The piano's here! The piano's here!

Not even close to a new one, but I'm so pleased! I'll have to ask Mom and Dad what year they bought this. I wonder if it's an official antique?

Before I get to that adventure, I posted the Black Bean Soup recipe over on Kitchen Chatter. It's the same recipe I posted here, but with a picture of how my soup turned out. If any of you make it (Laini mentioned that she was planning on it), let me know how it turned out for you!

Okay, the piano. Jana (my niece) called around 9 and said that they'd just left, so I knew they were on their way. (While I waited, I was going to read some blogs, but I accidentally hit "mark all as read" for ALL the blogs I follow, rather than the one I was reading at the time. Argh! So if I didn't get by today, it was because of that. If I know you update daily, I tried to get over and visit. I'm back on track now!) About 10 minutes later, Brian (her husband) called and asked me to ask the guys if one of them accidentally picked up his staple gun--he had been using it that morning, and looked everywhere for it...but it was gone.

So the guys get here, and were very happy to be able to back the truck up to the basement sliding glass door and take it in that way. They only had to move it 20-30 feet. I asked the guy about the staple gun, and he said, "No, didn't see anything like that. Unless it's in the bench, and maybe one of his kids did it." Sure enough, when he unloaded the bench, he said, "Yeah, something's in here." And there was the staple gun. When I emailed Brian after they left, he said that he (Brian) had taken the cushion off the bench and put it inside. When the guy carried the bench out, he'd taken the cushion back OUT...so the lyin' sack of s*** tried to steal Brian's staple gun! And then had the nerve to blame it on my great-nephew or great-niece! Brian said the kids weren't even there--they were already off to school. Granted, it's not like it was an expensive drill or anything, and we would have replaced whatever it was, but what nerve. I told Brian I'm so glad he called me so we could catch the guy out on his lie. They did a good job, but I would never recommend them based on that little piece of dishonesty. Now that I think about it, though, the guy cracked his head a good one on the part of the ceiling that is built around the ducts or whatever--it hangs down about a foot from the regular ceiling, and Ken conked his head pretty good when we first moved in here. I felt bad for the moving guy at the time, but it looks like he got a little payback for what he tried to do, didn't he? You can't hide from Karma! Even in the basement of Nutwood!

Anyhoo, the piano is back with me now. It's a Wurlitzer, and a little dinged up--it was quite the traveler for a while...Georgia, North Dakota, Indianapolis...but all in all, not too bad. I was also pleasantly surprised to hear that it doesn't sound too bad, although it definitely will need a tuning at some point. I also seem to recall that some of the keys were awfully "sticky," but that must have been because it spent a while in the extremely humid atmosphere of the north Georgia mountains. When I sat down and played a little, I didn't notice much sticking. I tried dusting the wood really well, but there are a lot of nooks and crannies, so I'll do it again.

It brought back such a rush of memories to see it! I played it a lot in high school, usually right after I got home. Some of you wondered what I liked to play. Mostly classical (nothing too complicated), but I remember I had an old, ripped up book from the '40's, I think, that had songs like "Don't Fence Me In" and "I Got a Gal from Kalamazoo" and I loved to play those! Ha ha! I'd give anything to find out what happened to that book. Maybe I'll see if I can find something similar on eBay. One of my favorites in that book was "Stardust" by Hoagy Carmichael. I also did Christmas songs at that time of year. Oh, and I had the sheet music to "Glow Worm"! I loved that one...it was an old piece of sheet music, too. I remember it included the German name of the song, "Glühwürmchen." Mom told me she always enjoyed hearing me play while she was getting dinner ready. That was so sweet of her, because I'm really not very good.

Ken mentioned that I'm self-taught. That's correct. I'm sure that if I'd said "I want to take lessons," my folks would have said yes, but both of my sisters took lessons, so we had all of their lesson books, and I had music classes in grade school, so I learned how to read music there. Once I knew the notes, it was easy enough to start playing. A few of you were kind enough to say you'd like Ken to tape me playing. I thank you very much for your interest, but I have to respectfully decline. It's for your own good, believe me! Since I never took lessons, I'm not very technically correct, and I definitely hit some clinkers! But I just do it for fun, so I'm cool with that.

I started looking for music books on Amazon, but thought, "Hey, I wonder if there's free stuff online?" Well, of course there is! Everything from the very basics to more advanced pieces. I printed out a few things, including "Ode to Joy" and one of what was always one of my favorites, Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata. I actually printed out a couple of versions of that one, one that was really easy and one that was a little harder. I sat down and played for the first time in probably 15 years, and was surprised to see how much I remembered! I still need to work on my low notes, but I can still read music, at least enough to get by. I was delighted, and I'm not ashamed to say it brought a little tear to my eye. I think when I finished one of the "Moonlight" Sonata versions without butchering it too badly, I actually actually clapped a little bit and said, "Yay!" as in "I can still do this!"

Welcome back, Mr. Piano!