Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Piano Odyssey Part Two: Lucas is Home At Last

It's here!!  Our long-awaited, carefully selected pre-owned piano was loaded onto a truck in Baltimore early Sunday morning to begin its trek to Charlotte.  The piano movers had several deliveries to make en route to our house, so it wasn't until around noon on Monday that they appeared on our doorstep.  We had spent a good bit of the weekend rearranging things in anticipation of the piano's arrival.  The chess table and chairs are now in the keeping room next to the kitchen fireplace, and the entertainment center and unused television it contained were lugged all the way up two flights of stairs to the third floor playroom.  I should point out that the television is not plugged into anything up there, no satellite or cable box, and no one is going to watch it up there, either.  It is amazing the amount of physical exertion and back pain my husband is willing to take on just to prevent me from throwing anything away. 

Anyway, Lars and Anders were so excited about the new piano when they got home from school that they raced through their homework as though their very lives depended on finishing first.  The one who finished first got to practice on the new piano first, and the one who finished just a few seconds later burst into tears.  But both boys got plenty of time to play, and both declared the piano to be a big improvement over the wretched, stinking keyboard.  In fact, they think the bass register on our piano sounds so good, they named the piano Lucas.  Yes, that would be as in Lucas Films, as in Star Wars...  (In case I haven't mentioned this already, EVERYTHING in our house at some level is about Star Wars!)

Lucas the Piano is beautiful.  He's not a grand, but he really fits the space well and although he's 26 years old, he looks brand-new.  Kind of like the digitally remastered Star Wars movies, come to think of it...  Lucas sounds rich, deep, and soulful, everything that we had hoped for in our piano.  Best of all, no rooster button!

Middle C is sticking a little bit, but when I called Rick Jones Piano Center to report it, they said that's a common occurrence right after a piano has been moved and it should resolve on its own within a few days -- if not, they will pay for any necessary repairs to be performed by the piano technician of my choice.  They are also paying for the first in-home tuning.  I couldn't be more pleased with the whole experience, and I feel like we got the very best instrument for our family within our budget. 

If I get any free time, I might just have to start taking piano lessons myself!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Rebecca Grace,

I enjoyed your piano post. My friend has a Kawai S-50 as well. Their family loves it! :) I love the band-aids on your son's fingers. Cute.

I am so happy you are giving machine quilting another try. You will really enjoy it, especially with the BSR. Anytime you have a question, I am more than happy to help. :)

Thanks for the comment you left on my blog. I thoroughly enjoyed it...

Rebecca Grace said...

Thanks, Wendy, and thank you for visiting and taking the time to leave your comment! I have learned to keep a supply of Batman, Spiderman, and Transformer band-aids in the house at all times.

Today I solved the Mystery of Why My Serger Kept Skipping Stitches (it didn't like YLI Elite thread in the needles, only in the looper -- go figure!) so tomorrow I'll finish turning the rest of Anders' long pajamas into short pajamas. And after that, I'm starting a new mini quilt for Anders' teacher, who's expecting her first baby in a couple of weeks. I want to use Minky for the back because I want it to be the cuddly blanky that gets dragged around until it falls apart, but I've never tried to quilt that before. I think the quilting would mess up the raised dot texture and look awful on the back, so I'm going to skip the batting and just tack the layers together every so often. But after that's done, I'm going to sit down and play around with the BSR. I'd like to machine quilt the tattoo quilt I'm planning for my sister.

Thanks again for your words of encouragement!

Janice the Manice said...

Oh, look at my adorable nephews looking quite the virtuoso pianists... they appear thrilled. Score one for Mommy.

Unknown said...

Congrats on the piano! At first I thought you r son was wearing some Liberace rings in honor of the new ivories but then my old eyes figured out they were just bandaids!

Anonymous said...

Hi Rebecca Grace,

Thanks for stopping by and leaving the kind comment on my Peppermint Parcels quilt. I did the buttonhole stitch by machine - I don't use the default setting. I normally set my W to be 1.4 and L to be 2.

Looking forward to see your quilt projects! :)