Happy Easter!

I'm home!!

Thank you all so much for your comments on my last post! They really mean so much to me and I promise to respond to each one of you individually! I missed the blog world, but I was able to read a couple posts from you guys on my phone. Internet is an amazing technology! :)

I had a fantastic weekend of playing four shows in three days (two on Friday--keep reading!), traveling, a little bit of sleeping, and some good plus some not-so-good eats. I don't have any particularly cool foodie pictures because all of my meals were eaten with the band. But I do have a couple pictures and full report which I hope will suffice. :)

Right before I left on Thursday around 3pm I had this delicious yogurt and granola.



I packed and had a late lunch in the car on the way up to the first show. Yes, another ham and hummus sandwich. I had finished up my spinach, so it was severely lacking veggies! Plus an apple.



I packed some delicious carrot sticks to munch on while driving.



And I packed 4 bars for emergency snacks. (Good thing, because I ended up eating all of them! On tours, I never have any idea of what the food situation will be; sometimes there is almost too much [usually free!] food, and sometimes we're basically on our own, which usually involves many band stops at gas stations. I don't mind gas station food [think nuts, protein bars, etc] but I'd always rather my Luna and Clif bars!)



All together:



Anyway, I also ate this from my purse. It was a free sample and was pretty good. A little too much sugar for me to buy on my own though. Sorry the photo isn't great. I had to take the picture while driving. (Not recommended....)



We had a great show on Thursday night. Really well attended and we sold a bunch of our BRAND NEW CDs!! It is so exciting, after working on something like that for such a long time, to have the finished product IN YOUR HANDS to see and listen to! I know all along that the hard work is worth it and that I'm incredibly blessed to be able to do what I love to do for a living, but somehow having the CD out (my first one!) makes it seem even better.

It was super exciting, and afterwards I realized around midnight that I hadn't eaten anything since my 3pm lunch, so I was pretty hungry! I had the apple that I packed and the Chocolate Chip Clif bar. I then got to talk to my mom just a bit (she's in another time zone that's 3 hours earlier, so 1am wasn't as late for her!) and ended up going to sleep around 2:30am. I had to wake up at 6am (!) to shower and get ready for a radio show we played, as a stop on our way to that evening's show and also to help get the word out about our new CD. We played a good radio show and the host was incredibly nice, and professional, and really so kind and gracious to us. It was great! Right when I woke up I had this bar (and I had the other Luna bar for Saturday morning!):



Obviously after that we were tired and hungry so we stopped at an excellent BBQ place for lunch. No pictures, but I got a FANTASTIC salad with grilled BBQ chicken and candied pecans on top, with an excellent house blue cheese dressing on the side. And the salad came with a piece of cornbread which was also pretty good.

After lunch we were on our own for the afternoon, so I went to a coffee shop to do taxes (brought the stuff with me!) and got a skim Cafe au Lait and a chocolate biscotti. Ok, the biscotti was an impulse purchase, but it was absolutely amazing! Probably didn't need it, but I certainly enjoyed it, especially with the coffee. :)

I had slept in the car for a few hours and we also got to take a one hour nap at a friend's house, so altogether I got almost 7 hours of sleep, broken into 3 increments. I wonder if that counts? I probably didn't actually hit REM any of the 3 periods, so it probably wasn't great sleep. But such is the life of a working musician.

The Friday and Saturday night shows were only each OK. Neither were in great venues and people weren't really listening, which makes it harder to give it your all. We are a band focused on songwriting and conveying meaning in our songs, so we really prefer playing theaters and listening rooms to bars and restaurants. But we sold a couple CDs and they were still good to play. On Friday night we went out for Chinese food and I had 4 dim sum choices: steamed broccoli with oyster sauce, 2 fresh shrimp rolls (not fried), seaweed salad (love this!) and crab rangoons, which were so rich (cream cheese filled) that I only ate 2 and gave the other 2 away. I wish I had pictures for you guys because it was all really incredibly delicious!

I also tried my first coffee ever from Tim Hortons. I liked it, but they didn't seem to have a milk bar in the establishment! I always order black coffee and add some skim milk and sweetener to it. Oh well; it was still good.



I went to sleep around 1 and slept till 11am on Friday (much needed!) and only from 4am to 7:30am today. We stayed out late after the show yesterday and the venue gave us 3 free drinks each. So I had erm...4 martinis...umm, and a Jaegerbomb...oops...before leaving. Don't worry, I wasn't driving anywhere! But that's probably an extra 1,000 calories or so which is a lot, so I'd like to get back on track this week with workouts. I don't do that all the time, but they were free and I'm a sucker for martini menus...they always look so delicious! :) I honestly miss working out! And I know I'm craving healthy food today to help my body recuperate. I guess it's my form of "detox"...which is to say I'm eating a bowl of steamed organic broccoli while I'm blogging. I'm definitely not a fan of traditional "detoxing" (juice fasting, cayenne and lemon juice fasts, broths only, etc etc) because I don't think that they leave your body well enough nourished, but I'm all about increasing the veggie and water intake for a while. :)

This bowl had a slice of FF cheese and some hummus on it. Yum!



On Saturday morning I had some Cheerios with skim milk and a plain pancake. But that didn't keep me full for very long, so throughout the day I had my other Luna, plus the last of my bars:



And these two guys. Remember these?! I loved these as a kid and still do! Anyone else like them?



On the drive home this morning (early, before church) I stopped at a Sheetz for this sandwich:





I bought this too and had quite a bit. Such a good treat!



I had some fresh strawberries and half a bagel after church and now I'm home catching up on blogging and doing work around the house. There's always so much to do, even after being gone for just 3 days!

I will probably post again tonight, but for now here's a gymnastics video on Kerri Strug on the balance beam during the 1996 Olympic Team Optionals. She is famous for landing her vault, hurt, on one foot and helping the US team win gold (maybe I'll post that sometime), but she's also an INCREDIBLE all-around gymnast, with determination, strength, and power. I really like her beam routine here, so I thought I'd share it.

And to answer your questions, I was a gymnast for several years growing up, but I started very late (12 year old) and had to stop when I started college (which was pretty young; I had just turned 16) due to the meeting time of orchestra, so I only got to level 5 and would have started competing, if I hadn't had to stop. But I still love gymnastics and find that it's one of my bigger passions! I have recently started attending an adult gymnastics class and I LOVE getting to do gymnastics; it's INCREDIBLE! I can still do things like my aerial cartwheel on floor, my regular cartwheel on beam, a round-off back tuck off the tumble track, back layouts and back layouts with a half twist on the trampoline and front hip circles and back hip circles on the bars. Yes, I am out of shape from when I used to do it, but that only makes me more motivated to regain my strength and learn new skills!



And for something else to leave you with: I heard this song in the car and I think the chorus is ESPECIALLY applicable to me and many other young women who tend to want to be perfect, stick to a schedule perfectly, not have anything happen unexpectedly and just generally are a little too stressed about things beyond our control.



I can't help smiling while listening to it! It's so catchy! Warning: it might get stuck in your head. ;-)

Alright, I'm off to the gym! Yay!

I hope you're all having a BLESSED EASTER!!