Breakfast salads

A year ago the doctor office scale said I weighed 107.7kg. In August 2024 (my wife and) I signed up for Noom. In March 2025 my home scale read 79.3kg.

I'm walking an average of 15000 steps per day and striving to eat approximately 1800-2000 calories including at least 100g of protein daily.

My best days start with what's become my favorite breakfast: a generous bed of fresh garden lettuce plus a handful of baby carrots for crunch, about a cup of fruit (like blueberries, cherries, mangos, peaches) warmed from frozen, sometimes a thinly sliced apple or banana, a serving of Greek yogurt, a microwave poached egg, sometimes a handful of baked marinated (honey mustard garlic) tofu cubes, and either a crumbled rice cake, or a slice or two of whole wheat toast, or a thin sliced frozen quartered section of a Costco blueberry muffin for carbs. Sometimes a small handful of pistachios added, but nearly always some Sriracha or other hot sauce drizzled over the whole thing for heat. Sometimes the fruit’s in a smoothie with protein powder mixed in and poured over the salad like a thick dressing.

Obsessively photographed examples:

This one's for Barry

Dateline: Edmonton Alberta, June 19 2025

I'm sitting in a booth at Mike's Famous on Whyte between a trio rehearsal at a colleague's place and a quartet coaching at an amateur’s, grabbing a little lunch and killing time until I need to get moving to not be late to my own coaching. Never been here before, had the salmon burger. I approve!👍

It's been a while since my last post; it's been a while since I've updated anything about this website. But I have a moment, and Barry let on recently at work that he's discovered my blog and encouraged me to keep writing. So… what do I have to say right now?

Well, I began by going over all the old posts I took down at some point in the last couple of years, removed photos of my family who didn't want to be showcased so much, made a few edits, and re-published everything. So go on and burn through your data hunting for gems and morsels in old writings. I dare ya!

But here we are at the beginning of another summer vacation. ESO finished last weekend and starts again mid-August. My mother-in-law has been visiting with us for nearly 2 months and it's been totally pleasant and even helpful having her around while our daughter finished up high school and we've been navigating an ever complicated calendar of work and events. Our son flies home next week from grad school to stay with us for a month, we're all looking forward to seeing him in person for the first time since last August. Mom in-law leaves on the first of July, same day I fly to California for a week-long stint coaching and playing at Festival Napa Valley. While I'm gone my sister-in-law will come out to Edmonton with her two kinds to visit for a week out so, overlapping with my return by just about a day before heading back home herself. After that my family (including parents, kids, dog and even cat, this time!) heads south to the annual family meetup with my mom in Wyoming and, this year, a side trip to Denver where the CSNK2A1 Foundation is holding their conference for impacted families and research scientists this year. Meanwhile the garden back home will grow and when we get back we'll have lots to harvest. (We're already busy harvesting stuff like endless lettuce, strawberries, cabbage, hascaps…)

In early August my string trio will run out Summer Chamber Music Workshop out of the Winspear Centre for the week before the ESO summer session gets going, complete with free runout concerts in communities throughout the region, the annual Symphony Under the Sky festival, and what seems to have become an annual giant cover l free concert in the square in downtown Edmonton featuring magical music from all your favorite Disney animated movies. Last year we played for something like 30000 people over two days. Great fireworks cap each night. Tons of fun! Then another break for a few weeks in September before the 25-26 season gets officially underway.

I'll be spending one weekend during that break coaching amateurs in the Wye Strings Chamber Music Workshop (or whatever the official title is) with a few colleagues but otherwise it's going to be a much needed break for our whole family; our daughter done with high school but without plans for further schooling or work yet, it's going to be an interesting time for all of us as we navigate the beginning of this new normal together.

Alrighty that is all for now. Have fun browsing the old stuff. I'm embarrassed by some of it but deciding to leave it up just to see what happens, if anybody's actually paying attention. Have a great summer and I'll see you here again soon… maybe…

Oh - and Here's me the other day trying on my backpackified inflatable kayak I have owned for a year but not yet tried to use because of injured finger last summer plus long YEG winter plus busy work schedule plus inconvenient but longed-for rainy weather on rare free days. One is these days the stars will align and I'll be sighted floating down the North Saskatchewan through downtown…

A guy can dream…

And we begin again . Aug 12 2016

On June 26, 2016 the Cypress String Quartet presented its celebratory Farewell Concert in its hometown of San Francisco in front of an audience of about 250 friends and family who had traveled from all over the country to attend as a final show of the same sort of support they had bestowed upon the group throughout its 20 year career.

I was the CSQ's violist for the last 15 years, until our disbanding following that Farewell Concert. My first rehearsal with them was in the afternoon on June 10, 2001. I had left New England Conservatory in Boston after one year of a Master's Degree program and drove my little red Toyota Tercel across the country to move back to the SF Bay Area to begin working with the Quartet. We had a lot of ground to cover in preparation for our first concerts of the coming season - at Scripps College in Los Angeles, scheduled for the second week of September.

We spent the summer rehearsing quartets by Haydn, Debussy, Ravel, Schulhoff, and other composers whose music the CSQ had committed to perform during the 2001-02 season. September 11 was a day off from rehearsal, but my mother interrupted my attempt to sleep in so that I could watch what was happening on television that horrible morning.

We ended up driving instead of flying to LA from SF for that first tour, because of all the airport closures and flight cancellations going on throughout the country. The concerts went well; the presenters appreciated that we had found a way to make it in time. On the return drive to SF we stopped along the way at a kitschy tourist trap novelty store and for some reason I bought myself a tiny little baby cactus in a ridiculously cute little planter pot. It was barely more than a spiky green bubble sticking out of the dirt. But I think it reminded me of my recently deceased paternal grandmother whose apartment used to be filled with variously scraggly, tall and skinny cacti that had been around for what seemed like - literally - forever. Somewhere in the back of my mind I imagined caring for that little thing and watching it grow to immense heights over the next several years.

It didn't grow very quickly.

I kept it on my desk near my computer, and tried to remember to water it regularly, but often forgot to do so for long periods of time. It never died, though, and I eventually came to enjoy observing its little pink flowers come and go within the few days following each occasional watering.

It actually didn't grow much at all for nearly 10 years.

When my family moved in 2008 into a house in San Francisco's 'outer parkside' district - a couple of blocks east from Ocean Beach, a couple of blocks north from the Zoo - I still kept the cactus on my desk but there was something different about being out there near the sea, with more moisture in the air, the cactus, now a couple of inches taller than when I first got it, began to sprout limbs.

I noticed the odd new tumors sticking out from the sides of the cactus and began to water it a little more regularly in earnest. At some point during a redesign of our backyard I decided to relocate the cactus - now transplanted into a slightly larger pot - outside. I didn't put it directly in the ground, but I figured it would appreciate the increased exposure to both sun and moisture, and I thought perhaps it would finally start to take off growing more dramatically.

In 2015 we moved out of our house to prepare for the end of my time with the Quartet and of my time in San Francisco - we were heading to Canada! - and found renters to take over our little house by the beach. We spent weeks, months, trying to minimize the...stuff we would be taking with us, some items identified as worth the hassle of bringing along, others labeled not important to hold onto forever. 

I decided to leave the cactus there. Clearly I don't need it nearby to remember it and what it signifies. Like growing up with a pet, I grew up with that cactus. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but it is meaningful to me, in some small way.

So I'm living full time in Kitchener Ontario now, enjoying spending more time with my wife and children, learning the lay of the land up here, preparing for a new career performing and teaching as a solo artist rather than as a part of the Quartet. Prospects are good but it's scary all the same - and I haven't found a baby cactus yet for this new phase of my life and career, but I'm searching. I'll let you know when I find one.

Justin . Aug 13 2016

During my final season playing with the Cypress SQ I lived with my mom in my childhood home in Danville, anywhere from 35 minutes to 2 hours from downtown San Francisco depending on the ever-worsening traffic. For many years up until that last season I had been living with my wife and kids in a small house in San Francisco's Outer Parkside district, but when we began the long process of moving to Canada - my family moved first, while I stayed in California to wrap up my work with the Quartet - we rented out our house to some friends who were being bought out of their apartment lease and needed somewhere affordable to stay in the city. So my family moved to Canada and I moved in with my mom. Usually I would drive in to rehearsal or whatever else was going on, but sometimes I'd take the bus from my mom's place up the valley to the nearest BART station and then take the train across to SF.

On one of my first Bus-to-BART commutes I met Justin, and thanks to his awkward but outgoing personality we struck up a conversation on the bus ride to Walnut Creek. Before we parted ways that first time I offered him a Cypress "15th Anniversary Album" CD I happened to have with me, as a gift. He couldn't have been more delighted to hold it in his hands, turning it over and over, his smile wide as could be.

Later in the year following a number of other encounters with him, I wrote this about the experience:

"I don't ride the bus very often, but it seems whenever I do, Justin is on it when I board. At first I thought I'd just say "Hi" and then read the news on my cell phone, but he always wants to chat. One day he told me his mom had been sick and described a bit about it. It reminded me of how kids talk together at school.

Today he was there, and I hadn't been for a couple of months. I settled into a seat across the aisle from him and we began to talk, just checking in. I told him about being tired after a late night out. He told me about a Secret Santa event at work. I told him about visiting Europe on our recent tour. He asked if I'd had any good dinners. I told him yes, and lots of bread and cheese.

Then he dug around in his backpack and pulled out a very tattered, faded CD - the one I had given him months ago. After turning it over in his hands several times he pried it open (the cardboard cover was sticking, he must have spilled something on it earlier) and began to read the liner notes out loud. It was like a child's safety blanket, or a Seattle teenager's coveted autographed Nirvana CD they've listened to a thousand times... He was having trouble pronouncing some of the words, and he would either point to the ones he couldn't read or I would correct him on others as he went... This picture is of Justin reading the liner notes on the bus this morning.

We went through the notes and then he asked where "viol" comes from - "why is it called a viola, or a violin?" It was a good question - I could explain the instruments were part of the same "viol" family but I couldn't explain exactly what the word meant or where it came from. So I looked it up on my phone, so we could both learn - and realized it had been so nice to talk to him for the duration of the bus ride instead of reading the news or checking Facebook on a screen.

We parted ways at BART just as the first time we'd met. I expect I'll see him again soon."