself.  After a bit of that, he was joined on stage by his bandmates, for a few more songs as a small group.  After intermission, they were also joined by dozens of musicians from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for a rockin' second half of the show!  I was especially impressed by his expansive vocal range.

SLSO has a link on their website to a Spotify playlist from the show, if you want to hear what we heard.  Thanks, K, for a great date!

Goals 2018 -- August Recap

The month started off with a bang!

I got to spend a lovely weekend with my sisters and mom in Minneapolis!  This was in lieu of other wedding-related festivities, which I'm either too old for (ahem, bachelorette party) or find unnecessary (I'm looking at you, bridal shower).  That trip will be a separate post, so you can read all about our fun when I get around to posting it.

S and I worked a volunteer shift at the PGA.  I wouldn't call it fun, but it was certainly an experience.  That very hot and sweaty experience was tempered by a lovely evening birthday party for our friend M.

My friend L and her husband came in town for a weekend.  The Sunday they were here was PGA day, but we did get to spend Saturday with them.  We ate some tasty meats at Duke's BBQ Shack, then ventured off with the canoe and some floaties to enjoy a very still stretch of the Cuivre River.

We wanted to go hear a lecture about cryptocurrency at the Fed, but by the time I got around to trying to register, it was booked.  So instead we made our own date night, with pizza from Marco's and viewings of two documentaries about Bitcoin.  One of them was Banking on Bitcoin; I can't remember the title of the other one, but S will know.

We went to a charity happy hour at The Royale, where the more you drink, the more money the charity gets.  We were very helpful there!

One thing I didn't get to do a lot (or actually any) of this month was biking.  I was very busy on the weekends, doing a combination of helping S work on the camper, doing wedding stuff (including finally mailing our invitations), and moving to a new office location.  All that took quite a bit of time.  But, there's always September -- which is when cross season starts anyway!