2013: A Year in Cell Phone Pictures

Continuing with my blogging tradition, I present a sampling of the past year's silly cell phone shots.

After over-dosing on a plethora of food industry documentaries, 

I went (mostly) vegetarian. This was my first veg dish: eggplant lasagna.

We had our very first Stiles Chicken Day, complete with a visit from the Chick-fil-A cow!

My babies continued being cute.

 I made a few purchases for my upcoming London trip.

And then we went! :) 

I watched good friends make good music.

The 90s came back.

Our band had a good first year.

My rose bush was BEAUTIFUL!... and then I killed it... :(

Scarlet reproved her evil genius by opening 

and then consuming 3/4 a jar of peanut butter.

I was introduced to some dude. :)

We saw Mumford and Sons in Austin! 

I went home and managed to catch the sesquicentennial celebration for my hometown.

We volunteered at a PBS fundraiser.

I visited my sister in San Francisco.

After much practice, I found my balance!

Cedar Park Winds performed at TBA.

We spent an exorbitant amount of time watching the Perseids meteor shower.

This was edited but occurred completely naturally in my front yard.

My dream came true(!) as Rosetta Stone went on sale for $200!

I learned that I can run without dying...

...and then was crazy enough to run my first 5k with some cute guy.

My Passat died. :(

But my new Ford Fusion allowed me to use a specially designed chicken wallpaper!

I pulled up the hell strip and then hardscaped it (strangely enough, no pic of that...).

I learned that a well placed tortilla takes your outfit from day to night.

another early morning on the way to school

I played far too much Animal Crossing,

but I still managed to crank out a mile under 8 minutes! :) 

Yay for old people!

The chicken tradition continued...

...this time with a commemorative shirt.

I attended my first (atypical) Vogt Auction.

This whole year we have been discovering that we are secretly amazing chefs, 

and this braised duck was perhaps our finest moment. :) 

...although the spiced apple and pear pie 

complete with "the official chicken" was pretty dang tasty.

The official chicken also found its way onto a sweater at 

our very first Stiles Big Ugly Chicken Sweater Party. :) 

Justin Timberlake in Houston!!!

Fish stew... Enough said.

YUM!

I came home one evening to discover my most awesome of neighbors had left a surprise!

With the help of a really cute dude, the kitchen transformation began with the removal of crappy linoleum and the installation of new dark countertops!!!

2013 was actually a pretty great year. My "new" band program grew tremendously, and the future is bright in (or maybe despite) our strange chicken culture. I find myself surrounded by loving supportive people, and that's pretty great. I am lucky enough to have found this silly guy who will draw chickens for my kiddos and backwards wink at me from across the way. All in all, I think the foundation is well laid for a super 2014, and I can't wait to see what ridiculousness the universe has in store! 

Be kind, universe!

2012: A Year in Cell Phone Pictures

2011: A Year in Cell Phone Pictures

Silent Sundays

Several months ago I started what I'd like to call Silent Sundays.

Ritual and tradition don't hold a big place in my life, but Silent Sundays are (often) a welcome and needed part of my week. Some would describe this time as antisocial; I would lean more toward a reboot. Five days a week I talk (or sing) virtually non-stop for at least 8 hours straight... most of the year closer to 10 hours. I am a one-woman show of instruction, stand-up, and melodrama, all centered around making music. My 5 seconds (oh wait... those are minutes?) in between shows are filled with building relationships, primarily with students (but sometimes even adults!), through encouraging, reminding, teasing, correcting. Much of the year my Monday-Friday gig extends into Saturday. Before and after, I'm flooded with information on the radio, TV, and my all too precious laptop and iPhone. Every second of the day my brain is on and active.

And so I started Silent Sundays. Not a clever name (but a fabulous display of alliteration), I gift myself the opportunity to reset my mind, my ears, my throat, and just be. 

Some Sundays that looks like catching up on my Oprah magazines that have a tendency to stack up. Sometimes it means tending to my gardens and yard. Sometimes it's yarn. Sometimes it's literally just an alternation between sitting and napping. My Sundays are each their own incarnation of my personal holiday, but they all share that special ingredient: silence. Today I started with coffee on the porch, then moved to a warm spot in the sun. I sat in my blue adirondack listening to the soft ring of my wind chimes, the bird in my neighbor's tree calling to another, a faint hum of bees on my salvia, somewhere in the distance a car. A curl from my ponytail tickled my neck in the breeze. Scarlet nuzzled in my lap. While the air was cool, the morning sun was warm on my face. I closed my eyes, allowed my neck to relax as my head rested on the back of the chair. The sounds of my .18 acre of the world washed over me but didn't linger as my mind cleared and became still. I was so still, my thoughts quieted, for what length of time I don't know. And then a moment of clarity...

Holy cow! I think I'm meditating! 

While not my intention, I think perhaps that is what Silent Sunday has become - undefined meditation: a chance for me to recenter, regroup, and reinvigorate for another week of shows; a chance to clear my mind of thoughts and worries; a chance to focus on sanity; a chance to focus on what I need at that moment, and often it is silence.

Happy Silent Sunday!

London, a Pictorial 2: Tower, Tate, Toilets, & St. Paul's

TUESDAY

 First thing Tuesday, we visited the Tower of London 

to see the Crown Jewels (awesome) and hear a Beefeater storyteller.

The Royal Seal above the Entrance.

Then we found a collection of Royal armor in the White Tower.

Henry VIII's "skinny" armor with a very... optimistic... cod piece.

The world's smallest & largest sets of armor.

These are carvings that prisoners made while held captive at the Tower.

London Bridge!

 Cheese!

 Then we visited the Tate Modern on the south side of the Thames. 

And after we perused the art work, we had tea on the top floor. No joke, this was the view from our table. I took the picture below through the wall of windows.  

A walk back across Millennium Bridge and we were ready to take some St. Paul's Cathedral pictures.

Architecture is always better in black & white.

A quick run through of Fortnum & Mason (more tomorrow), and we ended the day with take-away pasties (PASS-tees) for dinner... think empanadas with delicious fillings like tomato, basil, and cheese.

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Wednesday

 Windsor Wednesday! Home of the royal family for 900 years!

The castle really isn't that picturesque on the outside, but from the inside (again, no pictures allowed) it reminded me much of Versailles. In this picture, you can see where an old moat was turned into a rose garden. That crafty queen... :) 

After ooh-ing and ah-ing over the state rooms iced in gold leaf, we headed out to find the toilets... A moment that lives in infamy. My dear, sweet, reliable, lifeline of a phone jumped from my back pocket into the icy depths of a British John... I know it was icy because I plunged my hand in after it. Just seconds later, my phone flickered it's last wavy screen shots. 

Within 20 minutes, we had found a supermarket called Waitrose hidden within the maze of Windsor township, and my phone was buried in a £1.99 bag of rice that I emptied into a ziplock bag well before I even reached the checkout counter. My American debit card crashed the system, and an additional 10 minutes later we were back at Windsor Castle to see St. George's Chapel and the tomb of Henry VIII laying in the middle of the chapel's quire.

A leisurely lunch at a pub (finally found me a tasty vegetarian dish) followed by Evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral rounded out the afternoon and early evening. The highlight of the mass was when the priest read, "...and Jesus said, 'WOMAN!...' " which is funny only if you know how I talk. I joked that the next time I was going to use the word "woman" as an exclamatory, I would precede it with "and Jesus said." ;) 

Back to Fortnum & Mason for their Take Tea in the Parlour service with a steaming pot of Jubilee Tea, scones with clotted cream and jam, and special little ice cream cakes. Finally, we headed back to the hotel to (let's be honest) play on Facebook. :) Not many pictures that day... Partially because my phone was dead. :(