New Addition to the Living Room

For the last few months I have checking out the local classifieds whenever I remember, looking for cheap pianos. On Thursday I found one that sounded like it might be a good deal so I called the guy - Louie - and made an appointment to take a look at the instrument. It is a 1905 Bush & Lane upright piano. Louie said he got it because he likes to play ragtime and old west saloon-type music, which sounds better on uprights, according to him.

It really does sound pretty good, except for being out of tune in the middle of the piano. Luckily there are no weird clanking/clicking sounds when you hit the keys and they all have pretty even resistance. I am really pumped about it. Now, however, I have to find a piano tuner. Too bad I'm not back in Freeman where half the town knows how to tune pianos (slight exaggeration).

I paid $300 for it and originally Louie and I had arranged for me to pick it up and move it. But he called me yesterday to say he just went ahead and loaded it onto his trailer and would just bring it over. Considering he lives 30 miles south of us, that was a super nice gesture. He brought a buddy and they both helped put it in the house too. He turned out to be a really nice guy who invited Javers and I to go walleye fishing with him in March.

Below is a photo of my new purchase. We put a buffalo drawing I did in high school right above the piano to really accentuate the old-timey-western feel. That was actually Javers' idea. He should have been an interior designer.

Wow, blogger.com is now available in Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. Their writing is so beautiful.

My classes start this Tuesday. What, you say, you haven't even started school yet? Yep. I have actually been going to school almost every day this past month to try and get some thesis research done, but all this self-motivation and self-structuring has taken it's toll. I am the kind of person who likes a little bit of a regular schedule because planning how to spend my time takes too much time. I think one afternoon after lunch I spent a whole hour and a half playing Mahjong. Another morning I spent a couple hours organizing my songs on iTunes and downloading some new ones. I read and skimmed a whole issue of National Geographic one day too. Despite all these distractions, I was mildly productive. After a phone call with my advisor (who no longer teaches at WSU) I found out that he is going back to Belize in the beginning of April. That means I need to have my thesis written and defended in about two months. That is a little scary and has lit a small fire under me ... but still a small one at this point. I think I can do it. A lot of what needs to be written down is description of what I did and what I found. Those kinds of things I already know and don't need to to a lot of outside research for.

Alright, enough about that stuff. I saw No Country for Old Men a couple weeks ago. Good movie. Has anyone seen Atonement? There is all this buzz out there about it being such a spectacular movie, but I don't even know what it is about. All I know is that I see emotionally conflicted people in the ads.

Back from Vacay

I went on a blogging vacay during the holidays. Now I'm back. Javers and I returned to Kansas Dec. 30, but I continued my break from school work this week. It has been nice and relaxing, but next week I should really get back to my research if I want to finish my degree by May.

Yesterday I was catching up on some periodical reading and I came across this hilarious video clip starring Will Ferrell and a very articulate baby.