You know that feeling, when you are a passenger in a car being driven through the mountains, and you lean into the curves just a little too early, or a little too late? As a driver, you never get the sensation - you know exactly when the car will respond, because you are in control.
But as the passenger, you get all of the thrills of a roller coaster ride with none of the built-in security features that roller coasters are required to have.
I was surprised to find myself thinking of being a passenger in the mountains this weekend. When we bought the house, it came with a lovely piece of lagniappe (see my blog entry on that term here). In addition to owning a lovely house, we now also own a baby grand piano.
Yes. The house comes partially furnished. No, they did not leave the refrigerator. No washer/dryer, either.
But we got ourselves a baby grand.
It is an Ellington piano, which is was manufactured by Baldwin in the 1920s. It has a lovely brown mahogany body, and was clearly in dire need of a little TLC. One of the first things I did when I came into the house during our recon visit was to sit down and surreptitiously check out the tuning.
It was bad. It was fingernails-on-chalkboard bad. I grew up playing a piano that had been moved - twice - without being tuned. So somewhat out-of-tune pianos are not such a big deal to me. But this? I have uploaded the video of the chromatic scale to youtube to show how awful it was.
Kathe ended up calling The Piano Man, a local piano tuner out of Jackson, MS. I was there for some of the tuning (I had bought tools so that I could try and tune it myself, and Kathe wisely - and sneakily - called for a professional to do it before I could do any irreparable damage.) And it was a pretty amazing process. (I still maintain I would have done a decent job, and I really, really, really wanted 'piano tuning' on my Renaissance Man Resume).
What I discovered after fifteen minutes of listening to him tune the piano
But as the passenger, you get all of the thrills of a roller coaster ride with none of the built-in security features that roller coasters are required to have.
I was surprised to find myself thinking of being a passenger in the mountains this weekend. When we bought the house, it came with a lovely piece of lagniappe (see my blog entry on that term here). In addition to owning a lovely house, we now also own a baby grand piano.
Yes. The house comes partially furnished. No, they did not leave the refrigerator. No washer/dryer, either.
But we got ourselves a baby grand.
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| Our new piano. |
It was bad. It was fingernails-on-chalkboard bad. I grew up playing a piano that had been moved - twice - without being tuned. So somewhat out-of-tune pianos are not such a big deal to me. But this? I have uploaded the video of the chromatic scale to youtube to show how awful it was.
Kathe ended up calling The Piano Man, a local piano tuner out of Jackson, MS. I was there for some of the tuning (I had bought tools so that I could try and tune it myself, and Kathe wisely - and sneakily - called for a professional to do it before I could do any irreparable damage.) And it was a pretty amazing process. (I still maintain I would have done a decent job, and I really, really, really wanted 'piano tuning' on my Renaissance Man Resume).
