The Piano

I have been working on a blog post about our recent trip to the Loire Valley, but as it is still not complete, I wanted to put up a couple of pics concerning our most recent acquisition -- a PIANO!!!

For many years I had my heart set on an acoustic piano -- a nice little upright to start with, moving on to my ideal 5'9" grand eventually. Hah! Such are the dreams of youth. The grand piano was always a bit of a pipe dream -- you need a big room and an even bigger wallet to have one of those puppies -- but I always thought that the upright would happen. Somehow, 10+ years have passed since I had a piano in my house (and that was actually in my parents' house), but there was always a hindrance: not enough space, not enough money, my own stubborn refusal to consider a digital piano. The list could go on.

Now we finally have the space for a piano, and I finally reconciled myself to the idea of a digital. Added to that, we found a wonderful lease-to-own program with the piano salon -- after 2 years of making payments, you have the option to return the piano or to purchase it. If you buy it, 100% of your previous payments apply towards the purchase -- no surcharges, no interest, no fees!!! With Little Miss' imminent arrival curtailing my singing schedule, Troy insisted that I could not be without music so it was imperative that we make this piano thing happen now. He researched pianos, sent me links in e-mails, and bugged me for weeks about going to Hanlet, the piano salon. The day the piano was delivered, he was perhaps even happier than I! He deserves all the praise and credit for making this happen!!!



Believe it or not, this is a digital piano. They have come a LONG way from the little Casio keyboards of our childhood! It's a Yamaha (my favorite brand), the profile is lovely, and we sprang for the nicer, synthetic-ivory keys so it feels and looks even more like an acoustic. But, it has all the advantages of a digital. Living in a 6th floor apartment, we have to think about our neighbors, the piano's weight, how to get it in and out (likely through the windows!!!), getting it tuned, and the fact that we couldn't bring an acoustic from humid Belgium back to dry Colorado one day. The digital piano neatly solves all those problems.



Despite my rusty fingers, Troy insisted on a 'concert' the first night we had the piano. He provided a very enthusiastic audience, and Little Miss seemed to like the music too. We even had a lovely sunset to cast a warm glow over the scene...at about 9:45 pm!!!